Eleanor could not take her eyes off him. She had seen him, of course, since he returned to England; not just at that memorable ball when they stood face to face for the first time in nearly thirty-five years then passed without a word, but also in the distance on the street, in the park, even at other social events that they accidentally both attended at the same time.
She had not stood close enough to catalogue all the ways he had changed and all the ways he was still the young man — almost a boy — that she had loved and lost.
“James,” she said again, her vocabulary deserting her.
His eyes were the same warm brown, but the face from which they smiled had matured into a shape far distant from her memories. His height had not changed, nor were his shoulders broader. Indeed, if she ignored the maturity lines, and the wisdom and knowledge in his eyes, she would not believe him to be nearly sixty. He had been a handsome youth, almost pretty. The prettiness had worn into something sharper, something stronger.
“I waited,” she said, not knowing the words were in her mind until she heard them leave her tongue. “I told them if they dragged me to the church I would refuse Haverford at the very altar. Then they told me you were dead, and it didn’t matter any more.” It didn’t matter now. More than thirty years had passed. She had two sons. He had married a woman he loved and had ten children with her. How could she possibly care what he thought about the actions of that girl from so long ago. But somehow, it did matter that he knew she had tried to be faithful to their love.
His gaze had not left face. “Winshire had reason to believe that I was dead. My captor said he would kill me if Winshire did not pay the ransom he wanted.”
“Georgie explained.” She flushed, suddenly aware that she was gawking like a giddy girl. “Please, Lord Sutton, do have a seat.” She arranged herself in the chair closest to the tea makings. “May I pour you a cup.”
James’s lips curved, just a little. “Thank you. Black, please. No milk, cream or sugar.” As he took the chair opposite, he added, “Are we to be formal, then, Eleanor? Or should I say ‘Your Grace’?”
No. Never that. For James to address her as Haverford’s duchess struck her as a perversion of all things righteous and good. Floundering to regain her balance, she thought again of his wife. She had suffered decades of marriage to a monster, but he had loved and been loved, and she was glad of it. “I was sorry to hear about the death of Lady James. When Georgie told me she had died, I so wanted to write, but…” Unable to find the words to explain the social constraints she would have needed to ignore to write a condolence letter to her first love on the death of his wife, she gestured meaninglessly with one hand.
He seemed to understand. “Thank you.” He put out his hand to receive the cup she passed and her hand touched his. Even through two layers of glove, she felt a jolt, as if all the barely contained energy that gave him such presence and power had discharged up her arm and through her — through her torso. She snatched her hand back, and only his quick reflexes allowed him to take a firm grip on the cup in time to prevent more than a slight slosh into the saucer.
It was a relief when the door opened again, to let in Grace and Georgie. The flurry of greetings gave her time to calm down.
James said, “I will leave you ladies to your meeting and walk on to my own. The carriage will wait for you, my ladies. Your Grace, thank you for sparing me a few moments of your time.”
Eleanor curtsied and allowed him to bow over her hand, very properly not touching it. “It was a pleasure to see you, my lord,” she managed to murmur, her voice creditably even.
But one thought beat persistently in her mind all through tea with her friends, the ride home in the unmarked carriage she had borrowed from her son, her entrance into his private wing — yet another anonymous veiled lady visiting the wicked Merry Marquis — and her retreat to her own side of the house. Her attraction to James Winderfield, Earl of Sutton and future Duke of Winshire, was as potent as it had been when she was an innocent girl.
It was foolishness. She was married. They were enemies by her husband’s decree. James was a widower famous for still loving his deceased wife. Foolishness or not, he was still the only man who had ever made her heart race and her body melt. And nothing could ever come of it.
