Wells flinched. “Miss Eleanor, I have apologized to your sister for past behaviors which were reprehensible, to say the least.”
“Yet you’ve not apologized to me, sir, nor to our father, have you?” She got up off Cuthbert’s lap to stand before him. “Is it any wonder Charles wishes nothing more to do with you, Lord Wellesley?”
“Miss Eleanor, please,” he started, “allow me to?—”
“You don’t deserve the allowance, sir,” she lashed back, and Wells knew he was in for a beating as bad as the one his Fox had meted out.
“I know I deserve your wrath, miss, yet I beg you, let me speak with Charles in private, that she and I might?—”
“She is not here, sir, and I will have that apology, straightaway.”
Cuthbert looked at Eleanor in awe.
Wells took a slow, deep breath, willing himself to give this woman her due. “Miss Eleanor, you have my deepest and most sincere apology for the manner in which I treated your sister the night my steward caught her thieving my chickens. I abused my position as local magistrate in order to gain personally from her sentence. I am not proud of my behavior, but nor, in all honesty,do I entirely regret that night either, for it brought your sister into my life, and I have been the better for it.”
“And her, sir?” she cried bitterly. “Is she the better for it too? You paid her coin as your housekeeper, true, and you’ve kept us warm and fed this winter, none of which I’m ungrateful for, my lord. But what have you otherwise left her? A broken heart, ruined reputation, and a future now doing God only knows what.”
Wells was reeling. “Eleanor, where has she gone? Tell me where she is.” His heart began to race. “If she’s done something foolish now I should never forgive myself. Youmusttell me where she is. Eleanor, tell me where’s she’s gone!”
She almost told him, he could see it in her eyes.
“No, Lord Wellesley,” she said quietly. “I honor my sister’s wishes now, not yours.” She leveled her gaze. “She no longer wishes to see you.”
“Yes, but that is because . . . !” He was so incensed he nearly punched the wall with his fist, stopping himself at the last second. Wells balled his hands at his sides. “Eleanor, I beg you, consider but a moment my intent. I wish to make amends to Charles. I wish to marry her, to make her the next Duchess of Allendale.”
“And?” The lady was ruthless.
“And I can think of no better woman to be my Duchess. Cumberland is already her home, she is respected by its citizens, she is accomplished and capable and has assisted in countless ways already to restore the Abbey . . .” He was shocked to see her face remain so impassive, so cold.
“Is that how you proposed marriage, my lord?” Eleanor asked. “To Charles? Is that how you spoke to her?
“Well, along those lines, yes,” he mumbled, utterly confused now by the expression on her face.
“Then no wonder she refused you.” Eleanor glared at him before she stormed into the kitchen, leaving him alone with Cuthbert.
Wells turned to his steward. “John, why the devil is no one in all of bloody Cumberland pleased that I’m to make Charles Merrinan my wife?”
“Are you, Yer Grace?” Cuthbert regarded him critically. “Seems t’ me yer bride’s run off again, not the first that’s happened, now is it?”
Wellesley’s face burned to be reminded, but Cuthbert would not stop.
“Y’ talk as if it’s a done deal, Yer Grace, as if you’re already betrothed, when y’ know full well she turned you down. Y’ can’t force her t’ marry you, not the way y’ forced her t’ bed you, sir.”
“John, I did not?—”
“Y’ did, sir, and y’ know it.”
Wells sank his head in his hands, collapsing onto a chair. “What have I done?” he got out, strangled.
“Driven off the one woman able to take yer on, that’s what. And damned if you’ll get her back now.”
“Losing her isn’t an option, John, it simply isn’t. Iwanther. I’ve wanted her from the moment I first laid eyes on her, covered in chicken shit. And knowing her as I do now only makes me want her more.”
“And did y’ try tellin’ her that?” Cuthbert shook his head. “Did y’ try at’all speakin’ from yer heart and not yer bloody duke’s voice?” His look needled Wells. “A woman like Charles, sir, has got to know a man wants her, desires her, needs her in his life.”
“But shedoesknow,” he cried. “She must! When all I have done these past months is to show her again and again just how much I?—”
“Y’ desired her person, sir, but not her true bein’. ’T’ain’t the same thing.”
