Jennifer Ashley - The Duke’s Perfect Wife

He shouldn’t have come here. The house held too many memories.

Hart opened the door to the bedroom, and stopped.

Ian Mackenzie stood in the middle of the carpet, gazing up at the ceiling, which was painted with nymphs and cavorting gods. A mirror hung on the ceiling, right over the place the bed used to be.

Ian stared up into the mirror, studying his own reflection. He must have heard Hart come in, because he said, “I hate this room.”

“Then why the devil are you standing in it?” Hart asked.

Ian didn’t answer directly, but then, Ian never did. “She hurt my Beth.”

Hart walked into the room and dared put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. He remembered finding Angelina with Beth, Beth barely alive. Angelina, dying, had told Hart what she’d done, and that she’d done it all for Hart. The declaration still left a bitter taste in his mouth.

“I am sorry, Ian,” Hart said. “You know I am.”

Eye contact was still a bit difficult for Ian with anyone but Beth, but Ian took his gaze from the mirror and directed it at Hart. Hart saw in Ian’s eyes remembered fear, worry, and anguish. They’d almost lost Beth that night.

Hart squeezed Ian’s shoulder. “But Beth’s all right now. She’s at your house in Scotland, safe and sound. With your son and baby daughter.” Isabella Elizabeth Mackenzie had been born late last summer. They called her Belle.

Ian ducked out from under Hart’s hand. “Jamie walks everywhere now. And he talks. He knows so many words. He’s nothing like me.” His voice rang with pride.

“Why aren’t you in Scotland with your beloved wife and children, then?” Hart asked.

Ian’s gaze drifted to the ceiling again. “Beth thought I should come down.”

“Why? Because Eleanor was here?”

“Yes.”

Dear God, this family. “I wager Mac rushed out and sent Beth a wire as soon as Eleanor turned up,” Hart said.

Ian didn’t answer, but Hart knew the truth of it.

“But why have you come here, today?” Hart went on. “To this house, I mean?” Ian was sometimes pulled to places that had frightened or upset him, such as his father’s private study at Kilmorgan, where he’d witnessed their father kill their mother in a fit of rage. After Ian’s release from the asylum, Hart had found him in that room many times, Ian sitting huddled behind the desk where he’d hidden that fateful day.

Ian kept his gaze on the mirror as though it fascinated him. Hart also remembered that, because Ian had trouble with lies, he’d learned to be very good at simply not answering questions.

Oh, bloody hell. “Ian,” Hart said, his rage boiling up with nightmare force. “Tell me you didn’t bring her here.”

Ian finally looked away from the mirror, but he never looked at Hart. He wandered across the room to the window and peered out at the fog, his back firmly to his brother.

Hart swung away and strode into the hall. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. “Eleanor!”

The word echoed up and down the staircase, soaring to the painted cherubs that lurked at the very top of the house.

Silence.

Silence meant nothing. Hart took the stairs to the next floor two at a time.

One of the doors on the landing stood ajar. Hart shoved it open with such force that the door banged into the heavy bureau that partially blocked it.

Someone had moved excess furniture up here, and now the chamber was a jumble of bookcases, dressing tables, chests of drawers, and armoires. A velvet sofa, coated with dust, canted at an odd angle in the middle of the room.

Eleanor Ramsay looked up from where she’d been searching the sofa cushions, a cloud of dust around her.

“Good heavens, Hart,” she said. “You do make a lot of noise.”

Hart’s world took on sharp edges. Eleanor Ramsay could not be here, in this place with its horrible memories of anger, greed, jealousy, and fear. Eleanor here was like a daffodil in a quagmire, a fragile blossom all too easily pulled to its doom. He did not want this world, this part of his life, so much as touching her.

“Eleanor,” he said, voice tight with fury, “I told you not to come here.”

Eleanor shook out a cushion and plopped it back onto the sofa. “Yes, I know you did. But I thought I should get on looking for the photographs, and I knew that if I asked you for the key, you’d never give it to me.”

“So you went behind my back and asked Ian?”

“Well, of course. Ian is much more logical than you, and he does not bother me with pesky questions. I did not tell him about the photographs, if you are worried about that. They are quite personal, after all. It did not matter anyway, because Ian never asked me why I wanted to come.”

Hart gave Eleanor a look that had made Angelina Palmer drop her poised courtesan smile and whiten in fear. Eleanor merely stared at him.

On her head perched a pillbox hat with an absurd little veil. She’d pulled the dotted veil up out of her eyes, but not completely—it hung lopsidedly, dangling over her right brow. Her dark brown dress was filmed with dust she’d raised, and dust caught on her damp cheeks. One lock of hair had escaped her coiffure, a red snake dancing down her bodice. She was delightfully mussed, and dear God, he wanted her.

“I told you, I do not want you in this place,” he said. “Not now. Not ever.”

“I know.” Eleanor moved, calm as she pleased, to the bureau that blocked the door and leaned to open the bottom drawer. “I wasn’t silly enough to rush here by myself, if that is what is bothering you. I met my father and Ian at the museum, sent my father and Maigdlin home in your landau, and had Ian walk with me here. I’ve been watched over every step of the way.”

“What is bothering me is that I asked you not to come here at all and you flagrantly disobeyed my wishes.” His voice rang through the room.

“Disobeyed your wishes? Dear, oh, dear, Your High and Mighty Grace. I ought to have mentioned that I’ve always had trouble with obedience, but then, you knew that. If I sat quietly and waited to obey my father, I would long ago have become a dried-up skeleton on a chair. Father is very bad at making any sort of little decision, even including how much sugar he wants in his tea. And he never can remember whether he likes cream. I learned at an early age to not wait upon anyone’s permission, but simply to do.”

