Always a Gentleman, Never a Duke (Dueling for Dukes Book 3)

Chapter 9

Tuck stood there and wondered how much more of this he could take.

In only a short time, he would have been in London for two months.

Two. Months.

When he had first started thinking of this endeavor, he had not considered how long it might take to find a benefactor. Foolishly, he had believed London to be filled with rich gentlemen waiting for an opportunity to invest. How horribly wrong that assumption was turning out to be.

To make matters worse, he wondered if the blame lay at his feet. He wasn’t so naive as to think his feelings for Eloise hadn’t clouded his determination. Thoughts of her had begun to interrupt even the research he’d brought with him. Simple things like determining the number of notebooks he must pack were beyond him when he wondered absently what she might be doing just then.

To say nothing of the guilt that had surely eaten a hole directly through his stomach.

What if he’d never met Eloise?

The thought nearly made him sick. How dare he think of a life without her now? Her presence alone had opened something inside of him, and finally, for once, he had been able to release some of the worry and fear he’d never let another see.

His champagne glass was halfway to his lips when he realized what he had just thought.

Eloise.

Eloise was the one to whom he’d unburdened himself. It may have happened in a little rowboat in the middle of the Serpentine, but it had been so natural to tell her the things he’d never tell another. But then having said it, he’d wanted to tell her so much more. He wanted to tell her everything.

About how he was worried he wouldn’t acclimate to the weather and be forced home or risk death.

About how he struggled with finding ways to cope with the coming darkness once the sun set for the last time that year on Spitsbergen, not to return until the following spring.

About how his greatest fear was not finding answers for Harrison.

The person he wanted beside him more than anyone on this expedition was Eloise.

He shook his head, drawing a number of curious looks, but he didn’t care. Discarding his champagne glass on the tray of a passing footman, he raked his now-free hand through his hair. Eloise would not be with him in Spitsbergen. She was going to marry Liam and have lots of babies and maybe even a dog, who may or may not assault debutantes in boats.

That was what Eloise was going to do, and Tuck was going to go to the edges of the world and hope to be mauled by a polar bear rather than live life without her.

If that was a touch dramatic, he didn’t care. He wanted to feel maudlin just then. He would wallow in his poor feelings as long as he wished, and then in the morning he would pick up and move on.

He adjusted his shoulders and straightened his cuffs. Enough of this foolish nonsense. He must find a benefactor.

He had almost scanned the length of the ballroom when his eyes fell on a familiar form, one which, thankfully, was wearing trousers that day.

The Earl of Renshaw stood near the periphery of the room on the other side of the wallflowers gathered around the refreshment table. While Tuck felt an instant surge of happiness at seeing the man, he was not happy to see who he was with.

The earl was penned in by none other than the Three Crusaders, students at Oxford who had given themselves such an ill-fitting title so as to rise in the esteem of their peers.

Tuck had had them in his general astronomy class the previous semester and had gotten the distinct impression they’d taken the class thinking it an easy grade. Tuck had taken great pleasure in proving them wrong.

He waited, watching carefully and assuring himself that Renshaw was a grown man and couldn’t fall victim to the trio’s usual pestering and tomfoolery.

But when the tallest of the young men, a Mr. Sedgewick, flicked his finger against the bottom of the earl’s glass when the man tried to take a drink, sending liquid down the earl’s shirtfront, Tuck moved, sliding easily through the crowd and coming to stand in front of the earl before the Three Crusaders had even finished laughing.

“Mr. Sedgewick,” Tuck pronounced. “What a pleasure to see you.”

The laughter died immediately when Mr. Sedgewick registered who now stood before him.

“Professor Ryan,” Sedgewick said, his boisterous attitude from only moments before seemingly evaporated. “Why are you here?”

Tuck rocked back on his feet. “I believe what you meant to ask is what brings me to London. That would have been the proper address. I’m sure that’s how your father would have instructed you to address one of your professors.”

Mention of Sedgwick’s father had been deliberate, and Tuck took no small amount of satisfaction in watching the young man’s face blanche.

“Yes, exactly,” Sedgewick muttered. “What brings you to London, Professor Ryan?”

