LITMIR.BIZ

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claim that it was her favorite color. A poke at Vivi, he wondered? Or a twisted sort of penance?

      “Don’t be silly, Your Grace,” Vivi had simpered at him. She’d been in a slinky sort of red dress Hugo thought would have been more appropriate for a club in Central London than a country duke’s dining room. But the point was likely to draw his attention to all the skin the tiny dress left bare. “Everyone swears we are practically twins.”

      He was apparently not supposed to realize that she was being cruel.

      But before he could express his feelings on that—which, it turned out, were extensive and a bit overprotective—Eleanor had sighed. Mightily.

      “No one has ever said that. Not one person, Vivi. Anywhere.” She’d aimed one of her chillier smiles at Hugo. “My sister and I are quite aware of our differences, Your Grace. We choose to revel in them.”

      Vivi laughed then, long and loud. The way Hugo had then realized, belatedly, she would continue to do all night. Because she clearly imagined she was being lively and full of fun, or whatever it was women like her told themselves to justify their behavior. He should be better versed in it, he knew. He’d heard it all before.

      Sometimes from his own mouth.

      He’d settled himself in for an endurance event. But it had turned out that he was more than capable of blocking out the likes of Vivi Andrews. She’d brayed on about the guest suite she’d been given while she remained in Groves House and something about her feelings regarding the Amalfi Coast, and Hugo had watched Eleanor disappear. Right there in front of him. She’d simply...gone away.

      It had made Hugo edgy. And something far darker and more dangerous than that.

      And now he was wandering his own damned halls, scowling at the portraits of men who looked like him, wondering why the plight of a governess and her family were getting to him like this.

      Well. He wasn’t wondering. He knew.

      Watching Vivi create an entire character she called Eleanor—stiff and humorless and faintly doltish and unattractive—while Eleanor sat right there and was not only none of those things, but offered no defense against the brush that was being used to paint her, was maddening. But it was also familiar.

      It was what Isobel had done to him.

      He was in the grand ballroom, glaring out at the rain that lashed at what was left of the garden this far into fall, when he heard a faint noise from behind him. Hugo turned, and for a moment he couldn’t tell if he’d conjured up the sight before him or if she was real.

      But god, how he wanted her to be real.

      Eleanor moved across the floor, light on her bare feet. She wore some sort of soft wrapper that showed him the better part of her legs and made Hugo wonder what was beneath it. But the thing that made his chest hurt was that finally, her hair was down. It wasn’t ruthlessly scraped back and forced to lie flat and obedient against her skull. It was glossy and dark and swirled around her shoulders, making her look softer. Sweeter. Even that razor-sharp fringe seemed blurred.

      Mine, he thought instantly.

      And he wanted her so badly that he assumed this was a dream.

      Until she stopped walking, jerked a little bit, and stared directly at him as if she hadn’t seen him until that very moment.

      “Are you hiding in the shadows deliberately?” she asked him, and even her voice was different this long after midnight. Softer. Less like a challenge and more like a caress.

      “My ballroom, my shadows,” Hugo said, and he hardly recognized his own voice, come to that. He sounded tight. Greedy. As if the need that pounded in him was taking over the whole of him, and the truth was, he wasn’t sure he had it in him to care. “By definition, I think, I cannot be hiding. You should expect to see me anywhere you go in these halls.”

      Eleanor didn’t respond to that. Her lovely face seemed to tense, as if it was on the verge of crumpling, and he couldn’t bear that. He couldn’t stand the idea of it. He’d told her that tears were anathema to him. He’d told her he put distance between himself and the faintest hint of them.

      And yet he found himself moving toward her, his gaze trained on her as if he expected her to be the one who turned and ran.

      “Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked, her voice a small little rasp against the thick, soft air in the old ballroom. The chandeliers were dim high above and it made the room feel close. Somehow intimate.

      “You should not allow your sister to treat you like that,” he told her, his voice much darker than it should have been. Much more severe. But he couldn’t seem to do anything about that when it was taking everything he had to keep his hands to himself.

      But Eleanor only shrugged. “You don’t know Vivi. She doesn’t mean anything by the things she says. Some people don’t think before they open their mouths.”

      “You are mistaken,” Hugo said, stopping when he was only a foot or so away from her, and still managing not to touch her. He expected her to move away from him. To bolt. Or square off her shoulders and face him with that defiance of hers that he’d come to look forward to in ways he couldn’t explain to himself. Not to his own satisfaction. And not tonight, when neither one of them should have been here in this room where no one ventured by day. “Poison drips from every word she hurls at you. And you believe it. Sooner or later, you believe all of it.”

      Eleanor shook her head, though her gaze was troubled. “Vivi’s young. She’ll grow out of it.”

      “She’s what? A year or so younger than you?”

      “You don’t understand the sorts of people she knows. Viciousness is a sport. When she’s not trying to imitate them, she’s really quite sweet.”

      But Eleanor’s voice sounded so tired then.

      “I know exactly how this story goes,” Hugo told her quietly. “I’ve heard all these excuses before. I used to believe them all myself.”

      “You don’t have a sister. And you don’t understand. I almost lost her when we lost our parents. Who cares about a few thoughtless words?”

      But Hugo cared. And the undercurrent in Eleanor’s voice suggested she might, too, whether she wanted to admit it or not.

      “I had a best friend,” Hugo said softly. “And despite the fact we knew each other in the cradle, I eventually lost Torquil to the same poison that made me a villain in the eyes of the world. That’s the trouble with the sort of hatefulness your sister seems so comfortable with. It doesn’t go away. It doesn’t fade. It corrodes.”

      “Isobel,” Eleanor whispered.

      Hugo didn’t like her name in Eleanor’s mouth. As if that alone could poison the woman who stood before him against him. Just the mention of her.

      “Isobel and I dated, if that is what it can be called, for two weeks.” He couldn’t keep the bitterness from his tone. The truth was, he didn’t really try. Because what was there now besides that bitterness? What was left? Only the stories Isobel had told about him, his inability to refute any of them, and the long game of revenge he was playing against all those who’d chosen to believe it. “Two weeks, that is all. There was no on-and-off nonsense, stretching on for years. There was barely any affair to speak of. There were two entirely physical weeks when I was too young to know better, and then I cut it off.”

      Eleanor’s gaze searched his. “I don’t understand.”

      “Of course you don’t understand. I assure you, I do not understand it myself. Isobel didn’t like the fact that while she wanted our relationship to be something more than it was, I did not.” He felt his mouth flatten. “And she didn’t see why she should have to accept any reality that she didn’t like. So she made her own.”

      “You can’t mean...” Eleanor took a deep breath that made her hair move about on her shoulders. And Hugo couldn’t

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