Hart’s look said he didn’t give a damn what anyone thought. He’d dance with Eleanor tonight, and the world could go hang. Eleanor’s feet felt light, her heart lighter still. She wanted to lean back in his arms and laugh and laugh.
“We waltzed the first night we met,” she said over the music. “Remember? We were the talk of the town—decadent Lord Hart singling out young Eleanor Ramsay. So delicious.”
The raw look in Hart’s eyes didn’t lessen. “That wasn’t the first time we met. You were nine and I was sixteen. You were at Kilmorgan, trying to play a tune on our grand piano.”
“And you sat down next to me to teach me how to play it.” Eleanor smiled at the memory, the tall Hart, already handsome in his frock coat and kilt, with an air of arrogant confidence. “In the most condescending way possible, of course. A young man from Harrow deigning to notice a child.”
“You were a devilish brat, El. You and Mac dropped mice into my pockets.”
Eleanor laughed as the ballroom spun around her. “Yes, that was quite enjoyable. I don’t believe I’ve ever run quite so fast before or since.”
Her eyes were beautiful when she laughed, sparkling and blue like the sun on a Scottish loch.
Hart had wanted to discipline Mac himself for the mice, but their father had discovered the prank and tried to beat Mac senseless. Hart had stopped him and had later taken a beating on his brother’s behalf.
Eleanor’s smile wiped out the cloud of memory. Bless her, she could always do that.
“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.