The Duke’s Perfect Wife

Chapter 18

Eleanor fanned out the photographs across her writing table. The letter that had been folded around them was short, to the point, and badly spelled.

Many fellations on your weding, from one as wishes you well.

The writer meant felicitations. Another indication that she was unpolished and only basically educated.

Eleanor now had all twenty photographs. Again, no threats, no demands for money, nothing.

She rewrapped the photographs in the letter, returned to her bedroom to shove the bundle inside her remembrance book, and went in search of Ian.

She found him on the grand terrace that spread across the back of the house. Ian sat cross-legged in the middle of its marble expanse, playing soldiers with his son. That is, Ian was setting up carved wooden soldiers, and Jamie was cheerfully knocking them down.

“I say, the Battle of Waterloo would have been over quickly had Jamie been there,” Eleanor said.

Jamie picked up a French general, stuffed half of him into his mouth, and waddled toward Eleanor. Ian very gently stopped him and plucked the wet soldier out of his son’s mouth.

Eleanor sat down on the nearest marble bench. “Ian, I need you to tell me the names of all the ladies who lived in Hart’s High Holborn house.”

Ian wiped the soldier dry on his kilt while Jamie climbed up to sit next to Eleanor. Ian put his big hand on the boy’s back so he wouldn’t fall.

“Sally Tate, Lily Martin, Joanna Brown, Cassie Bingham, Helena Ferguson, Marion Phillips…”

“Stop.” Eleanor raised the notebook she’d brought and started scribbling with a pencil. “Let me take it down.”

Jamie pulling on the pencil slowed things, but Eleanor managed to start the list of names. “Go on.”

Ian continued, naming every one. Further probing let Eleanor know that some were courtesans, some maids who worked in the house, one the cook. All had lived at Angelina Palmer’s at one time or another, some staying only days.

“You wouldn’t happen to know where they all are now, do you?” she asked, making notes.

Ian, being Ian, did. Jamie tired of tugging on Eleanor’s pencil and climbed down from the bench. Ian steadied him, then kept a sharp eye on him as Jamie toddled about the terrace, picking up fallen soldiers.

Several of the ladies had died, he said. Most still lived in London, though one had married and emigrated to America. Quite a number had married, it seemed. Of the lot, three lived in Edinburgh. One was still a courtesan living with her protector, one was a maid in a big house, and one had married a former protector.

Eleanor wrote everything down, not asking Ian how he knew all this. She had no doubt that what he told her was accurate. The letters had most likely originated in Edinburgh, and to Edinburgh Eleanor would go. “Thank you,” she said.

Ian, seeing that Eleanor had finished her questions, became fully absorbed in his son. Eleanor watched, content in the April sunshine, as Ian and Jamie set up the soldiers again, Ian lying on his stomach while Jamie worked his way around his large father.

When Jamie tired, Ian sat up and let Jamie climb onto his plaid-clad lap. Ian closed his arms around his son, and Jamie dozed, Ian gazing down at him with such intense love that Eleanor quietly rose and left them alone.

Eleanor found it easy to get herself and Hart to Edinburgh not a few days later, into the very house in which one of the maids from High Holborn now worked. A woman called Mrs. McGuire had hired the maid, and Eleanor found that she and Hart—now the most sought-after couple in Scotland—had already been invited to Mrs. McGuire’s next grand soiree.

Eleanor had met Mrs. McGuire many times. She was the wife of The McGuire—the leader of clan McGuire—though Mrs. McGuire had started life as an English viscount’s daughter, raised to fine society in London. By all accounts, Mrs. McGuire adored her Highland husband, and her Edinburgh galas had become celebrated.

She was a kindhearted woman as well, a friend to Eleanor’s late mother. Eleanor quite liked her. Why Mrs. McGuire had hired a maid out of a brothel remained to be seen.

Hart and Eleanor descended before Mrs. McGuire’s Edinburgh home to the carpet a footman had spread from carriage step to doorstep. The entire street stopped to watch the fine carriage, the splendid horses, and the most famous man in Scotland and his new wife arrive at their first outing together.