“And now you work for me.”

She rummaged in the drawer, not looking at him. “I’m hardly your servant, but the same principle applies. Were I to wait for your commands, I’d be in that little study with Wilfred, tapping my fingers on the desk, wondering when you would bother to appear. Even Wilfred wonders at your absences, and he is a man of few words.”

“In that study is exactly where I want you to be!”

“I don’t see why. Wilfred doesn’t really need me to type your correspondence. He gives it to me for something to do, because he feels sorry for me. My time is much better spent trying to discover who is sending the pictures and what they mean by it. And you could help me search instead of standing in the doorway shouting at me.”

She made his blood boil. “Eleanor, I want you out of this house.”

Eleanor blithely ignored him to open the next drawer. “Not until I’ve finished looking. There are many nooks and crannies and much furniture.”

Hart pushed his way around the bureau, seized Eleanor by her shoulders, and pulled her upright. She came up swiftly, one blue eye now completely shielded by the veil.

Before Hart registered that he did it, he skimmed his hands down her arms to her wrists and pulled them behind her back. He knew how to lock a woman’s hands, knew how to hold her still. Eleanor stared up at him, red lips parted.

Need streaked through him, a craving that closed him in razor-sharp claws. Hart studied the red lips that beckoned him, breasts rising against her tightly buttoned bodice, the lock of hair, fallen, gold red against her cheek.

He leaned and took the curl in his mouth. Eleanor drew a breath, and Hart turned his head and caught her lip between his teeth.

Eleanor’s eyes were enormous this close to his. Gone was her defiance, her stubborn obliviousness. She focused on Hart and Hart alone, as he bit down on her lip, not brutally, but enough to trap her. Her breath was hot on his cheek, and her wrists were quiet under his hands.

Tamed? No. Never Eleanor. If she quieted in his skilled grasp, it was her choice to.

Hart could easily take her, now, perhaps across the top of the chest behind her. It would be quick and intense—a few thrusts, and Hart would be spent. They wouldn’t even have to undress. Eleanor would be his, again, inescapably.

Hart pressed a soft kiss where his teeth had scraped. Her lips were slightly salty with perspiration, silken soft, the warm tang of her mouth satisfying. He nipped her again, pulling her lip with his teeth, again gentling the movement by kissing where he’d bitten.

Eleanor moved her lips to kiss him back, her eyes closing to slits while her pink, soft mouth found his. Hart slanted across it, ready to lick inside, but Eleanor pulled back.

“Don’t.” Her whisper was quiet, and he wouldn’t have heard it had they not been this close. But no fear rested in Eleanor’s eyes. He saw sorrow and heartache instead. “It’s not fair.”

“Not fair?”

“To me.” Her lashes were wet.

Dark need tore at him. Hart gripped her wrists, but Eleanor didn’t flinch, didn’t move.

He was Hart Mackenzie, the Duke of Kilmorgan, one of the most powerful men in Britain, and Eleanor Ramsay had put herself into his power. Hart could do anything he wanted to her, up here, alone in this room.

Anything at all.

Eleanor’s eyes, one behind the pin-dot veil, one visible, stared into his. Hart dragged in a breath that burned fire, and made himself let her go.

His body fought him releasing her, and he backed a step before he turned away and leaned on the bureau. He pressed his fists to the wood, his lungs hurting, blood pounding through his body.

“Hart, are you all right?”

Eleanor looked up at him in concern. Still, she had no fear. Only worry—for him.

“Yes, I am all right. Why the hell wouldn’t I be?”

“Because you look very red and will break the wood if you’re not careful.”

“I’ll be better the minute you are out of this house!”

Eleanor spread her hands in her dove-colored gloves. “When I’m finished searching.”

Hart roared. He grabbed the chest of drawers and overturned it, the thing crashing to the floor. At the same time, the doorway darkened and Ian strode in, his Mackenzie scowl all for Hart.

Eleanor turned to Ian, giving him a bright smile. “There you are, Ian. Will you please take Hart downstairs? I will finish much more quickly if he’s not up here throwing the furniture about.”

Hart went for her. Ian tried to stop him, but Hart shoved Ian out of the way and lunged at Eleanor.

She shrieked. Hart didn’t care. He lifted her and tucked her over his shoulder, then he pushed past Ian—who had decided to step back and let this happen—and carried Eleanor bodily down the stairs.

“Ian, bring my package!” Eleanor shouted back over his shoulder. “Hart, put me down. This is absurd.”

Hart’s town coach was pulling to a halt under the gaslights, which were turning the now-misty air a sickly yellow. Hart at least set Eleanor on her feet before he guided her down the steps to the street, hand on her elbow, pushing her at the car-riage.

Instead of fighting him, Eleanor subsided after one “Really, Hart.” He saw her glance at the passersby and decide not to make a scene.

Hart shoved her into the coach that his footmen hastily opened. He climbed up beside her and directed his coachman to Grosvenor Square, knowing good and well that Eleanor would never stay in the carriage if he didn’t hold her there all the way home.

The pictures Eleanor had found at the shop were breathtaking. Hart in all his glory.

Eleanor sat alone at the table in her bedchamber that evening, the photographs spread before her. She was in her dressing gown, the new ball gown she’d wear tonight lying in emerald delight across the bed.

Ian, bless him, had brought the brown-paper package to her when he’d returned to Hart’s, again never asking what was in it. Eleanor waited for Maigdlin to go down to her supper before she cut the twine and unwrapped the box, laying out the photographs one by one.