Falling for a Duke (Timeless Regency Collection Book 8) Page 10

  It was not precisely the same. Besides, he had many more than merely two names.

  “My given name is William Thomas Rutherford Trebor.”

  She pursed her mouth. “And does anyone call you William?”

  “Just my mother.”

  A beat.

  “When I was very little, my nurse called me Liam,” he offered into the silence. “But she returned to Dublin to live with her daughter last year.”

  He had cried into his pillow every night for a month after Nanna left.

  No one had called him Liam since.

  “Oh. I see.” Her chocolate eyes shone with understanding.

  She did see.

  “No one calls you Liam anymore, just as no one calls me Eliza.” She suddenly grinned and shrugged her shoulders. “Well, there’s no help for it, I suppose. You must call me Eliza and I must call you Liam, and that way, we can keep our special names. You for your Nanna and me for my Mamma.”

  He liked the sound of her voice. He liked that she seemed genuinely interested in him as a person—not a title or a tool or a failure. He liked the sense that no matter what he said about himself, she would smile and easily accept it.

  Nanna had been the only other person in his life to do the same.

  He missed Nanna.

  And because of this, he nodded to his new friend. “I would like that, Eliza.”

  She beamed at him.

  “Now, Liam.” She patted the wall beside her one more time. “You really must put down your book and climb up here beside me. You can see to the moors across the valley, and the yellow blooming gorse is ever so beautiful.”

  And even though he did not particularly enjoy climbing, Liam set his book on the stone seat and scrambled up.

  Because, he realized, being “Liam” with a new friend was perhaps better than solitary contemplation.

  “But, Elizabeth, you promised you would accompany me!” Miss Charity Winters set her teacup down with a decided clink, her china-blue eyes wide with distress.

  Eliza stifled a sigh, sipping her own tea. Low clouds cast the parlor of her small cottage in a blue gloom, the popping fire in the grate only barely holding back the chill.

  Charity was not quite done, however. “My mother’s health won’t allow her to accompany me, and I cannot attend the assembly ball without a chaperone. You cannot renege now.”

  Eliza had promised Charity weeks ago that she would accompany her. But that was before a certain person had decided to visit the region. Eliza had expected her friend to take the news in stride. It was, after all, a simple country assembly ball held in the local guildhall for all and sundry to attend.

  What else was Eliza to do? The last three days had been filled with hearing about him.

  The Duke of Chawton had tipped his hat at elderly Miss Graham in greeting.

  The Duke of Chawton had insisted that the vicar and his wife be invited to dinner at Ambrose Park.

  The Duke of Chawton had stopped his horse to talk with Mrs. Smith and her son.

  Eliza remained indoors, concerned that if she left, she would encounter him. Avoidance seemed the best policy at this point.

  Of course, it was unlikely that Liam would frequent a public assembly ball in unremarkable Rothsbury. Dukes did not condescend to mingle with the myriad of classes who would be in attendance. Heavens, a mere mister might have the audacity to speak to His Grace.

  An unpretentious man like her Robert—if he had become a duke before meeting his end—would have come. The Liam of old would have come. That Liam—her Liam, if she were being honest with herself—would not have hid behind rigid social protocol.

  And given what she was hearing of the Duke of Chawton, she was starting to wonder if her old Liam had shown up here in Rothsbury. Not the cold Stranger Liam of five years ago who had so devastated her.

  The way he was popping up all over town made her uneasy about attending the ball.

  Of course, Eliza could not say as much to her friend. Charity knew nothing of her life before Rothsbury. No one in their small village did, and Eliza hoped to keep things that way.

  “I am genuinely sorry, Charity.” Eliza offered her most contrite smile. “But I must see to this matter with my solicitor. I shall only be gone a day or two.”

  It was a lie, of course. Eliza did not like lying as a general rule, but sometimes a small untruth was necessary.

  “Can you not postpone it?” Charity was not going to relent.

