The Duke’s Perfect Wife

Chapter 7

Eleanor saw him coming out of the corner of her eye. Hart looked like an enraged bull, or at least an enraged Highlander in a kilt. His short hair was rumpled, the light in his eyes was harsh, and those who attempted to speak to him melted out of his way.

Things with this Mr. Neely must not have gone well.

Hart kept barreling toward her, as though he meant to sweep her over his shoulder, as he had at the High Holborn house, and carry her off. The strength of him when he’d done that had thrilled her at the same time it had infuriated her.

Hart stopped in front of her, doing nothing so scandalous, but the tension in his body spilled to hers. He fixed Eleanor with his eagle stare and stuck out one large, gloved hand. “Dance with me, El.”

The command jerked out of him, and Eleanor knew he did not really want to dance. But they were at a ball full of people, in a place where Hart could not voice what he truly wanted.

Eleanor glanced at his offered hand. “Hart Mackenzie never dances at balls. Known for it, you are.”

“I’m prepared to give everyone a shock.”

Eleanor wasn’t certain what she saw in his eyes—rage, need, and again that bleak emptiness. Something was hurting him. She had the feeling that if she refused this simple request, the blow would erase every bit of new understanding they’d achieved.

“Very well,” she said, placing her hand in his. “Let us shock the world.”

Hart’s smile blazed out, the dangerous man back. “Your words.” He nearly crushed Eleanor’s hand as he pulled her onto the ballroom floor. “Let us waltz, Lady El.”

“It’s a Scottish reel,” she said. The fiddles and drums were around playing a raucous beat.

“Not for long.”

Mac and Isabella were leading the reel, ladies and gentlemen romping around and around the circles with them. Hart walked with Eleanor straight to the orchestra leader and snapped his fingers at the man. The fiddles stuttered to a halt as Hart spoke to the conductor in a low voice, then the man nodded and raised his baton again. The opening strains of a Strauss waltz filled the room, and the dancers looked about in confusion.

Hart guided Eleanor to the middle of the room with his hand on the small of her back. The orchestra gained strength, and the bewildered ladies and gentlemen started forming couples.

Hart stepped into the waltz with the downbeat of the main theme, pulling Eleanor effortlessly with him. They swirled past Mac and Isabella, who remained where they’d been for the reel.

“What the blazes are you up to, Hart?” Mac asked him.

“Dance with your wife,” Hart returned.

“Delighted to.” Mac, grinning, clasped Isabella in his arms and whirled her away.

“You’re getting yourself talked about,” Eleanor said as Hart swung her to the center of the ballroom.

“I need to be talked about. Stop looking at me as though you’re afraid I’ll tread all over your feet. Do you think I never dance because I’ve forgotten how?”

“I believe you do whatever you please for your own reasons, Hart Mackenzie.”

No, Hart hadn’t forgotten how to dance. The floor was crowded, yet Hart whirled her through the other dancers without danger, propelling her with strength. His hand was strong on her waist, the other firmly holding her gloved hand. His muscular shoulder moved under Eleanor’s touch, and the contact electrified her.

Hart took her across the ballroom floor, spinning her and spinning her. The vast and opulent room whirled past, and she saw the blur of his guests staring in astonishment.

Hart Mackenzie never danced, and now he danced with Lady Eleanor Ramsay, the very-much-on-the-shelf spinster who’d turned him down years before. And how he danced. Not with polite boredom, but with energy and fervor.

Hart’s look said he didn’t give a damn what anyone thought. He’d dance with Eleanor tonight, and the world could go hang. Eleanor’s feet felt light, her heart lighter still. She wanted to lean back in his arms and laugh and laugh.

“We waltzed the first night we met,” she said over the music. “Remember? We were the talk of the town—decadent Lord Hart singling out young Eleanor Ramsay. So delicious.”

The raw look in Hart’s eyes didn’t lessen. “That wasn’t the first time we met. You were nine and I was sixteen. You were at Kilmorgan, trying to play a tune on our grand piano.”