“An invitation from my cousin, the Duke of Ardley.” Tuck wasn’t one to use Liam’s name in such a way, but he would if it meant reminding young Sedgewick of his place. “I see you’ve met my friend, the Earl of Renshaw. Is he an acquaintance of your father’s?”

Sedgewick looked away uncomfortably. Young Sedgwick’s father was a baron, a destitute one, and the idea that he should be friends with an earl was a stretch.

“No, I’m afraid I only just now made the gentleman’s acquaintance.” Here he gave a bow to Renshaw. “And it was a pleasure meeting you, my lord. I hope our paths cross in future.”

Tippy stared up at the young man, his lips slightly parted and his squint extreme as if he were watching a play and couldn’t quite guess how the act was to end.

“Mr. Appleton,” Tuck cut in, addressing the shorter man standing behind Sedgwick. “I trust you’re working on your application of the comma. You were rather overly fond of the construction in your final term paper. I hope you’re taking the summer holiday to square that away.”

Mr. Appleton, a young man prone to blushing and plagued with bad teeth, only stared.

“Mr. Caruthers.” Tuck moved on to the last of the Crusaders, a stocky young man whose jackets strained to remain buttoned. “I take it you’ve contemplated my remarks regarding your last paper, and the fact that the moon is not at the center of the universe, and that you should reserve such thinking for your creative studies.”

Instead of actually responding, the man made a sound like a startled goat.

Satisfied he had made his point, Tuck smiled. “Please don’t let me keep you. I’m sure there are other fascinating minds with which you three wish to engage.”

Sedgwick’s eyes had cleared, and he seemed to have remembered himself. “My grandfather is a great donor to the college, and he will be hearing about this.”

“Oh, I hope so,” Tuck said. “I’d love to speak with him about the alarming similarities between your answers on the midterm and that of your seat mate’s. Shall I speak to him about that?”

Sedgwick’s lips thinned, but instead of saying anything further, he nudged Appleton behind him, and together with Caruthers, wandered off into the crowd.

Tuck turned a smile on his friend. “Good evening, Tippy. I didn’t expect to find you here. I thought you’d be at your club for your weekly round of whist.”

Tuck had taken to visiting Tippy once a week since their introduction at the Brocklehurst garden party, and he’d come to learn a great deal about the earl. That the man favored whiskey and cream tarts and played in a whist club once a week.

Tippy patted Tuck’s arm now. “I sincerely wish I were, young man, but I’m afraid tonight’s hostess was a dear friend of my Carolina’s. It would be remiss of me not to attend her ball.”

While Tuck heard every word Tippy said, his attention was captured by the tableau over the earl’s right shoulder. Just beyond the man in the corridor outside the ballroom stood Eloise. And she was gesturing at him to come with her.

Tuck shook his head and answered Tippy. “Then I’m delighted you’re here.”

Eloise waved more madly, sweeping her hands toward herself and then down the corridor.

“Same, same,” Tippy said. “But you must excuse me. I see an old friend I must speak to before she claims a headache and disappears.” Tippy waggled his eyebrows and scurried off, leaving nothing between Tuck and the madly gesturing Eloise except a few feet of empty space.

Still he shook his head.

Still she gestured for him to follow her.

He followed her.

Perhaps it was some sort of sickness. That was what compelled him to do as she bid even when he knew it to be a very bad idea.

She went left down the corridor, away from the ball, and the cacophony of the gathering slowly faded the farther they walked. When they came upon a small staircase, he thought she might make her way up it, but instead she continued straight to a door just under the stairs.

She opened the door and gestured for him to enter first. He eyed her skeptically before ducking his head inside the door, only to withdraw it.

“This is a broom cupboard.”

She pointed emphatically at the cupboard. “In,” she hissed.

Again, he did as she bid. He moved as far in as he could, but he didn’t see how there would be room for two of them. It was a very small broom cupboard, and judging by what he could make out of it, it was built in an older part of the house with roughhewn boards gone gray with age. This he could decipher from the moonlight that came from a small square window at his back under which was a patch of fading wallpaper. He wondered if this broom cupboard had been something else once and had become the victim of a renovation. Whatever had happened, Tuck was grateful for the small patch of light as he was not inclined to frequent cupboards in the pitch black.