  “The appointment is already set, you see, and—”

  “But the ball promises to be most diverting,” Charity interrupted. “My Mr. Thomas will be there. And they say that Lord Swansea may attend and bring the Duke of Chawton with him.”

  Eliza only barely controlled an involuntary flinch at Liam’s name. That was precisely why she could not attend.

  “I cannot imagine that Lord Swansea—or His Grace, for that matter—would be interested in a small assembly ball held in Rothsbury, Dorset,” Eliza said with a tight smile.

  “But I must be there.”

  “Why? Why must you attend?”

  “I promised not to tell.”

  “Charity, I need a better explanation.”

  Silence.

  Charity’s face crumpled. “If I do not go, Mr. Thomas will not have a chance to declare himself. He whispered as much to me when we encountered each other at the haberdasher’s last week. You know we see each other so seldom as is. With his family’s obligations, I shall have to wait another three months before setting eyes on him again.” Charity dabbed at her eyes. “How shall I bear it? You, of all people, understand what it is to be desperately in love.”

  Eliza swallowed. She did, indeed.

  A day never passed without thoughts of Robert.

  Liam’s presence in the village had amplified her sorrow, cruelly tearing open her festering wound, rendering the pain of Robert’s loss raw and new.

  “Please.” Charity’s eyes swam with sincerity. “Please help me in this.”

  Eliza forced her thoughts back from the brink of that abyss. This was her life now. Playing respectable widow chaperone to an amiable, but somewhat scattered, young lady.

  Oddly enough, she and Charity were nearly of an age but worlds apart in life experiences. Had Eliza ever been so hopeful and naive, so believing in the general goodness of others?

  She rather supposed she had. Once upon a time. Before her Liam had turned into Stranger Liam. Before Robert.

  Eliza set her teacup down and stood, wandering over to the window. The back window overlooked her small kitchen garden. A large bluff rose beyond, separating the town of Rothsbury from the fury of the ocean beyond.

  The lone church of St. Anne stood atop the bluff, abandoned and solitary. The church was much smaller than the abbey ruins where she had met Liam as a child. But St. Anne’s Church was a constant reminder of the home she had left behind in Yorkshire.

  Eliza had worked so hard to create a life for herself here in Rothsbury. She had her small cottage with a maid for help and companionship. She was respected and respectable. No whiff of scandal or shame had followed her here.

  And Eliza desperately needed to keep things that way.

  She had spent the past three days terrified of the consequences of Liam appearing on her doorstep. Dukes did not call upon genteel widows unless there was something more afoot. How could she explain a social call from him? What would her neighbors say? Would they still believe her to be virtuous and above reproach if he did call upon her with no seeming prior acquaintance?

  Liam could destroy five years’ worth of hard work with a few carelessly placed words. She didn’t have a way or the means to start over elsewhere. But he had not called upon her, which most likely meant he did not know she was here.

  She sternly told herself that she only felt relief at the thought.

  Not a smidgen of hurt. Not an ounce of disappointment.

  His coming here was simply an unfortunate coincidence.

  She had the
memories of Robert to cling to—the knowledge that she had once been loved and adored. Not even Stranger Liam could take that from her.

  Eliza cast one last look at St. Anne’s and turned back to her friend.

  “Please, Elizabeth.” Charity clutched her hands to her bosom, handkerchief trembling between her white knuckles. “You did promise.”

  Eliza hated feeling so churlish. Charity had been a true friend to her over the past years and asked for little in return.

  Perhaps Eliza could attend the ball if she kept to the shadows and positioned herself with the other matrons in a corner, observing the “young people” enjoying themselves.

  Besides, he would not appear. He had no reason to condescend to such a degree.

  Fourteen Years Earlier

  A rap on the window snapped Eliza’s head upright.

  She looked over to see Liam’s face smiling at her. He tapped again, motioning for her to let him in. She flew across the small library and pushed the window open.