“And you sat down next to me to teach me how to play it.” Eleanor smiled at the memory, the tall Hart, already handsome in his frock coat and kilt, with an air of arrogant confidence. “In the most condescending way possible, of course. A young man from Harrow deigning to notice a child.”

“You were a devilish brat, El. You and Mac dropped mice into my pockets.”

Eleanor laughed as the ballroom spun around her. “Yes, that was quite enjoyable. I don’t believe I’ve ever run quite so fast before or since.”

Her eyes were beautiful when she laughed, sparkling and blue like the sun on a Scottish loch.

Hart had wanted to discipline Mac himself for the mice, but their father had discovered the prank and tried to beat Mac senseless. Hart had stopped him and had later taken a beating on his brother’s behalf.

Eleanor’s smile wiped out the cloud of memory. Bless her, she could always do that.

“I meant that we waltzed the first night we met properly,” she was saying.

“You wore your hair in ringlets.” Hart pulled her closer, the space between their bodies diminishing. “I saw you sitting with the matrons, looking prim and respectable, and I wanted you so much.”

Hart felt the supple bend of her waist under his hand, her body warm as a flush colored her face. Nothing had changed. Hart still wanted her.

Eleanor smiled as she’d smiled that long-ago night, unafraid and daring him. “And then you didn’t do anything very wicked at all. I confessed myself disappointed.”

“That is because I do my wickedness in private. As I did on the terrace, and in the boathouse, and in the summerhouse.”

Eleanor’s cheeks went delightfully pink. “Thank heavens we are so public here.”

Hart stopped. Couples nearly collided with them but carried on dancing, saying nothing. Hart Mackenzie was the eccentric Duke of Kilmorgan, they were his guests, and anything he did in his own house was to be tolerated.

Hart led Eleanor quickly from the floor. “I take that as a challenge,” he said when they reached a quieter corner. “Meet me on the terrace in ten minutes.”

Eleanor, being Eleanor, opened her mouth to ask why, but Hart gave her a formal bow and walked away from her.

Ten excruciating minutes later, Hart strode through a servants’ back hallway in his vast house, startling a footman and a maid who were also stealing a private moment, and walked out through a side door to the terrace.

It was empty. Hart stopped, his breath steaming. Cold and disappointment hit him like a slap.

“Hart?”

A whisper came from the shadows, and then Eleanor stepped out from behind a pillar. “If you wanted a secret meeting, could you not have chosen a drawing room? It’s bloody freezing out here.”

The relief that swept over him threatened to drown him. Hart tugged Eleanor against him, gave her one swift, fierce kiss, and then pulled her rapidly down the terrace steps, out of the garden, around the side of the house, and through a gate that led to a stairway. Down these stairs they went and back inside the house, into a long, white-painted hall. This hall was empty of servants, the staff engaged in Hart’s private supper ball for three hundred upstairs.

Hart towed Eleanor through another door into the warm steam of the laundry room. There was no light in there, but plenty of lamplight streamed through windows that looked back out to the gaslit passage.

A huge sink stood at one end of the room, with taps to pour out hot water from the boiler on the other side of the wall. Ironing boards were folded in the corner, and irons waited patiently on shelves to be heated on the small stove. A long table was covered with clean, folded laundry, snowy white linen ready to be carried to the bedrooms above.

Hart shut the door, enclosing them in humid warmth. He slid his hands to Eleanor’s bare shoulders, not liking how cold she was.

The conversation with Neely had left a bad taste in his mouth. Hart had been aware that people believed he was like Neely, a seeker of questionable pleasures at others’ expense. Hart had never cared what people thought of him before. Why Neely’s rather disgusting eagerness should bother him tonight, he didn’t know.

No, he did know. He didn’t want Eleanor thinking that he was a man like Neely.

“What did you wish to speak to me about so privately?” Eleanor asked. “May I assume you did not win over Mr. Neely, hence your mood?”

“No, Neely capitulated,” Hart said. “David is seeing to him.”

“Congratulations. Do victories always make you this cross?”

“No.” Hart caressed her shoulders. “I don’t want to talk about Neely or victories.”

“Then what did you wish to speak about?” She gave him one of her coyly innocent looks. “The flower arrangements? Not enough vol-au-vent at supper?”

