Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
“Two servings of soup, Your Grace.”
Elinor startled, looking behind at her as Mrs. Neal entered the office, bearing two steaming bowls of soup on a tray. Several pieces of bread were plated alongside a butter dish, and Elinor took a quick moment to marvel at the difference in the catering.
Once, butter had been a luxury for Fielding House, and now it was being served in a generous slab on a proper dish.
Mrs. Neal glanced at her, giving a concerned lift of her brows. Elinor smiled at her, hoping she was more convincing than she felt. Upon her smile, the older woman made her exit, leaving Elinor and Lucien alone in the office.
“White soup,” Lucien noted, sniffing one of the bowls. He placed the other on one side of the desk, taking his own, along with two slices of bread. As he began to butter them, Elinor tentatively sat down. “Creamy and warm, just what we need on a night like this.”
When Elinor didn’t reach for her spoon to eat alongside him, Lucien paused.
“Are you not eating?” he asked.
“I am too nervous.” Even though her stomach made a noise of protest, it was also knotted with panic. “I do not think I can eat, so if you wish to have my serving—”
Lucien shook his head, and she fell silent. “It is yours. But here, let me do this.”
Placing his spoon down, he walked over to the decrepit fireplace in the office and crouched before it.
A small box of matches lay next to the logs within, and he struck one.
Elinor watched as the small flame lit up part of his face, casting dramatic shadows over the contours of his jawline.
His neat beard seemed to almost glow in the firelight.
He dropped the match into the stack of logs, and immediately, the room warmed up. Elinor was entranced by the flames for a minute before she turned back to the hearty-smelling soup.
“Better?” he asked her.
“I suppose,” she answered, her mind too distracted to be more polite. Then, she composed herself, and added, “thank you.”
“You do not have to thank me for anything.”
You have shown me kindness and generosity when few others ever have, she thought, but didn’t say.
Her thoughts kept straying back to being caught. Her stepmother rarely did checks of the chambers at night, too focused on her own retirement to sleep, but what if tonight was a night she decided to?
“Please,” Lucien murmured, “eat something. The soup is delicious.”
Elinor mustered a weak smile, but her annoyance was growing even as she tried to keep it at bay.
“The storm will pass,” he assured her, “and I will see you home, if you like.”
“No,” she replied hastily. “No, that will only rouse more questions.”
“Only if we are noticed.”
“And you think we will not be? Carriages are loud enough on their own. If you are there …” She shook her head. “No, I cannot risk it.”
“Elinor, what is the worst that can happen? Like I said, we can think of a story to tell.”
Her frustration finally snapped, and she glared at him. “Stories, stories, stories, that is all you think of all the time. More lies, more pretenses, as though everything is a game to you. Spin a pretty story and think that all is well? My life is not like that, Lucien.”
His name felt strange on her tongue, but her anger overrode any concern she had about that.
“I cannot risk it, why will you not listen to me? The storm is nothing. It needs to be nothing because I must get home.”
“Then you would rather risk your carriage being struck, and you becoming stranded on your own, than sit with me for a while?”
“I would rather do a great many other things than stew in my panic, because that is how I feel. Panicked. Do you even know what that feels like? To have to worry about being caught? To worry over whatever punishment may come next for every toe stepped out line?”
“Of course I do,” he snapped back at her. “You do not know me.”
“Exactly! And you do not know me, so how can you assume that I will be safe? That my stepfamily will feed on the pretty stories you keep on telling? One day, they are going to find out—find out about everything, and you will get to walk away unscathed. I will not. I will be stuck with them, and you expect me to relax? I cannot.”
“As you have said,” he said dryly, sipping on another spoonful of soup, and that casual action made Elinor’s anger flare.
“Heavens, you really do walk around without a care,” she whispered, appalled.
“Do I?”
“Stop it,” Elinor cried back. “Stop answering like that.”
“You are accusing me of assuming things, but so are you, Elinor.”
For a second, she was stopped by her name, without a title, on his own lips, and she blinked at him. It was enough to simmer her anger to a low burn. But then Lucien smirked at her, as if he had intended to make her pause in such a way, and that anger returned.
“I will not have you leaving in this storm, and that is final.”
