The Duke’s Perfect Wife hp-4 Read online

  “Possibly, but this might humiliate you. You’d be a laughingstock, and that would certainly be a setback.”

  His gaze became sharp. Gracious, he looked like his father when he did that. The old duke had been handsome, but a monster, with nasty, cold eyes that made you know you were a toad beneath his heel. Hart, in spite of it all, had a warmth that his father had lacked.

  “Eleanor, cease babbling and tell me what this is all about.”

  “Ah, yes. It’s time you saw, I think.” Eleanor dug into a pocket inside her coat and withdrew a folded piece of pasteboard. She laid this on the desk in front of Hart, and opened it.

  Hart went still.

  The object inside the folded card was a photograph. It was a full-length picture of a younger Hart, shot in profile. Hart’s body had been a little slimmer then but still well muscled. In the photograph, he rested his buttocks against the edge of a desk, his sinewy hand bracing on the desk’s top beside his hip. His head was bent as he studied something at his feet, out of the frame.

  The pose, though perhaps a bit unusual for a portrait, was not the unique thing about the picture. The most interesting aspect of this photograph was that, in it, Hart Mackenzie was quite, quite naked.

  Chapter 2

  “Where did you get this?” The question was hard, harsh, demanding. She had Hart’s full attention now.

  “From a well-wisher,” Eleanor said. “At least that is how the letter was signed. From one as wishes you well. Grammar indicating the writer is not an educated person—well, at least educated enough to write a letter, but she obviously didn’t attend finishing school. I believe it a woman from the hand—”

  “Someone sent it to you?” Hart interrupted. “Is that what you are coming around to telling me?”

  “Indeed I am. Luckily for you, I was alone at the breakfast table when I opened it. My father was out classifying mushrooms. With the cook, who was not so much classifying mushrooms as choosing them for our supper.”

  “Where is the envelope?”

  Hart obviously expected her to hand the whole thing over to him on the spot. But that would spoil her plans.

  “The envelope did not reveal much,” Eleanor said. “Hand delivered, not posted, brought to Glenarden from the train station. The stationmaster got it from a train conductor, who said it was passed to him by a delivery boy in Edinburgh. One line on the envelope—To Lady Eleanor Ramsay, Glenarden, near Aberdeen, Scotland. Everyone knows me and where I live, so in theory, even if the sender had dropped it somewhere between Edinburgh and Aberdeen, it would have reached me. Eventually.”

  Hart’s brows drew down as he listened, again reminding Eleanor of his father. A portrait of the man had hung in this room, in the place of honor above the mantel, but it wasn’t there now, thank heavens. Hart must have taken it to the attics, or perhaps burned it. Eleanor would have burned it.

  “What about the delivery boy in Edinburgh?” Hart asked.

  “I did not have the time or the resources to conduct such an investigation,” Eleanor said, drawing her gaze back from the fireplace. A landscape of a kilted man fishing in the Scottish Highlands, painted by Mac, now hung there. “I plunked the last of our money on train tickets to London to come here and tell you that I’d be happy to look into the matter for you. If you will provide the funds and a small salary.”

  His gaze fixed on her again, sharp and gold. “Salary.”

  “Yes, indeed. That is the business proposition I mentioned to you. I want you to give me a job.”

  Hart went silent, the ponderous clock across the room ticking loudly into the stillness.

  It unnerved her to be in the same room with him, the world closed out, but not because he watched her with his assessing stare. No, what unnerved her was being alone with Hart, the man with whom she’d once been madly in love.

  He’d been devilishly handsome, teasing, and tender, and he’d courted her with a verve that had left her breathless. She’d fallen in love with him quickly, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever fallen out of love with him.

  But the Hart she faced today was a different man from the one she’d been engaged to, and that worried her. The Hart who’d laughed so readily, who’d been animated and excited by life—was gone. In his place was a man even harder and more driven than before. He’d seen too much tragedy, too much death, too much loss. Gossip and newspapers had put it about that Hart had been relieved to be rid of Lady Sarah, his wife, but Eleanor knew differently. The bleak light now in Hart’s eyes came from grief.