Mrs. McGuire was buried with her guests upstairs, and a plump maid with very black hair took Eleanor’s wraps in the relative quiet of the downstairs hall. When the maid passed Hart, he stopped, smiled at her, and gave her an unashamed wink. The maid blushed, but she shot him a sunny smile in return and winked back.

Eleanor opened her mouth to demand what it was all about, but Hart had already turned to greet some of his cronies, and was swept up the stairs with them. Maigdlin was herding her into a withdrawing room so she could repair any damage the short journey from Isabella’s Edinburgh house might have done to Eleanor’s hair and gown.

Before Eleanor could decide how she felt about Hart’s blatant exchange with the maid, the maid herself entered the withdrawing room, came straight to Eleanor, and dropped a perfect maid’s curtsey.

“Your Grace.”

Maigdlin glared like a she-bear ready to defend her cub. “The cheek of you. You don’t speak to a duchess without her permission, you ignorant woman. What do you want?”

“It’s all right, Maigdlin,” Eleanor said quickly. “It’s Joanna Brown, isn’t it?” From the High Holborn house.

The maid curtseyed again. “Yes, Your Grace.” She had an English accent, from somewhere in London’s darker environs, Eleanor thought. “I know it is bloody cheek, but might I have a word with you? Private like?”

Maigdlin gave Joanna a look of high disdain, but Eleanor held up a reassuring hand. “Of course. Maigdlin, will you stand outside so that we are not disturbed?”

Maigdlin’s outrage was obvious, but she set down the brushes she’d taken from Eleanor’s case, curtseyed stiffly, and glided out the door, as though determined to show Joanna that at least one of them had manners. Indeed, if Eleanor had been a stickler for rules, she could have Joanna sacked for deigning to approach her, let alone speak to her. But Eleanor had never been one to bother with rules, especially when they got in the way of what she wished to do.

“I’m sorry, Your Grace,” Joanna said as soon as they were alone. “But I know you saw that wink, and I wanted to explain to you, so as you’d not have the wrong idea.”

Eleanor looked her over. Joanna had black hair and blue eyes and was not long past her first youth, perhaps thirty at most. She had a winsome smile, and her eyes sparkled with animation.

“All right,” Eleanor said. “But first, I must ask you. What do you know about photographs?”

The maid’s smile deepened. “Many things, Your Grace. You got them, then?”

Eleanor stopped. “You have been sending me the photographs?” She thought of the ill-spelled missives, always with the closing, From one as wishes you well. The words went with the warm woman who stood before her now.

“Goodness,” Eleanor said. “You did lead me on a merry chase. Why did you send them?”

Joanna curtseyed again, as though she couldn’t help herself. “Because I knew they’d take you to him. And see—you’re married to him now, and he looks ever so much better, doesn’t he? Now about that wink, Your Grace, it don’t mean nothing. He does that because he’s a kindhearted man. It’s sort of a signal, a joke between us, really.”

“A joke.” This was the first time in memory that Eleanor had heard someone refer to Hart as a kindhearted man. “Has it to do with the photographs?”

Had Hart told Joanna to send them? It would be like him, to confound and tease Eleanor with the photographs and at the same time pretend he cared nothing about them. Hart Mackenzie needed a good talking to.

“No, no,” Joanna said. “Them’s two separate things. If you’ll listen, Your Grace, I’ll explain.”

Eleanor nodded, curbing her impatience. “Yes, indeed. Please do.”

“Blame my forwardness on me upbringing, Your Grace. I grew up in London, in the east part of it, near St. Katherine’s Docks. That was all right, but my father was a lout and a layabout and my mother didn’t amount to nothing, so we were poor as dirt. I decided I’d clean up and learn my manners and become a maid in a Mayfair household, maybe even a lady’s maid. Well, I didn’t know nothing about training or references, I was that green. But I did my best, and I went and answered an advertisement for a position. Name of the lady what hired me was Mrs. Palmer.”

“Oh, dear.” Eleanor saw a glimmer of what was coming. “You didn’t realize she was a procuress?”