  “Liam!” she squealed, catching him in a tight hug as he stepped into the room, her exuberance knocking the hat off his head.

  He stiffened as he always did when she hugged him, but the hand patting her shoulder and his gruff laugh told her he didn’t mind the invasion.

  She pulled away and matched his wide grin with one of her own. As usual, he had a book tucked under his arm. His sandy blond hair sported a ringed indentation from his hat and poked out here and there.

  “You are all scarecrowy again.” She giggled. “Your straw is trying to escape.” She darted her hands to his hair, smoothing it down in places and fluffing it out in others.

  He had suddenly shot up over the summer—her aunt said that boys did that when they were twelve—so Eliza had to stand on her tiptoes to reach him. At only ten herself, she wondered if she too would grow tall when she reached twelve.

  He pushed her hands back and squirmed away, using his book as a shield.

  “Enough, Eliza! I already have a mother!” But he laughed as he spoke.

  She snorted and snatched his hand. “You must see what I have been doing.” She dragged him across the room to the table where she had been sitting.

  Eliza loved the cozy library. Lined with bookshelves and illuminated by two enormous floor-to-ceiling windows, the room was bright, cheery, and begged to be sat in for hours on end. Best of all, Nicholas hated reading and so avoided the library at all costs. This turned the library into a sanctuary, free from her cousin’s endless teasing.

  She wasn’t sure what Liam’s house was like—as a daughter of a mere country gentleman, she had never been invited inside—but from a distance, it looked to be more castle than house with turrets and ramparts and small windows. She imagined him moving from gloomy room to gloomy room, looking properly sober and ducal while searching for a spot of sun.

  But her uncle’s house was a model of modern building sensibilities. Though not overly large, it sported classical columns out front and high ceilings inside with symmetrically placed doors and soaring windows. Her house never wanted for daylight. She supposed that was why Liam came so often.

  The days he didn’t visit her, she would sneak out to the ancient abbey ruins, hoping to find him there.

  “Look what I have been practicing.” She swept a hand over the playing cards placed on the table.

  He shook his head. “Isn’t a library meant for reading?”

  “Don’t be tiresome.”

  She placed her hands on her hips and gave him her best set-down look. It was something she had recently learned from observing her aunt, but given how his lips twitched, she supposed the entire effect still needed some work.

  Or maybe it was just her. She couldn’t bring herself to care if he was tiresome or not. He was just Liam, her best friend, and she liked him no matter his mood.

  He looked at the cards for a moment and then cocked his head.

  “Who has been teaching you vingt-et-un?” he asked, calling the game by its more sophisticated French name rather than the bland English one—twenty-one.

  “The vicar and his wife came to dine last evening. Uncle let Nicholas and I watch them play for ha’pennies in the parlor after dinner. I wanted to play it again today just to better understand how the game works, but I fear I keep losing.”

  His lips twitched again. “You are playing alone. How can you lose?”

  Her brow drew down. “Precisely. I find it the oddest puzzle.”

  That got a laugh out of him, low and breathy. Sometimes she worried that if she weren’t around, Liam would never laugh again.

  He set his book down and gathered up the playing cards, mischief dancing in his deep blue eyes. Liam never got into mischief—and Eliza always did—so she reveled in this role reversal.

  “My tutor taught me to play last year.” He nudged his chin, indicating she should take a seat opposite him. “Shall we play?”

  She clapped her hands together and sat down, feet tapping. “Shall we play for ha’pennies, too?”

  He shrugged. “Why not play for truths?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Whoever wins the hand gets to ask the other person a question. You must answer truthfully.” He waggled a finger at her.

  Eliza pondered that for a moment and then nodded her head. “I can’t think that I have any secrets. Aunt constantly scolds me that I do not have to say aloud every last thought that flits through my head, but sometimes I fear I shall burst if I do not say them. Of course, you are welcome to all my secrets.” She narrowed her eyes. “Besides, what makes you think I won’t win?”