  “A job,” Hart was saying. “What are you up to, Eleanor?”

  “Up to? Our ears in debt, of course.” She smiled at her joke. “Quite seriously, Hart, we need the blunt. Father is dear to me but a wee bit impractical. He believes we still pay the staff wages, but truth to tell, they stay and look after us because they feel sorry for us. Our food comes from their family’s gardens or charity from the villagers. They think we don’t know. You can call me an assistant to a secretary or some such, if you like. I’m sure you have several of those.”

  Hart looked into the determined blue eyes that had haunted his dreams for years and felt something break open inside him.

  She’d come like an answer to a prayer. Hart had planned to travel to Glenarden soon to convince her to marry him, knowing the pinnacle of his career was nigh. He’d wanted to win everything and present it to her on a platter, so she’d not be able to refuse. He’d make her see that she needed him as much as he needed her.

  But perhaps this would be better. If he inserted her into his life now, she’d grow so used to being there that when he put his hand out for her, she’d take it and not say no.

  He could find some nominal employment for her, let her track down who had these photographs—she was not wrong that they might help his opposition make a fool of him—while he slowly closed his fist about her. So slowly that she’d not know he had her in his grasp until too late.

  Eleanor would be with him, at his side, as she was now, smiling her red-lipped smile. Every day, and every night.

  Every night.

  “Hart?” Eleanor waved a hand in front of his face. “Woolgathering, are you?”

  Hart snapped his focus back to her, on the kissable curve of her mouth, the little smile that had once made him determined to have her. In all ways.

  Eleanor tucked the photograph into her pocket. “Now, as to salary, it needn’t be large. Something to get us by, that’s all. And accommodations for myself and my father while we’re in London. Small rooms will be fine—we are used to scratching for ourselves, as long as the neighborhood is not too seedy. Father will walk anywhere alone, and I do not want street toughs bothering him. He’d end up trying to explain to his assailants how knives like the one with which they are trying to stab him first came to be made, and finish with a lecture on the best methods of tempering steel.”

  “El…”

  Eleanor went on, ignoring him. “If you do not wish to admit to engaging me for looking into who sent the photograph—and I can see why you’d need to be secretive—you can tell people that you’ve engaged me to do something else. Typing your letters, perhaps. I did learn to use a typing machine. The postmistress in the village was given one. She offered to teach spinster ladies how to type so that they might be able to find a job in a city instead of waiting in vain for a man to take notice of them and marry them. I, of course, could not move to a city without Father, who will never leave Glenarden for more than a few weeks at a time, but I learned the skill anyway, not knowing when it might become useful. Which it has. And anyway, you must give me a post so that I can earn the money to take us back to Aberdeen.”

  “Eleanor!”

  Hart heard his voice fill the room, but sometimes the only way to stop her flow was to boom over it.

  She blinked. “What?”

  One curl dropped from beneath her hat and snaked down her shoulder, a red gold streak on her serge bodice.

  Hart drew a breath. “Give a man a moment
to think.”

  “Yes, I know I can run on. Father never minds. And I am a bit nervous, I must say. I was once betrothed to you, and now here we are, face-to-face, like old friends.”

  Dear God. “We are not friends.”

  “I know that. I said like old friends. One old friend asking another for a job. I’ve come here in desperation.”

  She might say that, but her smile, her open look, spoke of eagerness and determination.

  Once upon a time Hart had tasted that eagerness, her zest for life, and he longed to taste it again.

  … To unbutton the buttons of her bodice, to open them slowly, to lean in and lick her throat. To watch her eyes go soft while he kissed the corner of her mouth.

  Eleanor had been responsive. So loving and strong.

  Dark need stirred in the places he’d kept it long buried, tantalizing and sharp. It told her he could lean down to Eleanor right now, pin her arms behind her on the straight-backed chair, take her mouth in a long, deep kiss…

  Eleanor sat forward, the collar of her dress brushing her soft chin. “I’ll look for the photographs while you tell your staff you’ve taken me on to help with your pile of correspondence. You know you need everyone you can to help you with your never-ending goal of becoming prime minister. I gather that you are close?”