“Naw. Where I came from, bad girls were obvious, flouncing about the streets and such, and what wicked tongues they had on them! But Mrs. Palmer spoke quiet like, and her house was large and filled with expensive things. I didn’t know at the time that ladybirds could be so lofty and thought I’d landed in clover. But that went away as soon as she took me upstairs, where she and another lady were in a bedroom. The things they told me they wanted me to do would make you faint, Your Grace. I might have grown up rough, but I was at least taught good from bad. So I said I wouldn’t, no matter how much they slapped me, and then Ma Palmer grabbed me and locked me in a room.”

Eleanor’s hands closed to fists, the pity she’d held for Mrs. Palmer, which had diminished over what the woman had done to Beth, diminished further. “I am sorry. Go on.”

“Well, Ma Palmer let me out again later that night. She said she had to get me cleaned up, because the master of the house was coming. I thought she meant her husband, and I couldn’t imagine what sort of man would marry someone like her. So there I was, washed and brushed, with a brand-new frock and cap, told I needed to bring the tea things into the parlor. Well, that didn’t sound so bad, and maybe Mrs. Palmer would behave herself in front of her husband. Cook put together the tea tray, and I made sure it was all pretty and carried it into the parlor. And he was there.”

Eleanor didn’t need to ask who he was. Hart Mackenzie, devastatingly handsome, arrogant, compelling.

“He were the most handsome gent I’d ever seen, and obviously so very rich. I stood there in the doorway, gaping at him like a fool. He gives me such a look, like he can see me inside and out, and gents like him aren’t supposed to even notice servants. At least that’s what I’d been told. I should be invisible, but he takes a long time to look at me. Then he sits down on the sofa, and Mrs. Palmer puts herself next to him, fluttering and cooing like a lovesick schoolgirl. She tells me to set down the tray on the table in front of them, and I tell you I was that nervous. I was sure I’d drop all the crockery, and then I’d be out on my ear.

“Ma Palmer laughs and says to him, Look what I’ve brought you. At first, I thought she meant the tea, then I caught on that she meant me.”

Eleanor remembered Mrs. Palmer confessing, her handsome face anguished, that she’d hired other women for Hart when she feared he’d grown tired of her. But Joanna hadn’t been a game girl, only a naive young woman trying to better her life. Eleanor’s pity for the late Mrs. Palmer diminished still more.

“I mean to tell you, Your Grace, I almost did drop all the tea things,” Joanna said. “It hit me like a blow that Mrs. Palmer had hired me to be a whore for her husband. I still thought he were her husband at that point, you see. I wanted to cry, or run back home, or even go for a constable. But Ma Palmer grabs me and whispers into my ear, He’s a duke. You do whatever he says, or he can make things very bad for you.

“I was that terrified. I believed her, because aristocrats, they do anything they like, don’t they? I knew a lad who used to be footman to one, and the lad got a beating whenever the lord was out of temper, didn’t matter that he wasn’t angry at the footman at all. I was sure Mrs. Palmer was right, and I was shaking in me boots, I can tell you.

“And then His Grace, he looked me over again and told Mrs. Palmer to get out of the room. She went, not looking pleased about it, but I realized, even then, that when this gent snapped his fingers, Ma Palmer jumped.

“Anyway, she left and closed the door. And there was His Grace, a’sitting on the sofa, looking at me. You know how he does. Steady like, as though he knows everything about you, every secret you ever had, and ones you didn’t even know about.”

Eleanor did know. The penetrating golden stare, the stillness, Hart’s conviction that he commanded everyone in his sight. “Indeed.”

“So, there I was. Well, Joanna, you’re in for it now, I was thinking. I’d be a ruined girl and never get a good place again. I’d be a whore the rest of me life, and that would be the end of it.

“His Grace just looks at me, and then he asks my name. I told him—weren’t no use in lying. Then he asks where I came from, and was this my first place, and what possessed me take a job with Mrs. Palmer? I told him I hadn’t known about Ma Palmer until I was already in the house. He looked angry, very angry, but I somehow knew he weren’t angry at me. His Grace told me to stay where I was, and he goes to the desk and pulls out some paper. He sits down and starts writing something, me standing there with my hands empty, having no idea what to do.

