Modern Romance Collection: October 2017 5 - 8. Heidi Rice
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“For all you know I intended to whisk you off to Rome for the evening.”
Eleanor scowled at the book in front of her, though she’d stopped seeing the words on the page in front of her the moment he’d materialized at her side. “That would be almost incomprehensibly inappropriate.”
“I would hate to be incomprehensible,” Hugo had murmured in that sardonic tone of his that made her think of his body pressed against hers and his clever hands between her legs. “My private dining room will have to do.”
“That is equally inappropriate,” she’d said sharply.
“But more comprehensible.”
“Your Grace—”
“It’s a bit late for that, Eleanor,” he’d said quietly. “Don’t you think?”
“I do not think,” she’d retorted, struggling to keep her voice in a whisper. She’d glanced at Geraldine, then back at Hugo again. “This is a game to you. But it’s a job to me. And more people than just me depend on it.”
Hugo’s impossible mouth had shifted into one of those half smiles that haunted Eleanor when she slept. And when she wasn’t sleeping, too.
“If I hadn’t tasted your innocence myself I’d assume that meant you had a child of your own hidden away somewhere.”
“I don’t have a child, I have a sister,” Eleanor had said in an undertone.
“A younger sister?”
“Vivi is twenty-five.”
“And she is unwell?”
Eleanor had frowned at him. “No, she isn’t unwell. But I’m the one who pays the bills.”
One of Hugo’s brows rose. “You pay for your twenty-five-year-old sister?”
And it had occurred to Eleanor that she’d never had to explain her situation to anyone before. Most people didn’t ask such impertinent questions and if they had, she wouldn’t have felt compelled to answer them.
“It’s complicated,” she’d said after a moment. “Vivi is very talented, but it’s not always easy to find the right place for her to shine. Once she does, everything will seem a good deal more...balanced.”
There had been something entirely too perceptive in Hugo’s gaze, then.
“Are you trying to convince me?” he’d asked. “Or yourself?”
When Geraldine had called out that she was finished, breaking the tight little knot that had seemed to hold them both where they stood, Eleanor had been unreasonably grateful.
Hugo made her feel like she no longer fit in her own body.
Not that she felt much like herself now, she was forced to admit as she hurried along the main floor toward the foyer.
Who exactly are you? a little voice asked from deep inside her, and to her shame it sounded a little too much like Hugo’s. Who exactly are you so desperate to hold on to?
She shook her head to get that voice to shut up, for a change. And then she turned the final corner that delivered her into the great foyer and stopped.
Because Vivi was standing there.
For a moment, Eleanor couldn’t make any sense of it.
There was no reason on earth for Vivi to be in Yorkshire, much less in the grand foyer of Groves House. Back in London, when Eleanor had asked if her sister planned to come up and visit her when she finally got a break after her first six weeks, Vivi had been noncommittal.
I can’t possibly know what I’ll be doing so far in the future, she’d said. Dismissively, Eleanor thought now. But at the time she hadn’t thought much of it. That was Vivi’s style, after all. So effervescent and carefree that she never knew what she was going to be doing from one moment to the next, much less six weeks out. But I doubt very much that I’ll have any business in Yorkshire.
But she’d said Yorkshire the way some people might say nuclear waste facility.
Eleanor told herself she had to be mistaken, but the woman who stood at the other end of the foyer was indisputably Vivi. She was microscopically thin, the better to show off the excruciatingly expensive designer jeans she wore thrust down low on her jutting hipbones. The denim licked down her minuscule thighs before disappearing into a pair of recognizably chic boots. She wore the sort of coat and scarf that would not look out of place in Sloane Square, and she wore her hair in the usual temperamental way. It was wild and wavy, pouring down her back and over her shoulders in an artful sort of tangle that was meant to look as if it never saw a brush or a styling tool, when the fact was, it took hours for Vivi to make it look just so. As she moved closer, Eleanor could see that her sister’s lips were pursed slightly as she took in the wealth on display across every inch of the deliberately jaw-dropping entryway. More, she had a particular gleam in her eyes that Eleanor recognized all too well.
Avaricious, that voice inside her whispered.
Eleanor told herself to stop. She was being severe and unfair. She should have been delighted to see her little sister. She was. Of course she was.
“Vivi? What are you doing here? Is everything all right?”
Vivi took her time meeting Eleanor’s gaze. Her own lingered on the walls, on all that gold and gilt, stretching out in all directions. Statues and flowers and paintings that went all the way up to heaven and back. And that was just the foyer.
“Aren’t you the dark horse,” Vivi murmured.
“You don’t look as if anything terrible has happened,” Eleanor continued, telling herself that there was no need to read into her sister’s dark tone.
Vivi eyed her, her hands stuck into the back pockets of her jeans and her hips thrust out in what could only be called an aggressive posture. Eleanor ignored that, too.
“You told me this place was a tired old mausoleum. A crumbling pile of rocks, plunked down in the middle of a moor with heather growing all over it like a weed.” Vivi sniffed and jutted her chin at all the lavish displays before her. “Apparently not.”
“You were the one who called it a pile of rocks,” Eleanor pointed out, still keeping her voice calm and even and something like soothing. “I just didn’t argue.”
“I had no idea you were so secretive, Eleanor. Is that a new personality trait?”
“Surely you didn’t really think that the Duke of Grovesmoor lived in a crumbling pile of stones.” Eleanor made herself smile. “Given that he owns the better part of England.”
“It’s quite intriguing that you’ve decided you need to keep secrets from me now that you work in such a posh old house, isn’t it?”
There was no denying the fact that there was more than little attitude in her sister’s voice. But Eleanor ordered herself to remain calm, and not only because she never called her miracle of a sister out on anything, much less tone. But because she couldn’t trust the things that were happening inside of her.
The truth was that she hadn’t felt much like herself since Hugo had kissed her that first time. Maybe Vivi was right and Eleanor had gone squirrely and secretive. She’d never done anything like that before.
And when, exactly, were you permitted to have any kind of a life before? that voice inside demanded. Or have you forgotten that your whole existence is catering to Vivi’s life, not yours? She just doesn’t like imagining that anything might have shifted.
It was possible that Eleanor didn’t really like it all that much, either.
“If I failed to tell you something it wasn’t for any nefarious reason,” she said, still keeping her voice even. “I thought you knew everything there was to know about this position. You’re the one who recommended I interview