The Unwelcome Homecoming
London, 1817
The crystal decantermade a distinctive clink as the stranger poured himself a glass of her best brandy. Eleanor Sinclair froze in the doorway of her drawing room, her reticule slipping from nerveless fingers to the carpet with a soft thud.
For a moment, she simply stared. The man had made himself entirely at home—jacket discarded over the back of her favorite chair, boots propped impertinently on her rosewood table, cravat loosened with casual disregard. Worse, he was drinking her late husband’s prized brandy, the one she kept locked in the cabinet for particularly difficult negotiations.
“Who are you?” she demanded, though a sickening suspicion was already forming. “How did you get in here?”
The man turned, one dark eyebrow arched in amusement. He surveyed her with a lazy thoroughness that felt like an invasion. Strands of dark hair fell over his eyes—a startling shade of green, she noted reluctantly—that lingered briefly on the modest neckline of her day dress before returning to her face.
“Is that any way to greet your husband, sweetheart?” He raised his glass in mocking salute. “His Grace, Damien Westmore, Duke of Westmore, here in the flesh to serve my darling wife.”
He rose to his feet in a fluid motion that had his well-defined thigh muscles contract and relax, stretching the black leather breeches taut. He performed an exaggerated bow that somehow managed to be both technically perfect and utterly insolent.
This, she realized with mounting indignation, may become an unwelcome negotiation. The Black Widow of Whitehall, the notorious matchmaker, had assured her this would never happen—that the legal documents so carefully crafted by that woman’s clever solicitors would protect Eleanor’s unusual arrangement.
“I must say, when I agreed to this proxy marriage arrangement, I had no idea my wife would be quite so… enchanting.” His smile revealed a wide mouth that quirked more on one side.
Eleanor’s carefully constructed world tilted beneath her feet. The duke wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to be in China or Japan or some other suitably distant part of the world, collecting his quarterly allowance and leaving her in peace to manage her affairs.
Her hard-worn freedom was gone in an instant.
She drew herself up to her full height and composed her features into the mask of cool efficiency that had served her well in countless meetings with her late husband’s business associates, all of whom looked down their noses at a woman presuming to understand financial matters.
“Your Grace,” she said with brittle civility. “This is a surprise. Our arrangement specified you would remain abroad.”
“Plans change, Duchess. Plans change.” He swirled the amber liquid in his glass, studying it with apparent fascination.“Excellent brandy, by the way. Your late husband had impeccable taste.”
Eleanor’s fingers itched to snatch the glass from his hand. That brandy had been George’s pride—one of the few possessions she’d fought to keep when Mr. Abram had begun his systematic dismantling of her inheritance. She still remembered the day she’d visited the Lyon’s Den in desperation, after Abram had informed her that another property would need to be sold to “cover expenses.”
The Black Widow had been her last hope—a woman rumored to arrange unconventional solutions for desperate women. And her solution had been most unconventional indeed: a proxy marriage to an absent duke, a man with a title powerful enough to supersede an executor’s authority without any hassle but who had no interest in returning to England after the scandal surrounding his younger brother three years prior.
Until now.
Eleanor crossed to her writing desk, her back deliberately straight. “I assume some emergency has precipitated your return. A financial emergency, perhaps?” She picked up her reticule, opening it to retrieve banknotes. “I would be happy to advance you an additional quarter’s allowance to resolve whatever difficulty has arisen. Or I can instruct my banker to arrange a draft, if you prefer.”
The brandy thief laughed, the rich sound sending an unwelcome warmth up her spine. He stretched out his long legs in front of him, crossing one over the other. Without thinking, her eyes fixated on how the light and shadow played around the definitions of his powerful thigh muscles. To her horror, she swallowed. Swallowed! The duke’s low baritone brought her eyes back to his face, which was bathed in smugness.
“How very hurtful of you, my dear wife. Already attempting to purchase my absence?” He languidly rose to his feet andmoved toward her, each step unhurried. “I’m wounded. Truly. One might think you aren’t pleased to finally meet your husband in the flesh.”
“O-our arrangement was clear,” Eleanor said, her pulse quickening at his approach as her fingers curled around the banknotes. “You were to remain abroad, and I was to manage affairs here. It was a mutually beneficial agreement that has worked perfectly for six months. What would make it agreeable for you to honor that arrangement?”
He stopped beside her desk, close enough that she could smell the bergamot and sandalwood of his cologne, along with the faint scent of her purloined brandy on his breath. He was so very tall.
“I’ve decided the arrangement no longer suits me.” He plucked the reticule and banknotes from her fingers, setting them down with deliberate care. “London has its charms. My title has its privileges. And now, it seems,” he lowered his voice conspiratorially while his gaze dipped to her décolletage, “I have a beautiful wife whose company I’ve yet to properly enjoy.”
Eleanor’s cheeks warmed at his implication. “Your appearance here is a breach of our contract.”
“Perhaps,” he said slowly while holding her gaze, “but who’s going to contest me, Duke of Westmore? Certainly not you. Not if you don’t wish to be the subject of a scandal.”
He smiled in a way that made her want to slap him, but he was correct. She couldn’t afford a scandal by admitting to thetonthat she was in a pretend marriage. The gossip alone would destroy her reputation and, with it, any hope of maintaining her independence as well as Madame Tansley’s rescue mission that served exploited women with nowhere else to go.
“I can double your quarterly allowance,” she said instead, attempting to reclaim the reticule.
“Not interested.”
“Triple it.”