Page 7 of Disguised Desires of a Scarred Duke
She still felt breathless, with her jaw dropped open in disbelief when her friend Lucy Charter sat down next to her.
“Who was that holding your foot like you were a modern Cinderella?” Lucy asked with a teasing tone. “And teach me how to get my new husband to do that to me!”
Eleanor barely acknowledged that her friend had spoken to her. She kept searching the space where William once stood as if she’d seen a ghost.
“He … he had my mother’s eyes. The exact shade and shimmer. Obsidian eyes, like volcanic glass. I couldn’t stop staring at those eyes, Lucy. He was …spellbinding.” Eleanor finally turned her gaze to her friend. Then she reached up to feel the tears pooling on her lower lashes with her fingers. The same fingers the obsidian-eyed man had held in his own.
“Who was he?” Lucy asked. “Have you seen him before?”
“No, never. I may have thought him a spirit if you hadn’t seen him for yourself.”
Lucy took one of her friend’s hands and squeezed it. “I didn’t see him up close, but from over there, he looked like a dashing man. Chivalrous, too. Did he tell you his name?”
Eleanor shook her head, which made the blue ribbon tied at her chin flutter against her neck. “No, he didn’t. He held my ankle because I was hurt, but I pulled back from the shock of his touch. I could tell it was a caring gesture, but it caught me off guard. My reaction spooked him. I feel terrible that I didn’t say anything else before he left.”
She closed her eyes to dab away the tears, but Eleanor had no idea why she was so full of an unidentifiable emotion. It kept rising through her ribcage like a wild flock of doves. It made her lick her lips again as she remembered the way the man had carefully caressed her ankle with his strong, calloused hand.
“I’ve never seen him before. Have you?”
Lucy removed her simple pleated straw hat and smoothed a hand over her golden hair to slip some loose strands back into place. “No, I haven’t. Maybe he’s new to London or just passing through.”
Eleanor nodded. “Yes, he’s probably from somewhere else. And I’ll never see him again.” She absentmindedly slid her hand through the thin mist of perspiration across her decollete. Eleanor’s chest filled again with an aching pressure at the thought of never seeing his obsidian eyes again.
Lucy squeezed her friend’s hand again and stood up. “Come. Let’s get you to the carriage and home to rest that ankle. Maybe your hero with smoky black eyes will appear again when you least expect him to sweep you off your feet.”
The sparkle in Eleanor’s eyes returned as she let Lucy help her up. “Ah, but he already did.”
Back at home, Eleanor decided the accidental meeting with the handsome stranger was simply that – an accident. And one that barely caused her any harm.
It wasn’t a sign from above that her mother’s spirit was still with her. And it wasn’t a romantic gesture from a children’s tale, as Lucy suggested.
Seeing the man with those mesmerizing deep black eyes was merely a coincidence. One to be forgotten rather than turned into a fantasy of knights with gleaming armour and damsels waiting for rescue.
She didn’t need rescuing and had no interest in more suitors that were more flash than substance.
Like Cecil Phillips had been.
As Eleanor got undressed and ready for bed, she thought about the time she’d spent with Mr Phillips. He was courteous but also very vain. Unfortunately, he also didn’t entice her physically like the mysterious man she’d crashed into this afternoon.
Cecil had loved to spend money and spoiled Eleanor with fine gifts. However, he spent more time trying to show people he had great wealth than he spent enjoying its spoils.
Mr Phillips had also cancelled on her a few times during their weeks of courtship. Later, Eleanor learned through gossip that Cecil had spent all day gambling at the gentlemen’s clubs and couldn’t tear himself away.
She also learned that if the rumours were true, Mr Phillips had an eye for younger women. As Eleanor was well past her first London season, perhaps she’d been too old to keep the full attention of such a man.
When Cecil set his sights on flirting with Regina behind Eleanor’s back at a horse racing event, his behaviour could no longer be excused. Eleanor was so angry at him that day that she’d dumped her lemonade down the front of his trousers and walked away.
She smoothed a hand over her white linen bed sheet and sighed. The man with big obsidian eyes was probably just the same. All men were the same, really.
All except her father, who’d adored her obsidian-eyed mother with all his heart.
Too bad men like that don’t exist anymore.
Eleanor yawned and snuggled into her pillow. She was convinced that all the good men lived only in fairy tales. Or she’d have to sail across the vast and mighty sea to find another man like her father who was capable of that kind of love.
Until then, she would spend more of her late-night dreamtime in her favourite fantasy world where brawny pirates pillage while young maidens swoon.
And where she could imagine the obsidian-eyed stranger hungrily relishing her body under a stormy black sky.
