Page 86 of How to Tempt a Duke

Charles stopped, unable to bring himself to read more. The author did not have to put such names to paper—not when Charles already knew.

His father had been a thief. A great man brought down by the force of his own greed.

The soup churned in Charles’s stomach.

The footman placed a glass of wine before him. Charles reached blindly for it and drained it in one gulp. The alcohol burned a path down his chest and pooled in his unsettled stomach, assuaging the need to retch.

If only the pain in his chest could be so easily quelled.

The foundations of Charles’s life—the greatness of his father and the accolades surrounding his incredible findings—had all been built on a lie.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Charles grappled with what he’d read in the journal. In fact, with what he’d read in several more journals. All of which Evander had gladly turned over to him.

Dinner had gone largely uneaten and they had all retired immediately afterward, overwrought with the events of the day.

Now Charles made his way to the room he shared with Eleanor, weighted with the burden of newfound knowledge. No, with the confirmed knowledge of what he hadn’t allowed himself to consider previously. It settled like a rock on his chest, rough-hewn and heavy.

Eleanor didn’t say a word until they were in the privacy of their room. Then she turned to him, held out her arms and drew him into a tender embrace. “I’m sorry for what you have learned of your father.”

Charles let himself be cradled against her perfumed warmth, breathing in that lovely jasmine smell of her. “I’m sorry about your father as well.”

Eleanor released him and shook her head. “My father was never held high in my esteem. He was not...not kind.”

Charles bristled. “Not kind?” he repeated.

“He did not like what he could not control, and that meant me and my emotions.” Eleanor slid her gaze away and walked toward the vanity, where she sat and began to pull the pins from her hair, her back ramrod-straight as she spoke. “He did not like us to show emotion of any kind. Not happiness, for it made us too excited, and certainly not rage or fear, for that made us weak. Except I did feel, and it was a visceral ache when he left so often.”

Charles approached Eleanor and helped pull the small pins from her beautiful hair.

“I missed my father when he was gone,” she said quietly.

Something in Charles’s chest went tight. He would need to be gone soon too, the way her father had been gone. This was the truth he had not wanted to face—the reality of the critical issue of their marriage. He would need to leave, to put the calamitous piece of his soul to rest with travel, while she remained in London, alone. He slid a pin free and gently uncoiled the length of red hair it had held in place.

“Once I asked my father to stay. The thought of him leaving again was too great.” Eleanor dropped her hands from her hair and clasped them together in her lap. “He ignored me and I started crying. I begged him and he...he...”

“He what?” Charles tensed, knowing innately he would not like the answer.

“He struck me.” Eleanor lowered her head. “It happened so fast...and he was so strong... Evander was sent away soon after that. The soft affection I’d once been afforded went hard and I was given a rigorous education in its place.”

“He struck you?” Charles growled. If her father were still alive, Charles would strike him—repeatedly. Stand up for the girl who had not been able to stand up for herself.

Eleanor pressed her lips together before speaking again. “He did not have the extensive lineage my mother had, and he’d always overcompensated for his new acceptance into the nobility. He wanted us to be iron, emotionless, strong.”

Charles clenched his jaw with restrained rage. He reiterated in his mind, if the former Earl of Westix were still alive Charles would kill him. To think of Eleanor being so helpless against the power of a grown man...

“The loss of love was far more painful.” She turned her face up to him. “And all for treasure.”

Charles’s heart flinched.

“Charles...” She met his gaze in the mirror.

His stomach sank. Would she ask him to forgo his travel? “Yes?”

“What if the only way for you to get the ruby you seek is to employ the tactics they used?” Her brows pinched together. “Would you still reclaim the stone?”

He didn’t respond. He couldn’t. His final promise to his father had to be fulfilled. Experience had taught him that not all treasure could be legally acquired. In the past Charles had let it be—it was unnecessary to bring everything back. But the Coeur de Feu...