  He simply smiled again in reply, gazing at her while he shuffled the cards.

  Liam acted as dealer. He kept one card face down in front of him and turned over a nine of clubs next to it.

  Eliza started with the four of spades and a five of hearts. She took a third card—two of diamonds—and then a fourth card—ace of clubs. She pouted and sighed, doing the math in her head. She now had twelve or twenty-two. Of course, that would never do. She asked for a fifth card and ended up with the king of clubs.

  Humph. Twenty-two.

  Liam turned over his hidden card, revealing the jack of diamonds. Combined with his first card, that made nineteen.

  “I win.” Liam grinned. “I get a truth.”

  Eliza sighed and sat on her hands. What would Liam want to know?

  “Tell me the naughtiest thing you did this week.” He rested his chin on his right palm and stared at her with his too-observant blue eyes.

  Eliza felt herself blush. Liam would ask that.

  “What makes you think I did something naughty this week?”

  “Please.” He snorted. “I know you, Eliza. Of course you did something.”

  “Let me think about it.” Her strained laugh ended on a resigned sigh.

  She looked up at the ceiling, pretending to be thinking. But she already knew the worst thing she had done that week. She just didn’t want to see his expression as she told it.

  She fixed her gaze on the corner moldings high above. “I spent all of church service on Sunday making faces at your father’s back.”

  Silence.

  Liam cleared his throat. “Why did you do that?”

  More silence.

  She wilted. “Because I overheard him tell you to stop being such a ridiculous ninnyhammer.”

  Anger shot through her again at the memory. She had been behind Liam and his father walking into the parish church. She had quite clearly heard his father scolding him for shying away from jumping his horse over a fence the day before.

  “You are a disgrace to the Trebor family name, boy. I am appalled to have sired such a ridiculous ninnyhammer.”

  Liam hadn’t even so much as flinched at his father’s words. His face remained stoic and impassive. Which, somehow, was the worst part of all.

  Eliza continued to stare at the ceiling, still refusing to meet Liam’s gaze.

  “Do—” He cleared his throat again. �
�D-do you think me a ridiculous ninnyhammer?”

  Her head snapped back down. His eyes gazed into hers with his normal intensity.

  “Of course not!” she said. “That’s why I made faces at your father all through church.”

  He smiled—a soft, wan thing.

  “Well then, I daresay it does not matter what my father thinks.”

  And somehow, that truth was better than any other she won from him.

  Eliza slowly fanned herself in the corner.

  It was really all too predictable. The very heavens themselves were conspiring against her.

  She surveyed the room. The assembly room ball was an absolute crush of bodies. Charity had swayed her in the end to attend. Eliza could not say no when faced with the distress of her friend’s tears.

  And so, here she was, ensconced in a corner of the old guildhall trying not to panic. Clearly, the village anticipated seeing a bona fide duke in attendance this evening.

  Heaven help her.

  Originally a medieval meeting hall for some long disbanded guild, the space had been purchased by the town of Rothsbury generations before and now served as a town hall or theater or courtroom or communal ballroom, depending on the day. With its white plastered walls, dark Tudor cross timbers, and vaulted beamed ceiling, the room was usually too large for most town gatherings.

  But not tonight.

  Every gentleman farmer and landowner within half a day’s journey had come this evening with their wives and, more to the point, eligible daughters in tow. All paying the sixpence entrance fee in hopes of catching a glimpse of a real-live duke.

  Oh, that Robert were here. They would have sat in the corner together, laughing over the silliness of all this.

  Eliza had taken extra care with her appearance this evening, helping her housemaid iron her best dress—a well-worn green silk several years out of fashion—and spending extra time with her curling tongs.

  Vanity? Perhaps.

  But if the worst occurred and she had a public altercation with Liam and ended the night in utter disgrace, outcast from all polite society . . .