Eloise stepped in behind him and closed the door with a decisive snap. When she spun about to face him, moonlight fell over her eyes, and it was as though he were seeing only her soul. He felt himself pitching forward even as he didn’t move, but then she spoke.

“We mustn’t see each other anymore.”

He blinked. “You were the one who lured me into this broom cupboard.”

He knew that wasn’t what she meant, but her words had cut something inside of him, and he thought sarcasm might keep the pieces together a little longer.

She closed her eyes briefly before opening them again. “You know what I mean. My sister, Annie, married Grimsby, Tuck. That leaves only me to marry…to marry…” She licked her lips, her eyes moving away from his face, and he could almost feel her dread, predict her next words. “To marry your cousin.”

He knew her word choice to be deliberate, and he could only respect her for it. Because she was right. Liam was courting Eloise, and Tuck was…what was Tuck doing?

Stealing pieces of her to which he had no right? Trading stolen moments for a lifetime that wasn’t his?

“You’re right.” The words were easier to say when he reminded himself of his betrayal. “I had heard about your sister, and you are right. We cannot do this.”

He thought her eyes might have widened, but the moonlight was tricky in a broom cupboard.

“Yes, I am,” she said. “No more helping each other. No more agreements. Nothing. We cannot be seen together anymore. We’ve already put ourselves in too much danger, and we’re lucky we were never caught.”

Danger? Is that how she thought of it?

Because that had never once entered his mind. When he thought of their stolen moments, he could only think of wonder and magic and worst of all, love. Never danger.

But she was right. If they had been caught, she would be forced to marry him, and he would ruin her life. He had no funds beyond his meager allowance. He was a professor of all things. That was no life for someone like Eloise.

“I agree.” How the words didn’t shred his throat he’d never know. “Eloise, I—” But it seemed those were all the words he had because he couldn’t look at her in the moonlight anymore. This beautiful woman who had so mysteriously entered his life when it was already too late.

“I hope you have a wonderful life with Liam. I truly do.” His words hung between them, and something happened to her eyes, a light sparking in them only to die quickly to a mere ember.

He thought she would say something, but instead she shook her head, and he thought he saw tears in her eyes now, but she spun around too quickly for him to see, and then she was reaching for the door, turning the knob, and this magical interlude in his dull life would be over.

But the knob didn’t turn.

He watched her, her hand struggling, the other going up to push against the door.

Nothing.

“Tuck.” The sound of his name, harsh and low, was like yelling fire in a crowded ball. She shoved against the door, turned the knob. Nothing.

“Move.” He squeezed beside her, braced himself against the door, and tried the knob, but he knew almost at once it was of no use. “Eloise, I’m afraid to tell you this.”

She shoved at his shoulder. “Try again. You must try again.” She was trying to get around him, her arms pushing around him even though there was no space to move.

He seized her arms, drawing them down her sides and pulling her into his embrace if only to stop her from hurting herself.

“Eloise, listen to me,” he said, and then when her eyes finally lifted to his, he said the thing that would end everything. “We’re locked in.”

* * *

Locked in.

The words reverberated in her mind like the ringing of a bell, the same pitch and cadence played over and over again.

“No.” She pushed Tuck’s hands aside to grip the doorknob once more, but again, it wouldn’t twist beneath her hand. She wedged her shoulder between the door and the jamb to gain better leverage, using both hands this time to turn the knob.

Nothing.

Locked in.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. She had come here tonight with such resolve, so cool of emotion. In fact, there was to be no emotion at all. Emotion was too dangerous when it came to Tuck. There could be none of it when she ended whatever it was that was happening between them.

Love.

She knew it for what it was but had been too scared to speak it.

But now…

Locked in.

She spun around, or at least, tried to. The cramped space afforded little when it came to demonstrative emotional outbursts.

“We can’t be locked in. We can’t. You must get this door open. We can’t be found like this. We’ll?—”

But she couldn’t finish the sentence. There was the smallest window behind Tuck, and moonlight fell through it, casting enough of a glow for her to see his face. There was a pain there, an unfathomable one, and she knew if she finished her sentence it would be the greatest unkindness to someone who didn’t deserve such cruelty.