  “Yes,” Hart said. Such a short answer to summarize his years of work and diligence, his countless journeys to assess the state of the world, the politicians he’d endlessly courted at endlessly dull gatherings at Kilmorgan Castle. But he felt the need, the obsession boil up in his brain. It drove him every day of his life.

  Eleanor’s gaze had gone soft. “You come alive when you look like that,” she said. “Like you used to. Wild and unstoppable. I very much liked that.”

  His chest felt tight. “Did you now, lass?”

  “True, you’ve become a bit cold these days, but I am quite glad to see that the fire is still within you.” Eleanor sat back, practical once more. “Now, then, as to the photographs—how many were there in total?”

  Hart felt his fingers press down on the desk, as though they’d go through the wood. “Twenty.”

  “As many as that? I wonder if the person has them all, or where they obtained them. Who took them? Mrs. Palmer?”

  “Yes.” He did not want to talk about Mrs. Palmer with her. Not now, not ever.

  “I suspected so. Though perhaps whoever is sending them found them in a shop. Shops sell photographs to collectors—of all kinds of people and all kinds of themes. I’d think yours would have come to light long ago if so, but…”

  “Eleanor.”

  “What?”

  Hart reined in his temper. “If you’ll stop talking for the space of a moment, I can tell you that I’ll give you the post.”

  Eleanor’s eyes widened. “Well, thank you. I must say, I expected much more of an argument—”

  “Shut it. I’m not finished. I won’t put you and your father in some crumbling rooms in Bloomsbury. You’ll stay here in the house, both of you.”

  Now trepidation entered her gaze. Good. No more surety that she’d breeze in here and have it all her own way.

  “Here? Do not be ridiculous. There’s no need.”

  There was need. She’d walked in here, into his trap, and he’d not open it and let her go. “I’m not fool enough to turn you and your unworldly father loose in London. I have plenty of room here, and I’m rarely home. You’ll have the run of the place most of the time. Wilfred is my secretary now, and he will be here to tell you what to do. Take it or throw it away, El.”

  Eleanor, for possibly the first time in her life, could not think of what to say. Hart was offering her what she wanted, the chance to help him, and—she hadn’t exaggerated—to bring home some much-needed money. Her father rarely noticed their poverty, but unfortunately, poverty noticed them.

  But to live in Hart’s house, to breathe the air he breathed every night… Eleanor wasn’t certain she could do it without going mad. It had been years since their betrothal ended, but in some ways, the time would never be long enough.

  Hart had turned the tables on her. He’d give her money to keep her from starving, but on his terms, in his way. She’d been wrong to think he wouldn’t.

  The silence stretched. Ben rolled his big body over, groaned a little, and settled back into sleep.

  “Are we agreed?” Hart spread his hands on the desk. Firm, strong hands with blunt fingers. Hands that worked hard but could be incredibly tender on a lady’s body.

  “Actually, I’d love to tell you to go to the devil and walk off in a huff. But since I need the blunt, I suppose I must say yes.”

  “You can say whatever you wish.”

  They shared another stare, Eleanor looking into hazel eyes that were almost gold. “I do hope you intend to be away quite a lot,” she said.

  A muscle moved in his jaw. “I’ll send someone to fetch your father from the museum, and you can move in at once.”

  Eleanor drew her finger across the smooth surface of the desk. The room was dark with old-fashioned elegance but at the same time unwelcoming.

  She moved her hand back to her lap and looked again into Hart’s eyes, never an easy thing to do.

  “That should be acceptable,” she said.

  “He’s making you do what?” Mac Mackenzie turned from his painting, brush out. A glob of Mackenzie yellow spattered on the polished boards at his feet.

  “Papa, do be careful,” five-year-old Aimee said to him. “Mrs. Mayhew will scold something rotten if you get paint all over the floor.”

  Eleanor cradled little Robert Mackenzie in her arms, his small body warm against her chest. Eileen, Mac and Isabella’s daughter, lay in a bassinet next to the sofa, but Aimee stood near Mac, hands behind her back while she watched her adopted father paint.