“And who are you to get to tell me what to do?” Elinor challenged. “What we portray to the ton is a ruse. You are not truly my betrothed, you are a duke who found me tutoring children and somehow saw something in me worth investing in for your own gains.”
“And what of your gains?” he shot back. “What of the children’s gains? Does that not matter? It is not only I who reaps rewards with this arrangement. I will remind you of your dance card the other night, Elinor. Does that not please you?”
“You know it does not. I do not care about such frivolities.”
“Then you will be content to be a spinster?”
His question silenced her, her lips parting.
“I … I have spent the years since my debut hoping somebody would notice me, hoping that somebody would see me as more than a mere wall decoration when I was pushed to the background. I came to learn to live with that, so no, I do not care what suitors want to fill up my dance card. Do you know why?”
“Humor me,” he invited, eating more soup.
“Because it is not real,” she told him. “It is only because your attention has piqued theirs. They wonder what you see in me, so they want to know.”
“Is a win not a win?”
“Not when I have not gained it by my own merits.”
“Elinor.” Lucien leaned back, cocking his head. “Your pride is very quiet, but it can be potent in certain moments. Are you aware of that? Why does something have to be of your own doing? Why can you not simply accept assistance?”
Her jaw clenched, and she fought to keep the worst of her counter back.
Because I have had to rely on myself for four years to survive my stepfamily, because nobody has ever seen their cruelty. Because survival has been a lonely road, and I expect nothing.
“Answer me,” he said, his voice softer. Finally, he set down his spoon. “Help me understand, so I can help.”
“I do not need you to,” she muttered, turning her face away, but at that moment, more thunder rumbled outside, and she startled again.
“See? You want to fight to leave, but you are scared,” Lucien observed. “Why would you put yourself through that for them? Because I guess that returning to that townhouse is not for your own benefit.”
“It is,” she answered, “in a way. It is for my own safety.”
“And, like I will remind you, you have my protection.”
“That does not cover every moment, every word behind closed doors.”
“Then I will make changes to assure it does.” Lucien stood up, rounding the desk to stand over her.
Elinor still did not look up at him, stubbornly keeping her gaze downward. Her soup would have grown cooler now, but she still ached to eat it, despite her nerves.
“Elinor.”
“No.”
“Elinor.”
When she still did not look up at him, he took her chin in his fingers, surprising her when he lifted her face toward his. She stared up at him in bewilderment as he held her like that.
“When will you accept that, ruse or not, I am here to protect you? That I am invested in you?”
“Because it is not true,” she whispered.
“I can still possess those things whether you are my pretend fiancée or not,” he said earnestly. “My protection is not a transaction. I expect nothing for it.”
Elinor slowly rose to her feet, needing to gain back some autonomy. She shook off his grasp. “Why me?” she asked quietly. “What on Earth did you see in me to bring me into this? You could have had your pick of any lady in any ballroom, yet you chose me.”
“Would you like me to tell you it was merely timing?” he asked, and Elinor ground her teeth in frustration, ignoring the question.
“Because that is not entirely true. Yes, I saw an opportunity, but I saw a woman who interested me far more than any other lady ever has. I thought we had been through this.”
“We have, but I cannot stop questioning it, not when I have grown up alongside ladies like Belinda who everybody wishes to dance with, and Joanna, whose beauty is often overlooked by Belinda’s charm, but men are still enraptured by her.
Me, though? I have nothing to entice anybody with, yet …
yet, you keep coming back, even when there is no one watching us. Why?”
Something came over Lucien’s face, something that Elinor had never seen before but knew well enough: frustration combined with desire.
And then he had her face in his hands, his face lowering to hers.
There was a brief second where he only held her gaze, his eyes searching hers—
And then his mouth was on her own.
Elinor made a noise into the kiss as he held her to him, not tight enough to force her to stay, but hard enough for her to feel the tremble in his hands, as if he had restrained himself and was now fighting it.
But why would a duke need restraint for a lady like her?
Elinor had never been kissed, and she feared for a moment that she did not know what to do, but as Lucien’s mouth moved against hers, she followed his lead. He kissed her as though she were the only thing keeping him standing, the sudden intensity catching her off guard.