For answer, Hart hooked his fingers into the top of her long glove, the buttons popping as he drew the glove down, down, down. He kissed the bared inside of her wrist, then kissed it again. Warm, sweet Eleanor.

He wanted to bathe in her and cleanse himself of all the things he’d done and all the things he would do in the name of making himself prime minister. He’d begun the supper ball as the duke trying to win over those who would help bring him power. He’d segued into the man who’d make a bargain with the devil himself if it would win him his vote.

He did not want to be that person anymore. At this moment, he wanted to be with Eleanor and shut out the world.

Eleanor’s eyes softened as he drew her up to him and kissed her parted lips.

Something jolted between them. Sparks. Always sparks.

Hart kissed across her lower lip, lingering on the place where he’d bitten her. A tendril of darkness danced somewhere inside him, but he wouldn’t let himself ruin this. Not with Eleanor’s lips soft under his, her mouth warm and responding.

Sweet and tender, that was Eleanor, and yet she had a core of steel. Hart kissed her throat and then her shoulder, her skin damp with their wild dancing.

Not enough. It wasn’t enough.

Hart swept her into his arms and deposited her on the low table heaped with laundry. Before Eleanor could protest, he was over her on hands and knees as he laid her back.

“You’ll ruin the linens,” she struggled to say. “They worked so hard on them.”

“I pay my servants the highest wages in London.”

“For putting up with you.”

“For letting me ravish my love on a pile of clean laundry.” Hart plucked a pair of drawers from behind her shoulder, a lady’s drawers, made of thin linen and trimmed with lace. “Your laundry, I believe.”

Eleanor tried to snatch them. “Hart, for heaven’s sake, you can’t be waving my knickers about.”

Hart held them out of her reach. “Why are they so worn out?” The place that cupped her bottom was threadbare, and the lace on the leg openings had been mended many times. He picked up the companion camisole, again of fine fabric but carefully mended over the years. “Isabella needs to outfit you from the skin out.”

“I can do it myself,” proud Eleanor said. “I’ll buy some new smalls out of my wages.”

“You should have a roomful of new ones. Throw these away.”

“I shall have to if you rip them.”

“Don’t tempt me.” Hart drew the camisole across her cheek. “These are linen. I want to see you in silk.”

“Silk is expensive. Lawn is more practical. And you shouldn’t see me in either.”

Hart lifted the drawers again. “When you put them on tomorrow, think of me.” He pressed a kiss to the worn fabric that would go over the round of her buttocks.

Eleanor’s eyes widened. “Cheek.”

“Cheek? Was that a pun?”

“You’re horrible.”

“I never pretended to be anything else.” Hart dropped the drawers on the pile and lost his smile. “You make me wicked, El. When I walk into a room with you in it, everything and everyone goes to hang.”

“Then you shouldn’t walk into rooms with me in them. You have so much responsibility now.”

“And you danced back into my life just as I’m poised to grab my greatest success. Why?”

“To help you. I told you.”

Hart leaned to her, looking into her blue eyes. “I think God is playing games with me. Having his vengeance.”

Eleanor frowned. “I’m not sure God works quite like that.”

“He does with me, but then I’ve always had the devil in me. Maybe you were sent to save me.”

“I highly doubt that. No one could save you, Hart Mackenzie.”

“Good. I don’t want you to save me. Not right now.”

“Then what do you want?” she asked.

“I want you to kiss me.”

Eleanor’s eyes softened. She wound her arms around his neck, and Hart forgot about darkness, forgot about Neely, forgot about everything but Eleanor.

Their mouths met in the silence of the room, Eleanor’s a point of warmth. The laundry slipped and slid beneath them as Hart laid her down all the way and pressed his knee between her skirts.

He longed to wrest off the skirts and the cage of the bustle that kept him from her. From there, it would be easy to remove her drawers and be inside her in one swift thrust. And then he could be with her, complete. Finding her heat, becoming one with the woman he’d always wanted. Craved. For years.

If he asked politely, she’d say no. So, he’d have to be impolite.