Because the worst of it would be that it wasn’t true.

Forced to wed.

How tragic to even think it. To marry Tucker Ryan would be her greatest dream, and she could never make him believe otherwise.

So she didn’t say it. She simply stood there, staring at him in the moonlight just as she’d done the first time they’d met, but this time with a great deal less apprehension.

She set you free.

Her grandmother’s words came back to her then, and she felt them as she hadn’t that day in the drawing room. Her grandmother was right even if Eloise hadn’t wanted to see it then. Annie had released Eloise by marrying a duke. That would need to be enough now.

She didn’t realize she was crying until he reached up and with his thumb brushed the tears from her cheeks. She couldn’t stop herself. She leaned into him, her cheek finding the place where it fit so perfectly into his palm, and for one second she believed everything wasn’t falling apart around them.

“Annie’s married, Tuck. I’m the only one left to win Ardley’s proposal. It’s all up to me, and I can’t be a silly girl who believes in love anymore. I must face the future and what’s expected of me. There’s no one else left.” The last of her words caught on a sob, and she gave in, burying her head against his chest.

His arms came around her, one going into her hair to hold her against him, the other around her waist to pull her close.

He whispered things to her she couldn’t understand through the sound of her own tears, but it didn’t matter. She was in precisely the right place when the world fell apart.

She had been so certain in seeking out Tuck that night. Ending things was the only rational action to take. She couldn’t do it anymore. She couldn’t help him, not after everything that had happened.

Now it was over.

For they would be discovered. Dear heavens, she hoped they were discovered. How long must they wait in a broom cupboard?

Slowly she became aware of what Tuck was actually saying, and his words had her drawing back.

She blinked at him. “You were really planning to live in the Arctic so you wouldn’t be forced to see me and Ardley married?”

The haunted look that had so recently filled his gaze was gone, replaced with a sad kind of resignation. Why hadn’t she thought of that? Her goal that entire season was to marry this man’s cousin. Why had she never once thought of what that would mean?

She knew now how close the two of them were, and if Eloise were married to Ardley, she would be forced to be around Tuck a great deal. Why hadn’t she even considered it? It would be torture to see this man while married to another.

“Oh Tuck.” The words were hardly whispered, and yet her voice was still heavy with tears, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say. So she didn’t. For once, she let Tuck speak.

He cupped her face in both hands now, and she forced herself to listen and stop her silly crying.

“I promise you I will find a way to provide for you. I have an allowance from my father, and Oxford affords?—”

She gripped his wrists. “You mustn’t worry about that. I’m not. At the very worst, my father would be happy to provide a place for us in his home—” She stopped, the words jamming against the back of her teeth as she realized what she was saying. “Oh no, I can’t possibly live with my mother.” She shook her head even though Tuck’s hands remained where they were, cupping her cheeks. “I can’t live with my mother. She’s a lovely woman, but you’ve met her. Her personality would overflow a barge, and really it’s quite a lot.”

His lips turned up just the slightest bit at this, and suddenly it didn’t seem quite like the entire world was ending. Just the one she had imagined.

“I’ve ruined your life.” She spoke when she realized she hadn’t intended to, but with those words something lifted from her chest like an admission of guilt.

He shifted his hands, pressed his thumbs to her lips. “Don’t say that. My life would have been ruined without you in it.”

She shook her head, and he let his hands slip away. “How can you say that? Before this season, you didn’t even know I existed.”

He studied her, and she wondered how much he could see in so little light. But then his eyes were shifting back and forth as though he were reading something she couldn’t see. “I think somehow I knew you were out there. And if I didn’t know, my body knew because it recognized you the moment you sprang out of that hedge in the courtyard and nearly gave me a heart attack.”

Impossibly she felt a smile pulling at her lips. “Gave you a heart attack? I thought you were a ghoul from one of Dante’s seven circles of Hell.”

His face turned boyish then, and she remembered that night in the courtyard, so long ago now, when she had thought him playful.

“A ghoul? Why would you think that?”

“You had red eyes.”

