Page 51 of A Secret Consequence for the Viscount
Chapter Ten
Eleanor sat at her dressing table and peered at herself in the mirror. She looked older and more tired than she had ever been, lines of worry marring her forehead.
Lucy was back in London and she had spent the evening with her for she’d missed her daughter’s laughter and hugs. She breathed out in worry for Jacob had asked Nicholas to their small family gathering tomorrow night and that definitely posed a problem.
Did Lucy look like him? Could the others possibly see the resemblance that she herself most certainly could? Would her daughter tell him how old she was in a passing conversation and if she did, was that something that he might consider and calculate?‘Five and nearly three-quarters.’Children were never vague about their age.
No wonder she had lines on her forehead. Eleanor shut her eyes just to find a quiet that was missing inside every single thought she had.
It was Grandmama’s fault. She had insisted on Nicholas Bartlett being there and for what reason Eleanor could hardly fathom. Something about promising his grandmother that she would watch over her grandson as the older woman was dying.
Eleanor wished her mother could have been standing behind her and running her soft hands across her hair, telling her that everything would work out fine and that worrying was just ‘borrowing trouble’.
But it had not worked out fine at all when Mama had succumbed to the sickness of the lungs so quickly and had gone from them before anyone could even say goodbye.
Borrowing trouble? She inhaled slowly, one breath and then another. It was a trick she had perfected when Nicholas had disappeared and she had found out that she carried his child, when her whole world had shattered at her feet.
The calm came back and her glance fell to the small bracelet sitting beside her mother’s silver brush.
She wished he had kept her token. She shook her head at that thought and wondered if in the six years of apartness she had learnt anything at all.
Nicholas had not kissed her. He had not remembered. Oh, granted he had held her with sensitivity after she had burst into tears, but he had let her go soon enough and gone back to the Bromley town house. With relief, she thought, if she’d read the look in his eyes properly.
She pulled her ring out from the neckline of the nightgown and stroked it.
‘Please, please, God, let him love me.’
A knock at the door made her start and Rose appeared, her long blonde hair tied in a rough knot.
‘I heard you talking and wondered who was in here.’
‘Ghosts,’ Eleanor replied. ‘And deities.’
At that her sister-in-law came in and shut the door behind her to sit down on her bed.
‘You have seemed busy lately? Jacob said you were helping Viscount Bromley retrieve his memory.’
‘Well, it’s not working.’ She knew this sounded petulant, but it was good to speak to someone other than herself on the subject.
‘What do you wish he would remember, Ellie?’
She turned at that to look at her sister-in-law and saw concern in the soft blue eyes.
‘How much do you know of my past, Rose?’
‘Very little, I think. I do understand that you have been lonely for all the time I have known you.’
God, was she meant to be near tears for ever today? She swallowed back hurt.
‘I was never married. Not to the Highland Laird who died from a horse accident nor to the landowner in Edinburgh lost in a storm at sea nor, even, to any man in Scotland.’ There, she had said it, just spat it out into the world for another to hear. Even Jacob and she had never been as honest on the subject. Rose, however, was perfectly pragmatic and blatantly unshocked.
‘Well, it is nobody’s business but your own, Eleanor, and I for one would never judge you.’
At that Eleanor smiled. ‘I know.’
‘And if this lack of a husband has anything to do with Nicholas Bartlett’s disappearance then that is a conversation for the two of you only. But it is one you need to have.’
‘How did you get so very wise?’