Hart tugged her glove the rest of the way off and pressed a hard kiss to her palm. He wrapped the glove once around her wrist and then around his.

Eleanor watched, startled, not sure what he meant by it. Hart wasn’t certain either. He only wanted her close, and to stay.

The strange binding of the glove licked heat through Eleanor’s body. Hart was heavy on top of her, and the glove around both wrists bound him to her, she to him.

He’d taught Eleanor to kiss long ago. Showed her how to part her lips, how to let him inside her mouth. She’d let this man slowly, slowly take all her innocence. Seducing her, teaching her to give in to her desires and not be afraid.

“El,” he whispered.

Breathing hurt. Hart had said her name like that on the day in the summerhouse in Scotland when he’d laid her down and kissed her in the sunshine. He’d told her that he wanted her and exactly how he’d wanted her. Eleanor had laughed, pleased with her power. Eleanor Ramsay, bringing the great Hart Mac-kenzie to his knees.

Foolish, foolish Eleanor. She’d never had power over Hart, and that very day, he’d proved it.

He was proving it again. He kissed down to her décolletage, his breath heating her bare skin, his hair like rough silk. She found her unbound hand coming up to stroke his hair—she hadn’t told it to do that.

He would unmake her. Again.

Hart, no. Let me go.

The words wouldn’t come. Hart kissed her throat, lips lingering, searing like a brand. She was hot from dancing, cold from their brief moment on the terrace, and burning inside.

Hart’s body fitted against hers. Hart Mackenzie, again in her arms, where he belonged.

He raised his head, his golden eyes dark. “I’ve missed you, El.”

I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you so much it’s breaking my heart.

Hart kissed her again, and Eleanor knew she’d surrender. Tonight, she’d let him have her, never mind the cost. It frightened her how easily she was going to succumb.

The glove wrapped around their wrists made her shiver. More so when Hart lifted her bound hand and pressed a kiss to the inside of her wrist.

He followed that with a lick and then a gentle bite. He nipped her again, then he raised his head. “El, I want…”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t. You can’t.” He shook his head. “You are innocence itself, and I am evil incarnate.”

She smiled, her heart beating faster. “You are a bit devilish, I admit.”

“You have no idea what a man like me wants.”

“I have some idea. I remember the summerhouse. And your bedroom upstairs, and at Kilmorgan.” Three times she’d been Hart Mackenzie’s lover; three times in her life she thought she’d die of happiness.

“That was innocent. I was holding myself back, because I didn’t want to hurt you.”

Hart was holding himself back now. Eleanor saw something desperate in his eyes that she didn’t understand. She longed to reach it but couldn’t.

“I tell myself that you’re precious and breakable,” he said. “But you have a fire in you I want to touch. I want to show you my evil games and bring that fire to life, to teach you what that fire can be.”

“That does not sound like so bad a thing.”

“It could be, El. I can be very bad.”

“I’m not afraid,” she said, still smiling.

Hart’s laugh was laced with heat. “That is because you don’t truly know me.”

“I know more than you think.”

“You tempt me every time you look at me. You with that fan.” Hart picked it up from the laundry table and threw it across the room.

Eleanor put her hand out in protest. “Good heavens, Hart, if you’ve broken that… Fans are expensive.”

“I’ll buy you a new one. I’ll buy you a cart full, if you promise me never to use it like you did tonight—telling me and every man in the room that you wanted to be kissed.”

Her eyes widened. “I did no such thing.”

“You kept tapping the confounded thing to your lips and looking coy over it.”

“I did not.”

“It made me want to take you, right there in the ballroom. I want to take you now. I want you bare on this table, and I want…”

He checked his words, and Eleanor’s pulse raced. “You want what?”

Hart looked at her with eyes that were molten. “I want everything. To be your lover in all ways. I want to come to your bedroom every night and teach you things that will shock you. Best lock your door, El, because I don’t know how long I can stay away.”

His smile held sin, the man she’d known before finally shining out. But he was right; even all those years ago, Hart had held himself back. Eleanor had sometimes caught a glimpse of intense hunger when he looked at her, which he’d quickly mask.

