left in August. She’d hovered in his dreams at night and walked with him in daydreams in the sunlit hours. She’d enchanted him, and he’d found her unfledged and ready for flight.
Thank God he’d come to entertain himself when his father and brothers had visited Pembroke’s. He could so easily have stayed away and gone to London.
But his father and hers were going to be mad as hell.
He asked for another tankard of ale and ordered the pork dish. He’d eaten enough bloody rabbit for a whole century during the Peninsular War. He would not touch the rabbit pie. It reminded him too much of the biting pain when hunger gripped inside you and you still had to march or fight. Yet he barely touched the meal, his hunger now was for a certain pale-blue-eyed, black-haired beauty.
Finding Ellen had been like finding treasure on the battle torn fields in his head. His sanity clung to her, something beautiful to remind him that everything was not ugly. She was someone to fight for. Someone to survive for…
The clerk arrived. “The day after tomorrow. Would that suit, sir?”
“Yes.” The sooner the better. Tomorrow would be torment. Now he’d made up his mind, and Ellen had agreed, he simply wished to go. But if there was no choice. “That will suit.”
“Thank you, Captain.” The man bowed.
~
Ellen’s stomach growled with hunger for the umpteenth time as she lay on her bed. She’d been confined to her room for four days, but this would be the last day… She was leaving. The thought clutched tightly in her heart. No one knew. In ten hours Paul would come to meet her.
She’d not even told Pippa, she was too terrified her father would hear it from someone if she said the words aloud.
Every detail of their escape, in Paul’s words, was safely tucked inside her bodice near her heart, pressing against her breast.
“Eleanor.”
Heavens.
“Eleanor!” The sound seeped through her bedchamber door; a deep heavy pitch that made her instantly wish to comply. Obedience had carved its mark into her soul – and yet she was about to disobey. Where on earth would her courage come from?
“Father?” The key turned in the lock on the outside and Ellen scurried off the bed.
When the door opened she stood by the bedpost, her hands gripped before her waist, her back rigid and chin high, but her eyes downturned. It felt as though she was one of Paul’s soldiers on parade when she faced her father. She did not feel like his flesh and blood.
“Your Grace.” She lowered in a deep curtsy sinking as far as she was able, in the hope he would think her penitent and be kinder. She did not look up to meet his gaze in case it roused his anger. But she needn’t even look at her father to know when he was displeased; displeasure hung in the air around him without him saying a word. Yet he never showed his anger physically, apart from barking orders and offering condemning dismissals.
Those cutting words and his exclusion were enough punishment though. He never looked at her as if he cared, never smiled…
What I am planning will horrify him …
Her father’s fingers encouraged her to rise, with a beckoning gesture.
“Papa.” She lifted her gaze to his.
Paul’s words, promising faithfulness, love and protection, pressed against her bosom as she took a deeper breath. A blush crept across her skin. She feared even the blush might give her away.
Compared to her father, Paul was water to stone, something moving and living.
Vibrancy and approachability – warmth – emanated from Paul.
Her father hid beneath coldness and disdain. If there was any warmth in his soul she’d never been able to see it. He most often communicated in a series of bitter glares rather than words.
Yet Paul had experienced awful things. Death. Illness. He had cause to be bitter. He’d seen friends die, and killed others for the sake of freedom in Europe. He never spoke of it though, even when she’d asked. He always spoke of good things. But she supposed his months in England were months to forget the Peninsular War.
“Well? Have you thought about your behaviour, Eleanor?”
Paul’s letter was warm against her heated breast. Yes, she had thought, and she had made a choice – to leave. “Yes, Papa.”
Until this summer she’d thought her father was unaware of his daughters, they’d grown up in the hands of servants, with a daily visit from her mother. But last year she’d reached a marriageable age, and now he saw her – but only as a bargaining tool. He wished her to marry to secure a political alliance.
“And are you sorry?”
Ellen’s gaze dropped to his shoes. She felt no regret. “Yes, Papa.”
“You will take Argyle?”
Ellen took a breath longing for courage. She did not feel able to lie to that extent.
“Eleanor?”
Looking up, she faced his stern condemning glare. His expression was as unreadable as marble. “I cannot, Papa. I do not wish to marry His Grace.” Her father had a way of making other people seem small and insignificant – incapable. “Papa?” Do you love me? Will you miss me?
“You do not have a choice, Eleanor. You will do your duty.”
His gaze held her at a distance, blunt and cold.
Hers reached out, begging for a sign of his affection. “I cannot, Papa. He is so old, and–”
“You are being wilful and defiant, Eleanor. You will do as I say and that is an end to it.”
The words inside her pressed to escape catching up in a ball in her throat as she longed to plead, to make him accept Paul, but her father did not like emotion. As children they’d always been taken from his presence whenever there were tears, or shouts or laughter. But today, today she could not quite hold herself back. “Papa, please… What would be so wrong with Paul? I love him and he loves me…”
He gave no obvious sign his anger had escalated, yet she knew. It was in the stiffness of his body, in the cut of his silver eyes as they glared at her. He was like her in appearance – or rather she was like him. She had his eyes and his jet black hair and pale skin. But she was nothing like him in nature, and she did not wish to be. What possessed a man to be so cold? He would be handsome if he smiled but he never smiled, merely glowered and growled.
“Do not be ridiculous, Eleanor. Love? What is love?” Something you do not feel, Papa. “You are talking nonsense. There is nothing in it. You are the daughter of a duke. You have a duty and responsibility, and that is what you must think of in a marriage. It seems you are unrepentant then, and you’ve learned no lesson at all. You will spend the next full day on your knees. Study the bible, ask for forgiveness and pray for guidance. You will learn, Eleanor. Your mother has been too lenient, letting you dream of such fanciful things.