“He finishes up and comes back to me, handing me the folded letter. You take this to a lady I know in South Audley Street, he says. I’ve written the directions on the front. You walk out of this house and find a hansom and tell him to take you there. Tell the housekeeper in South Audley Street to give the letter to the lady of the house, and do not let her turn you away. Then he hands me shillings. I didn’t want to take them, but he said they were for the hansom. He told me not even to go back upstairs and get my things—such as they were.

“I was a little worried about where such a man as him would send me, but he gives me a stern look and says, She’s a lady, is Mrs. McGuire, a true lady with a tender heart. She’ll look after you.

“I started to cry and say thank you, and that he was being so kind. He put his finger to his lips and smiled at me. You’ve seen His Grace smile. It’s like sunshine after a wet day. And he says—I’ll never forget his exact words—Don’t ever say to anyone that I am kind. It will ruin my reputation. Only I will know, and you. It will be our secret. Then he winked, like he did when he came in tonight.

“I weren’t sure, even then, because I’d never heard of this Mrs. McGuire. It might be all a strange game he was playing with me. But I did what he said. He even walked me out into the hall and down to the front door. I should have gone out the back, being a servant, but he said he didn’t want me walking through the kitchens.

“Mrs. Palmer comes out while he’s taking me down the stairs. He gives me a little shove toward the front door, and then he turned on her. Right enraged he was. He shouted something terrible, asking Ma Palmer what was the matter with her, and Why would you think me depraved enough to want to deflower an innocent? Mrs. Palmer was crying and shouting back at him, and telling him she didn’t know I was an innocent, which was a lie, because she’d asked me. I ran right out of that house and let the door bang behind me, so I didn’t hear any more.

“Now, I could have taken the shillings and gone anywhere I wanted to, but I decided to take the hansom to South Audley Street and give the letter to Mrs. McGuire on the off chance.” Joanna spread her hands. “And here I am.”

The story sounded like Hart—he had an amazing sensibility about what people were like and who needed a hand up and who needed to be kept in check. That was how he’d risen so far, she thought, from a lad beaten by his father to a man knowing who to be gentle with and when.

“I still haven’t told you all of it,” Joanna said. “The next time I saw His Grace, he was paying a call on Mrs. McGuire, who is a good lady, just as he told me. When I took his coat, I made to say something to him, but he puts his finger to his lips again and tips me a wink. I winked back at him, and he went away. It’s become our signal, like, for me saying thank you, and for him keeping his good deeds secret. No one’s ever caught the signal, except you, tonight. Stands to reason you would, since you’re his wife. I wanted to tell you all about it, in case you misunderstood. And I’m married meself now,” Joanna finished proudly. “I have a son, five years old and he’s such trouble.”

Eleanor sat still after Joanna finished, thinking the story through. “You haven’t explained about the photographs. How did you get them? Did Hart himself give them to you?”

“His Grace? No. He knows nothing about them. They came my way about four months ago, around Christmas.”

“Came your way how?”

“In the post. A little packet of them, and I must tell you, I blushed when I opened them. It came with a note that told me to send them on to you.”

Eleanor’s eyes narrowed. “A note from whom?”

“Didn’t say. But I was told to send them to you one or two at a time, starting in February. I knew who you were, everyone does, and I thought it couldn’t do no harm. His Grace always looks sad, and it tickled me to think you’d maybe go and see him, and show him the piccies and make him smile. And you see? You married him.”

“But what about the others?” Eleanor said, her curiosity not abated. “Why were they sold to a shop in the Strand?”

Joanna blinked. “Others? I don’t know about any others. I was sent the eight, which I started sending on to you.”

“I see.” Eleanor thought about the sequence of events. Hart had proclaimed his intention of taking a wife to his family at Ascot last year in June. Joanna was sent the photographs at Christmastime, told to start sending them to Eleanor in February. Eleanor rushes to London to see Hart, Hart begins his game of seduction, and Eleanor now was his wife.

Planned by Hart from beginning to end? He was devious enough to do it.

“How do you know His Grace himself didn’t send you the photographs?”

Joanna shrugged. “Handwriting was different. I’d seen the letter he wrote to Mrs. McGuire.”

Hart might be canny enough to know that, perhaps get someone else to pen the note, not telling that person what it was all about. Eleanor might have to interrogate Wilfred.

