The Duke's Perfect Wife
Page 91

“No.” Eleanor shook her head. “If he’s found, I want to be here, to go to him right away. He’ll need me.” And if he were found near to death, she’d never forgive herself if she weren’t there to say good-bye.
Cam and Mac watched her, they looking so like Hart and yet so different. Hart’s nephew, again similar and yet different, had left school in Edinburgh to hurry to help her. Their wives—her closest friends—knew what they’d feel were it their Mackenzie lost and gone. Eleanor’s heart swelled with the love of this family.
On the other hand, she would not let them herd her off to Scotland and seclude her. They ought to know her better than that, by now.
At last, they stopped trying to convince her, even Beth realizing it was useless.
Later, after the family had gone, Eleanor retreated to her bedchamber, retrieved her memory book from her drawer, and opened it to the photographs of Hart. She’d pasted the ones she’d taken at Kilmorgan onto the pages following the older ones.
Eleanor studied them all, first those of Hart young and such a devil, his body beautiful. In the photograph of him in his kilt, Hart laughed out of the picture, his hand out to stop the photographer.
She turned from that to the photographs she’d taken of him in his kilt at Kilmorgan. She traced the one of him holding his kilt over himself, hiding little. The next one was of him leaning, bare, against the wall, laughing.
The flash of vision came to her of Hart over her in the dark, his body against hers, whispering, I need you, El. I need you.
Eleanor’s resolution cracked, and she lay across the book and sobbed.
Eleanor loved him. She’d lost Hart, and she loved him so much.
She thought about how she’d found Hart at the tomb of his son, tracing the letters of the lad’s name. Remembered him with head bowed, his hand on the cold stone—proud, proud Hart—anguished that he hadn’t been strong enough to save little Graham.
Eleanor put her hand to her abdomen, where life had begun to stir. Her child. Hart’s son. Tears flowed faster.
She heard someone enter the room, but she couldn’t lift her head. Maigdlin, she thought, but the tread was wrong, as was the scent of cigars and wool.
The chair next to her creaked and then a broad hand touched her arm. Eleanor pried open her eyes to see Ian next to her, his hand unmoving. Ian, who rarely touched anyone but Beth.
Eleanor sat up and snatched up her handkerchief. Ian smelled of the outdoors, of coal smoke and rain. “I’m sorry, Ian. This is not me giving up hope.” She drew a long breath. “It’s me feeling sorry for myself.”
Ian didn’t answer. He was staring at the book, still open to the page with Hart naked, his kilt on the floor.
Face heating, Eleanor closed the book. “Those are…”
“The photographs Mrs. Palmer took of Hart. Good. She gave them to you.”
Eleanor sat back, her lips parting. Joanna had said that an unknown someone had sent the photographs to her with instructions to post them to Eleanor at intervals.
Not Hart. Ian.
“Ian Mackenzie,” she said.
Ian met her gaze for a fleeting moment, then studied the patterns on the cover of the memory book.
“You sent the photographs to the maid Joanna,” Eleanor said. “You did, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Good heavens, Ian. Why?”
Ian traced the gold curlicues that lapped and overlapped and twisted back along themselves across the book’s cover. He said, without glancing up, “Mrs. Palmer had others. I couldn’t find them. I was afraid they’d end up in a newspaper, so when Mrs. Palmer died, I searched the house for them. But someone had gotten there before me, and I only found the eight, stashed behind a brick in a chimney. I kept them a while, then decided to send them to Joanna.”
“And told her to send them on to me?”
“Yes.”
He went back to tracing the pattern. Over and over, staring at it without blinking, his body still except for the tracing finger.
“Why?” Eleanor asked, a little more sharply than she meant to.
Ian shrugged. “So you’d go to Hart.”
“I mean, why now? Why not when you first found the pictures after Mrs. Palmer died? And why use Joanna as the go-between?”
“Joanna likes Hart. She’d want to help him.”
He fell silent, and Eleanor regarded him impatiently. “You didn’t answer my first question.”
Ian sometimes did that. He’d answer what he wanted to and ignore the rest. He used that method to get around his inability to lie.
But this time, he said, “I did not send the pictures when I found them, because Hart was too busy then. He would not have paid enough attention, and he would have lost you again.”
“Well, you cannot tell me he is less busy now. He is about to become prime minister.”
Ian shook his head. “I waited until he finished all his plotting. Now it’s almost over. Hart won’t be prime minister long. He’ll fall.” Ian wrenched his gaze from the pattern and fixed it directly on Eleanor. “And he’ll need you.”
Eleanor, caught by the golden depths of Ian’s eyes, could not look away. “What are you talking about? His coalition is strong, the newspapers are full of it. Even without Hart here, they’ll win the majority. His party will rule.”
“Hart will be a bad leader. He wants everything his way, all the time. All must obey.”
“He’s bad at compromise, you mean.” Eleanor had to agree with Ian, there. The word compromise hadn’t been invented for the likes of Hart Mackenzie.