“I meant that we waltzed the first night we met properly,” she was saying.
“You wore your hair in ringlets.” Hart pulled her closer, the space between their bodies diminishing. “I saw you sitting with the matrons, looking prim and respectable, and I wanted you so much.”
Hart felt the supple bend of her waist under his hand, her body warm as a flush colored her face. Nothing had changed. Hart still wanted her.
Eleanor smiled as she’d smiled that long-ago night, unafraid and daring him. “And then you didn’t do anything very wicked at all. I confessed myself disappointed.”
“That is because I do my wickedness in private. As I did on the terrace, and in the boathouse, and in the summerhouse.”
Eleanor’s cheeks went delightfully pink. “Thank heavens we are so public here.”
Hart stopped. Couples nearly collided with them but carried on dancing, saying nothing. Hart Mackenzie was the eccentric Duke of Kilmorgan, they were his guests, and anything he did in his own house was to be tolerated.
Hart led Eleanor quickly from the floor. “I take that as a challenge,” he said when they reached a quieter corner. “Meet me on the terrace in ten minutes.”
Eleanor, being Eleanor, opened her mouth to ask why, but Hart gave her a formal bow and walked away from her.
Ten excruciating minutes later, Hart strode through a servants’ back hallway in his vast house, startling a footman and a maid who were also stealing a private moment, and walked out through a side door to the terrace.
It was empty. Hart stopped, his breath steaming. Cold and disappointment hit him like a slap.
“Hart?”
A whisper came from the shadows, and then Eleanor stepped out from behind a pillar. “If you wanted a secret meeting, could you not have chosen a drawing room? It’s bloody freezing out here.”
The relief that swept over him threatened to drown him. Hart tugged Eleanor against him, gave her one swift, fierce kiss, and then pulled her rapidly down the terrace steps, out of the garden, around the side of the house, and through a gate that led to a stairway. Down these stairs they went and back inside the house, into a long, white-painted hall. This hall was empty of servants, the staff engaged in Hart’s private supper ball for three hundred upstairs.
Hart towed Eleanor through another door into the warm steam of the laundry room. There was no light in there, but plenty of lamplight streamed through windows that looked back out to the gaslit passage.
A huge sink stood at one end of the room, with taps to pour out hot water from the boiler on the other side of the wall. Ironing boards were folded in the corner, and irons waited patiently on shelves to be heated on the small stove. A long table was covered with clean, folded laundry, snowy white linen ready to be carried to the bedrooms above.
Hart shut the door, enclosing them in humid warmth. He slid his hands to Eleanor’s bare shoulders, not liking how cold she was.
The conversation with Neely had left a bad taste in his mouth. Hart had been aware that people believed he was like Neely, a seeker of questionable pleasures at others’ expense. Hart had never cared what people thought of him before. Why Neely’s rather disgusting eagerness should bother him tonight, he didn’t know.
No, he did know. He didn’t want Eleanor thinking that he was a man like Neely.
“What did you wish to speak to me about so privately?” Eleanor asked. “May I assume you did not win over Mr. Neely, hence your mood?”
“No, Neely capitulated,” Hart said. “David is seeing to him.”
“Congratulations. Do victories always make you this cross?”
“No.” Hart caressed her shoulders. “I don’t want to talk about Neely or victories.”
“Then what did you wish to speak about?” She gave him one of her coyly innocent looks. “The flower arrangements? Not enough vol-au-vent at supper?”
For answer, Hart hooked his fingers into the top of her long glove, the buttons popping as he drew the glove down, down, down. He kissed the bared inside of her wrist, then kissed it again. Warm, sweet Eleanor.
He wanted to bathe in her and cleanse himself of all the things he’d done and all the things he would do in the name of making himself prime minister. He’d begun the supper ball as the duke trying to win over those who would help bring him power. He’d segued into the man who’d make a bargain with the devil himself if it would win him his vote.
He did not want to be that person anymore. At this moment, he wanted to be with Eleanor and shut out the world.
Eleanor’s eyes softened as he drew her up to him and kissed her parted lips.
Something jolted between them. Sparks. Always sparks.
Hart kissed across her lower lip, lingering on the place where he’d bitten her. A tendril of darkness danced somewhere inside him, but he wouldn’t let himself ruin this. Not with Eleanor’s lips soft under his, her mouth warm and responding.
Sweet and tender, that was Eleanor, and yet she had a core of steel. Hart kissed her throat and then her shoulder, her skin damp with their wild dancing.
Not enough. It wasn’t enough.
Hart swept her into his arms and deposited her on the low table heaped with laundry. Before Eleanor could protest, he was over her on hands and knees as he laid her back.
“You’ll ruin the linens,” she struggled to say. “They worked so hard on them.”
“I pay my servants the highest wages in London.”
“For putting up with you.”
“For letting me ravish my love on a pile of clean laundry.” Hart plucked a pair of drawers from behind her shoulder, a lady’s drawers, made of thin linen and trimmed with lace. “Your laundry, I believe.”
Eleanor tried to snatch them. “Hart, for heaven’s sake, you can’t be waving my knickers about.”
Hart held them out of her reach. “Why are they so worn out?” The place that cupped her bottom was threadbare, and the lace on the leg openings had been mended many times. He picked up the companion camisole, again of fine fabric but carefully mended over the years. “Isabella needs to outfit you from the skin out.”
“I can do it myself,” proud Eleanor said. “I’ll buy some new smalls out of my wages.”
“You should have a roomful of new ones. Throw these away.”
“I shall have to if you rip them.”
“Don’t tempt me.” Hart drew the camisole across her cheek. “These are linen. I want to see you in silk.”