“I told you, I’m not afraid,” she said. “I’m not a virginal young lady, needing shelter and protection. After all, I’m the one who told Ainsley she should run away with Cameron.”

“Did you, minx?”

“She came to me for advice, since I had experience with a Mackenzie.”

Hart smoothed Eleanor’s hair, his touch becoming tender. “I want you. It’s what I’ve wanted every day since I met you. It’s always been you. And that’s why you need to get off this table and get away from me. Now.”

“But…”

Hart dragged her up to him for another kiss that forced her mouth to open to his. His teeth scraped her lips, but her body rose to his, and her mouth responded, tangling and stroking with his.

He released her suddenly, and she fell back onto the soft laundry, breathless, her lip throbbing where he’d bruised it.

He made her feel loosened, freed. She drew her hand down his arm, thrilling to feel the muscles like steel beneath his coat.

Hart leaned to whisper into her ear. “You need to stay far away from me, Eleanor Ramsay. You say you don’t need protection, but that is exactly what you do need. From me.”

He kissed her again, a hard kiss, demanding. All at once, she felt him free her wrist, the glove sliding away to land on her chest. Hart kissed her lips one more time as he lifted himself away from her and got to his feet.

Eleanor sat up, clutching the glove, trying to catch her breath. Hart ran his hand through her curls, then bent down for one more kiss.

Hunger blazed in his eyes, one so fierce Eleanor knew she should be frightened, but she wasn’t. Hart wanted her, even after all these years, and that made her warm and excited.

She saw him fight the hunger, watched him tuck it away beneath his iron self-control.

He touched an emerald dangling from her ear with fingers that shook. “Keep the earrings,” he said. “They suit you.”

Then Hart walked away, without apology, without good-byes. He slammed the door open and strode out into the bright corridor, leaving Eleanor alone and shivering on a table filled with crumpled laundry.

Hart walked into his private dining room the next morning, out of temper, and found it full of people.

He’d tried to snatch a few minutes’ sleep after the ball had ended but had given up, because Eleanor had invaded his dreams. In them they’d been dancing, dancing, but her green dress had slid down with every turn, revealing her beautiful and most distracting breasts. At the same time, she’d danced away, just out of reach. Eleanor had smiled at him, knowing his wanting, knowing he couldn’t have her.

Hart looked irritably around the room as he made for the sideboard, ravenously hungry. “Do none of you have homes?”

Mac glanced up from the foot of the table, where he was spreading marmalade on toast for Isabella next to him. Isabella paid no attention to Hart, continuing to scribble in the little notebook she always carried with her. Mac had accused Hart of organizing things to death, but Isabella and her lists could defeat Hart every time.

Ian sat halfway down the table, a newspaper spread wide in front of him. Ian could read extraordinarily quickly if he didn’t get fixed on something, and he turned two pages in the space of time that Hart lifted lids from serving platters and shoveled eggs and sausages onto his plate. Lord Ramsay sat opposite Ian, also reading a newspaper, but far more slowly, absorbed in each page.

Eleanor was the only person missing, and her absence made Hart all the more irritable.

Lord Ramsay said, without looking up, “I do have a home, but I thought I was your guest.”

“I did not mean you, Ramsay. I meant my brothers, who both have perfectly good houses and servants of their own.”

Isabella gave Hart an unworried look from her green eyes. “The decorators have torn up the bedrooms. I told you.”

Yes, Hart knew that. Ian, on the other hand, had a large house on Belgrave Square, which Beth had inherited from the fussy old lady to whom she’d been a companion. Hart knew that Ian and Beth kept the house in good working order for whenever they might take an impulsive trip to town.

Ian, of course, said nothing, turning another page of the newspaper. He wouldn’t explain, even if he did pretend to listen.

Hart thunked his plate to his place at the head of the table. “Where is Eleanor?”

“Sleeping, poor thing,” Isabella said. “She worked like a drudge all day and all night and waved off the last guests with me a few hours ago. Likely she’s also exhausted from the way you pulled her around the dance floor. You know everyone is talking about that, Hart. What do you intend to do about it?”