Page 85 of The Duke's Forbidden Bride
Charlotte’s voice sounded distant, and he found himself smiling, a disbelieving laugh spilling past his lips.
“Are you all right, Spencer?”
Katherine’s voice broke through his haze, but it was Eleanor he sought out first. Her soft gaze, that smile she had fought hard to win back, the shadows of her past tucked away at least for the night.
And he was doing the same.
Home.
That was what the feeling was.
The warmth filled him. It filled the hole that had been dug in his chest, punched through when he was only a boy, forever carved into him, making him feel incomplete. He had tried to fill that gap with too many things that had never worked, greedily hunting for something to make himself whole.
Yet the answer was right there: his family. Laughter.
No, home wasn’t a wall and endless hallways, or even a maple tree forest behind a grand estate. Home was the candlelight catching his sister’s blue eyes—so very different from his own—and the curve of Eleanor’s grin as she tipped her head back, her hair tumbling down her back.
Homewasn’t something he was familiar with, but as that warmth anchored him, he wanted to welcome it back into himself.
It had been too long.
Do you know that you undo me entirely?
He looked at Eleanor.
Do you know that you are turning me into a man I do not recognize—perhaps the man I might have once been? A man worthy of you.
Spencer smiled, tuning back into the conversation as Eleanor recounted a ball where she had tripped on her way to the dance floor.
“Of course, you tripped; you are ever so clumsy,” he muttered almost absentmindedly. And just that simple familiarity between them softened the atmosphere.
“Charlotte,” Katherine spoke up a few moments later. “I do believe you have had quite enough wine.”
“Oh, nonsense! I am celebrating my friend’s return to my life.”
“It is lovely to know that I am included too,” Spencer drawled.
“Of course I am celebrating you, too, Brother. But Eleanor and I are very close. Closer than you and her, perhaps.” Her words grew more slurred as she held up a scolding finger. “She is my very best friend, and nothing—nothing—in this world will pull us apart again.” She jabbed that scolding finger at Eleanor. “You must promise me this.”
“I promise,” Eleanor swore, and the two linked fingers.
“I can hardly believe Charlotte drank so much wine that she passed out,” Eleanor sighed as they closed the door to their room later that evening.
“It is not an unfamiliar sight,” Spencer confessed, grimacing. “After I returned to London, there were evenings when she was so cross with me that she would break into my stash of brandy. She would very much take a tumble into a deep slumber, inebriated.”
Eleanor’s face twisted in sympathy. “Why did you leave London? And Charlotte.”
Spencer tensed up, a lie coming to the tip of his tongue before he could rethink it.
He could offer a thousand excuses, reasons that were not as honest as he wanted to be, but Eleanor deserved better than that.
“The answer to that does not make a nice tale,” he sighed. “Let me tell you another night.”
Eleanor nodded, sitting down at the vanity to start loosening her hair. Having styled it back for dinner, part of it was still wet.
Spencer had moved over to her chair before he realized was he was doing, and then he was combing his fingers through the thick strands. Her eyes met his in the mirror.
“Here,” he said quietly, nodding toward the fireplace. He had ordered a maid to light it before dinner. “Come, warm up.”