  “The idea of the post was mine,” Eleanor said. “I can easily type away and earn money for my and my father’s keep. Father’s books are amazing works, but as you know, no one ever buys them.”

  Mac listened to her rationale with a stare equal to Hart’s in intensity. He wore his usual painting kilt and boots, a red scarf around his head to keep paint out of his hair. Eleanor knew that Mac liked to paint without his shirt, but in deference to his children and Eleanor, he’d donned a loose smock heavily streaked with paint.

  “But he expects you to work for him?”

  “Really, Mac, I do it happily. Hart needs much help if his coalition party is to win. I want to help him.”

  “So he made you think. My brother does nothing that is not underhanded. What is he playing at?”

  “Honestly.” The photograph weighed heavily in her pocket, but Hart had asked her—and she agreed with him—to keep it secret from the rest of the family, for now. They’d be outraged that someone might be trying to blackmail Hart, but they’d also laugh. Hart had no wish to be a family joke. “I want the job,” Eleanor said. “You know how things are for Father and me, and I refuse to take anyone’s charity. Put it down to my Scots stubbornness.”

  “He’s taking advantage of ye, lass.”

  “He is Hart Mackenzie. He cannot help himself.”

  Mac stared at her a moment longer, then he thrust his dripping paintbrush into a jar, strode across the room, and slammed open the door. Eleanor jumped to her feet, still holding the baby.

  “Mac! There is no need…”

  Her words were drowned out by Mac’s pounding boots on the stairs.

  “Papa is angry with Uncle Hart,” Aimee said as the door swung slowly shut again. “Papa is often angry with Uncle Hart.”

  “That is because your Uncle Hart is most maddening,” Eleanor said.

  Aimee put her head on one side. “What does that mean? Maddening?”

  Eleanor shifted Robert, who’d slept soundly through the outburst. Cuddling him filled something empty in her heart. “Maddening is when your Uncle Hart looks at you as though he listens to your opinion, then he turns around and does whatever he pleas
es, no matter what you’ve said. Your feel your throat closing up, and your mouth tightening, and you want to stamp your feet and shout. And you know that even if you do shout and wave your fists, it will do no good. That is what is meant by maddening.”

  Aimee listened, nodding, as though storing the information for future use. She was Mac and Isabella’s adopted daughter, born in France, and hadn’t learned English until she was three. Collecting new words was her hobby.

  Eleanor pressed a kiss to Robert’s head and patted the sofa next to her. “Never mind your uncle Hart. Sit here, Aimee, and tell me all about what you and your mama and papa have been doing in London. And when my papa gets here, he’ll tell us all about the mummies at the museum.”

  “I cannae believe you,” Mac shouted, his Scots blazing out with his anger.

  Hart shut the cabinet that held the portrait he couldn’t seem to get rid of and looked around in irritation. Mac was in a fair rage, his clothes and fingers paint-streaked, the gypsy kerchief still on his head. Hart had known this would be coming, but still it irritated him.

  “I gave her a nominal post with a salary and a place to live,” Hart said. “This is me being kind.”

  “Kind? I heard you at Ascot, Hart—you said you were prepared to hang out your shingle for a wife. Is this how you’re going about it?”

  Hart moved back to his desk. “This is my personal life, Mac. Stay out of it.”

  “Personal, is it? When did that keep you out of my life? When Isabella left me, you shouted at me something fierce. You all shouted at me—you and Cameron and Ian—”

  Mac stopped. “Ian,” he said. A grin spread across his face. So like Mac, jumping from emotion to emotion without a pause in between.

  “I don’t have to shout at you, do I?” Mac asked. “All I have to do is explain things to Ian. And then God have mercy on your soul.”

  Hart said nothing, but he felt a qualm of disquiet. Ian, the youngest Mackenzie brother, did not understand subtlety. He could spell the word subtlety and give a dictionary meaning for it, but Ian couldn’t assimilate it, or practice it, or recognize it in others. Once Ian decided on a course of action, not all the devils in hell nor the angels in heaven could sway him from it.