“How did you know I’d gone to London?” she asked. “The second photograph reached me there, in his house.”

“Mrs. McGuire,” Joanna said. “She knows everyone. Her friends in London wrote her that you were in London, you and your father guests of His Grace in Grosvenor Square. I was serving tea one afternoon when Mrs. McGuire read the letter out to her husband.”

Whoever had sent Joanna the photographs remained a mystery, though perhaps not such a mystery. Hart might be perfectly innocent of it, but he loved to guide a situation to the conclusion he wanted, so much that Eleanor could not help but suspect him. The man would drive her insane. But then, Hart excelled at driving people insane.

“Thank you, Joanna.” Eleanor got to her feet, took Joanna’s hands, and kissed the startled woman’s cheek. She reached into her reticule and pulled out a few gold coins.

Joanna held up her hands. “No, Your Grace, you don’t need to give me nothing. I was doing it for him. And you. He needs someone to look after him, don’t he?”

“Don’t be silly. You have a little boy now.” Eleanor took the maid’s hand and pressed the coins into it, then she kissed Joanna’s cheek again. “Bless you.”

She hurried away and out of the room, leaving both Maigdlin and Joanna behind as she went in search of her husband.

Hart broke from a clump of men arguing against Irish Home Rule, they saying that the Irish were too stupid to make decisions for themselves, and headed for the card room. His blood was up. The card tables, with their games of numbers and odds would soothe him. He understood why Ian liked to immerse himself in mathematical sequences—there was a purity about numbers that eased the mind.

He heard Eleanor’s light step behind him, then her clear voice.

“You’re a fraud, Hart Mackenzie.”

Hart turned. He and Eleanor were alone in the little hall. Laughter, masculine voices, and smoke drifted from the card room at one end, and feminine exclamations came from the drawing room at the other.

“Fraud? What are you talking about this time, minx?”

Eleanor came to him, her steps slow, her hips swaying under her bustle dress. Her color was high, and her eyes sparkled. “A complete and utter fraud.”

Hart frowned, but her hot little smile, the way she stepped close to him, stirred his desire.

Stirred? It had never gone away.

“I know how Joanna came to work in this house,” Eleanor said. “She told me everything.”

Hart remembered the maid, so many years ago now, standing before Hart, trembling and terrified. She’d been incoherent with fear. Angelina had been trying to tempt his appetite, as usual, but she’d miscalculated with Joanna.

Hart made himself shrug. “She didn’t belong there, she was an innocent, and I couldn’t throw her out into the street. How does this make me a fraud?”

“The hard-hearted Duke of Kilmorgan. All must tremble before him.”

“How much sherry have you drunk, El?” He wanted to draw his finger across her lips, down her throat to her bosom bared by her evening dress.

“You do an act of kindness, then beg her to tell no one, in case people discover you have a heart.”

“Beg is going a bit far.” He’d told Joanna to keep quiet to spare her reputation. The world was hard on young women tainted by the demimonde, even if they fell into it by no fault of their own. Once the line was crossed, there was no going back. Mrs. McGuire was the kindhearted one. She’d taken Joanna on Hart’s word and asked no questions.

Several men started coming out of the card room. Hart grasped Eleanor’s arm and steered her quickly up the stairs to the next floor. The gentlemen did not notice them, and went on to the drawing room, greeting the ladies there.

Hart opened the door nearest the top of the stairs and towed Eleanor inside. It was a little sitting room, lit by one gaslight, and Mrs. McGuire’s staff were apparently storing guests’ coats there.

“Say nothing about Joanna,” Hart said. “For her sake.”

Eleanor withdrew from his grasp. “I had no intention of saying anything. You had no need to drag me up here to tell me that. You could have whispered it into my ear.”

“I did need to.”

“Running from the pompous gentlemen already?” she asked, smile in place. “We’ve not been here above half an hour yet.”

Avoiding more tiresome arguments had only been part of it. Hart had had the sudden and overwhelming urge to be alone with Eleanor, and Mac’s town house, where they were staying the night, was too far away.

“Now that I do have you alone,” Eleanor said, “I will tell you that it was Joanna who sent me the photographs.”