His expression fell, his countenance turning serious. “I suppose that is true. Excellent observation, Lady Eloise.” His brow furrowed. “And what did you expect me to do, being a ghoul as it were?”

“Steal my soul.” She said it plainly, not feeling at all foolish to tell him the truth.

“What if I steal your heart instead?”

His words traveled straight to the part of her that warmed at the mere sight of him.

“Tucker Ryan, you’re being romantic again.”

“And so what if I am?” He nodded in the direction of the door. “When someone comes to let us out, there will be scandal that can only be stopped by our marriage. You know that. Would it be so terrible if it were a happy one?”

“How can it?” She licked her lips, suddenly feeling the enormity of what was about to happen clogged in her throat. “We’ve done a horrible thing. We’ve betrayed the trust of people who matter to us.”

He gripped her shoulders now and squeezed reassuringly. “It’s not anything that hasn’t happened before, and it’s not as though we didn’t try to stop it.” He shook his head, slowly, almost in astonishment. “I just don’t think love can be stopped, Eloise.”

Everything inside of her stilled as her eyes rounded. “You love me?” It was little more than a whisper, and she hated how her confidence fled in that moment, but there was something about gazing upon this man in the moonlight that did things to her.

“I do love you, Eloise Bounds. I hope that’s enough for you.”

She waited a beat, thinking this all a horrible trick the universe hoped to play on her. That the most wonderful thing to ever happen to her couldn’t possibly be true, and any second he would disappear, having never been there in her arms at all. But he didn’t disappear, and he didn’t take back the words that had found their way to her heart.

“Say it again.”

A grin tipped up one side of his mouth while his eyes seemed to absorb her, and she realized she should have told him she loved him back.

She gripped the lapels of his jacket. “I’ve wanted this my whole life, and I just want to hear you say it again.”

“But how can you? You didn’t know me before this season.”

“Tucker Ryan, do not make me beg.”

“Matthew. My middle name is Matthew. If you’re going to scold me, do it properly.”

Now it was her turn to grin. “Tucker Matthew Ryan, tell me you love me.”

He leaned down, and she thought he might kiss her, but instead he whispered against her lips, “You first.”

She laughed, and somehow her arms wound themselves around his neck as she hung on to him. “I love you,” she said. And then, “I love you, Tucker Matthew Ryan.”

“I love you, Eloise—” He leaned back just enough.

“Cassandra,” she supplied.

“Really?” He tilted his head to one side. “I wouldn’t have thought it.” He leaned back even farther. “Do you wish to secure the gift of sight from me? For I promise you, I do not have it to give.”

She smiled now, truly, wondering if this would be how it always was between them. This back and forth that came so easily, nothing ever moving in a straight line, going wherever their whimsy carried them.

“I shouldn’t want it even if you had it on offer. I find I like the surprise of you.”

His smile warmed then, and he bent his head back down. She readied herself for his kiss, but it never came. Because just then the door rattled, sending her nearly into the ceiling in fright.

She turned and faced it as though she were facing her executioner, but Tuck still held one of her hands, and she curled her fingers into his.

With a great jarring splinter of wood, the door came free with a mild curse and puff of air.

Lady Travers, the woman whose house they stood in, was expected. She held an old iron key in one hand, examining it as though she hadn’t anticipated it would work any longer. She turned her gaze slowly on the broom cupboard. There was nowhere for Tuck and Eloise to hide even if they should wish it, so Eloise kept hold of Tuck’s hand and stepped into the light.

“Lady Travers, I believe I got locked in your broom cupboard. You must see to it should any of your other guests fall victim to the same circumstance.” Where such bravado came from, Eloise couldn’t have said, but Grandmother Bitsy was always telling her people were often confused by a display of confidence. Perhaps some part of Eloise believed they could still come out of this unscathed.

But at the sound of the second voice, the one coming from just beyond the door, so that Eloise hadn’t seen her standing there, what little bit of hope she had left vanished.

“Is that so?” Rosemary Hayes-Martin, Viscountess Bowes said.

Eloise looked her directly in the eye and raising her chin, she said, “Viscountess Bowes, I didn’t see you there. Will you allow me to introduce you to my betrothed?”