Page 63 of A Secret Consequence for the Viscount
Chapter Thirteen
An hour later Eleanor rummaged in her wardrobe to try to find a newer version of the same dress she had worn before at the Bromley town house. A dark primrose gown, with embroidery around the bodice and the bottom of the sleeves.
The décolletage was low, but she heightened it with a swathe of ivory Brussels lace that had been her mother’s. Today she needed courage and conviction. After this morning it was time to face the ghosts of the past whether Nicholas remembered what had happened or not.
He had been ill shaven when she had visited him and the jacket he’d worn had been covered with bloodstains. Another contretemps, she thought. A further recklessness.
Was his life going to be blighted by such violence for ever? Today he had not looked angry, only sad. That had thrown her more than the fury.
It was not his fault he had been shanghaied into a journey to the Americas and yet...
It was not her fault she had fallen in love with him so quickly and allowed him everything and yet...
They were both to blame for what had happened six years ago. There was only the desires of the present in all that they had done, the thrill of the flesh and the forbidden.
She had just lost her mother then and Nicholas’s uncle was becoming more and more impossible. Each to the other was a way out, a way to forget.
But now...
She liked him more as a man.
Stay here with me.
She swallowed hard and stood to look out the window into the winter. She knew what she wanted. Last time they had laid together it had been in the summer warmth. Now it was cold, but if they could find a path back to each other the spring came next and then new life. The smaller niggle of uncertainty also crept back again. He had never said that he loved her.
There was a knock on the door and Jacob’s head appeared.
‘Can I come in?’
‘Of course.’ She knew her brother would want to have a conversation after the events of last evening.
‘Nick thinks Lucy is his, Ellie. I can see it in his eyes.’ Jacob did not beat about the bush and, given his lack of addressing her pregnancy this directly before, she was shocked because it was a statement more than a question. After her conversation with Rose she knew she owed him at least the truth.
‘He wants to talk to me tonight. At Bromley House.’
‘Is it true, Eleanor? Is he the father?’
‘Yes. We slept together once the night before he disappeared.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because you were too sad. Because you had just lost him and I knew that you would not be able to bear hearing his name everywhere in our house and in the tragedy of what had happened to me.’
‘Nicholas will marry you. I know he will. It is his responsibility and his duty.’
She smiled. Another honourable man. Her brother.
‘It is not quite as easy as that, Jacob. He has changed and so have I. We are different people from those that we were.’
‘You are parents of a little girl who needs a mother and a father.’
‘And you think I do not understand that? You think I don’t wonder about this every single moment?’ Her ire had built and Jacob raised his hands.
‘I am of the belief that every problem well discussed can be solved.’
The truth of that advice comforted her, made her calmer.
‘Which is the reason I am going there to see him tonight.’