Hart stopped, surprised. “Did she? Where did she get them? Stolen from Mrs. Palmer?” If Joanna had somehow found those ridiculous photographs while staying with Mrs. Palmer, would she have looked at Hart in such terror?

Eleanor’s eyes narrowed. “Did you give them to Joanna?”

“No. Why the devil would I?”

“Playing some game of your own?”

He shook his head. “Not this time.”

“Hmm.” Eleanor folded her arms and regarded him skeptically.

“Now, what are you doing?” Hart asked.

“Deciding whether or not to believe you.”

“Believe whatever you want.” Hart could wait no longer. He snaked one arm around her waist and pulled her with him across the room to an armchair, which had given him an interesting idea. He swept the coats that had been carefully folded over the chair to the floor.

“Hart, you should not…”

“I should. How is your arm?”

“Much better. But you know that. You ask me three times a day.”

“I am the reason you were hurt,” Hart said. “I’d ask five times a day if I saw you that often. Now, come here.”

“Why? What are you going to do?”

Hart seized her hand before she could back away and pulled her smack against him. “It was very dangerous for you to smile at me like you did downstairs.”

As though she loved him. As though she wanted him. He touched her lips.

Eleanor pulled away the slightest bit. “What if someone comes in?”

Hart smiled his excitement. “What if someone does?”

“Oh.” He saw her passion rise. “I see.”

“Turn around,” he said.

Hart swiftly found the fasteners that held her skirts to her bodice and undid them. He lifted the skirt off, and the petticoats as well, then untied the tapes that held her bustle in place. Under that, she wore fine lawn drawers, no more worn fabric for his wife. He had her out of those quickly too.

He sat down on the armchair, faced Eleanor away from him, unswathed the kilt from his hips, and pulled Eleanor down to his lap. Eleanor gasped in surprise, but she was so slick that Hart slid right into her.

Yes. Hart tilted her head to the side, baring her neck and shoulder to him, she still in her bodice. The satin rode low across her bosom, delphinium blue fabric to match her eyes. He suckled a little, tasting her skin and the fragrance she’d dabbed on.

Eleanor wriggled, seemingly pleased at the way that drove him inside her. Hart let her play while he fingered her curls and kissed her neck.

He’d positioned the chair so that the standing mirror across the room would reflect them. Eleanor had her eyes closed, but Hart drank in the sight of her bare legs wrapped around his browner ones, her head resting on his shoulder, trickles of her hair snaking across his chest, and the place where they joined.

He could watch as he pleasured her, see her every rise of chest and twist of mouth, every flutter of her hands as she pushed against his thighs. She was a beautiful, beautiful sight.

It did not take long, and Hart hadn’t thought it would, before Eleanor found her deepest pleasure. Hart reached to the join of her legs and gently stroked her.

Eleanor’s eyes opened wide, and she cried out her joy. Hart’s shout joined hers, the syllables of her name a delight on his lips.

Eleanor sank back onto him with a sigh, and Hart wrapped his arms around her and held her close. He would never let her go. She was too precious to him.

He touched the bandage on her arm, a smaller dressing now, thank God, and vowed that he’d never let anything hurt her again.

The halcyon first days of Eleanor’s marriage ended when Hart had to return to London. A telegram from David Fleming arrived at Kilmorgan, and off Hart went. It was time for him to work, and Eleanor knew that from now on, she’d see little of him.

True to his word, Hart did have Wilfred make arrangements to move Eleanor to town as soon as possible. Hart’s lingering kiss promised he’d do much more when she arrived at the Grosvenor Square house, and then he was gone.

Eleanor had too much to do to wallow in missing him, and the day or so between his departure and hers flew by. She was excited not only to see Hart again, but to make a start on redecorating the house. The Grosvenor Square mansion had been left much as when Hart’s father had lived in it, and Eleanor was determined to give it a new life. She’d be hosting balls, soirees, and garden parties of her own there, and she’d need to make a hurried start.

Eleanor traveled to London with Ian and Beth and their two children, plus Ainsley and her baby daughter, Gavina. Mac and Isabella had already gone, their three children in tow, back to Isabella’s London social whirl. Cameron had returned south to his horses, and Daniel remained in Edinburgh at university.

Hart had a private car that was hooked to the back of the train in Edinburgh, Hart, of course, always traveling in luxury. The parlor car helped keep the three busy children contained, at least. Eleanor helped with them, enjoying the task.

She watched them with a secret hope in her heart. Her cycle was late, which could mean a child starting or could mean nothing. Eleanor hadn’t conceived when she’d been Hart’s lover years ago, and she was much older now.

Euston station in London was crowded when they arrived, so many people traveling up and down the country. The train glided into its empty platform, Hart’s car being the last in the line.

Eleanor was happy to alight, the overcushioned comfort starting to wear on her. Perhaps she should redecorate the car as well.

Hart was to come to the station to meet her, and her heart beat faster as she stepped down to the platform. He’d scoop her up for a kiss—Hart wouldn’t care that all of London watched. She’d let him know, when she could whisper it to him, that her arm felt much better.

Beth and Ainsley lingered with the children’s nannies to put everyone to rights, Ian protectively with them. Eleanor couldn’t wait. She excused herself, eager to find Hart and go home.

Eleanor lifted her small valise and started walking down the platform, ignoring the porters and the duke’s footmen, who looked shocked that she was actually carrying a bag by herself. She spied Mac’s tall bulk in the crowd in the main part of the station, Aimee on his shoulders, Isabella beside him. No babies, so they must have been left in the charge of Nanny Westlock at home. Aimee would have insisted on coming along.

But no Hart. Eleanor tried not to let her heart sink. Her husband had many things to do now, and some crisis had likely prevented him from leaving Whitehall. That was probably why Mac had come instead.

Eleanor waved across the platforms and crowd to Isabella, and Isabella and Aimee waved back. She walked quickly onward, making her way to the main platform. She could almost feel Isabella’s hug and kiss, and see Mac’s huge smile and hear the booming baritone of his voice in greeting.

How splendid to be part of such a family—a large, unpredictable family with her husband at its head. Eleanor walked faster, feet light.

When she neared them, Eleanor saw, at the far end of the platform, entering the station, the unmistakable form of Hart Mackenzie. With him was the tall David Fleming, he and Hart debating something as usual. The pugilist bodyguards trailed behind them.

Eleanor resisted the urge to run straight to Hart and stopped to hug Isabella and Mac.

“There’s Ian,” Mac said, looking across the platforms. He shaded his eyes. “What is he doing?”

Ian was standing at the edge of the platform, two over, where their train had pulled in. His gaze was fixed on something near the waiting room, but Eleanor, glancing that way, couldn’t discern what had caught his eye.

Her gaze was drawn back to Hart, and Isabella laughed. “Go on. He needs someone to be glad to see him.”

Mac snatched Eleanor’s valise out of her hand, and Eleanor thanked him and started pushing through the crowd toward Hart. So many people, so many bonnets and tall hats, so many bustles and folded parasols and umbrellas to wade through. Did they all have to be here today?

Hart loomed through the crowd, Fleming having dropped back. Across the space between them, Hart’s gaze met Eleanor’s. She felt warmed, happy.

She saw Hart stop, turn, scowl, then lift his hands to his mouth and shout Ian’s name. Eleanor turned to look, and her mouth went slack as Ian dropped from the platform to the tracks, sprinted across them, climbed the next platform, and dropped onto the next set of tracks, never minding the giant steam engine chugging into the station toward him.

Beth saw, and screamed. Hart kept shouting. Ian cleared the tracks and leapt onto the platform with seconds to spare, his kilt flying as he ran for Hart.

A loud noise sounded to Eleanor’s left, nearly drowned by the groaning breaks of the approaching train. Eleanor turned her head, heard a boom! then saw a giant cloud of smoke, rubble, and glass expand and rise to cover the entire platform and all the people on it.

Eleanor felt her body pushed backward. She fell against a man in a long wool coat and then slapped onto the surface of the platform. Then she was rolling toward the edge, the iron face of the engine coming at her, and she heard the horrible hiss of steam and squeal of metal on metal as the train tried to stop.