Page 21 of Desperate Duchesses


  “A man who doesn’t understand poetry, cannot live poetry,” he stated, hoping Roberta would understand him.

  “Living poetry has never been an active pursuit of mine,” Villiers responded promptly.

  Roberta cleared her throat. The marquess remembered how much she hated philosophical statements. The last thing he wanted to do was embarrass her on such a special evening. His heart dropped again.

  “My father was speaking metaphorically,” she said to Villiers.

  “I know of metaphors,” Villiers said, glancing at Roberta with an indifference that shocked her father to the bone. “But I fail to understand the concept.”

  “Try to think of it as a person who lives in contact with great minds,” she said to him and, gentle though her voice was, there was a sting in it. “Perhaps there were great chess players of the past, but they have left no record. There have been great poets, and we are able to enjoy their thoughts still.”

  The marquess sat, frozen. Roberta had defended him! Her father’s chest hurt from the joy of it.

  Villiers took a bite of chicken, presumably because he was so floored by his fiancée’s brilliant riposte that he could think of nothing to say.

  The duchess said in a very soothing way, “Who is your favorite poet, Lord Wharton?”

  “Shakespeare,” he said. “I am pedestrian in my admiration for the man, but to live in Shakespeare’s words, to walk in his steps, gives me reason to continue.” He caught sight of Mrs. Grope’s plumage wagging at his shoulder and added hastily, “Along with my deep devotion to Mrs. Grope, of course.”

  “Of course,” Villiers agreed. There was something very unpleasant about his tone. The marquess didn’t dare look at his poor daughter. Though he had been a terrible papa, and embarrassed her time and again, she still loathed it when people made fun of him.

  So this time he took her hand. Because though he’d told her many a time that laughter didn’t hurt him, he knew she didn’t really believe him.

  The sad thing was that she had never grasped the truly important thing: laughter can’t hurt someone, but cold indifference can.

  Chapter 26

  The Duke of Villiers had made up his mind. While it would be acceptable to marry Roberta, he may have made a wee error. In truth, he’d be just as happy not to marry the lady. He certainly would rather not have her father as an intimate. His engagement didn’t seem to have made a damn bit of difference to Jemma. In short, he may have made a mistake.

  It was unfortunate that he came to his conclusion approximately two hours after issuing a formal proposal. But it was the work of a moment to launch a stratagem that would change the complexion of the board as it was laid out before him.

  Unless he missed his bet, his old friend Elijah was flirting with a new piece, a pawn, a pawn, a veritable pawn and yet…who was he not to admit that pawns could be deliciously useful in their own way?

  He would send Elijah’s queen careening toward the opposite side of the board. He would then sacrifice his own queen…it was all in the nature of the game.

  “Would you care to accompany me to the library?” he asked his fiancée.

  Roberta came to her feet with a pretty show of grace. She was an elegant young woman, he had to admit. They walked to the library.

  “I merely wanted to make certain that we were in agreement about certain aspects of our marriage,” he said, helping her to a brocaded couch.

  “I am all attention,” she said.

  He blinked. In another woman, the comment might have an unpleasantly satirical edge, but she was smiling at him.

  “It’s a simple thing,” he said. “Having to do with those unpleasant bits of law called torts.”

  “Torts?”

  “Breach of contract.”

  “I trust you are not planning to break our engagement?” She asked it with perfect courtesy, but her eyes narrowed. Perhaps this marriage would have been the making of him. Yet it would be better to let it go.

  “I would never break our engagement,” he said. Such an action would be rash and clumsy, opening him up to attack by pieces not yet in play, such as solicitors. Yet it should be a matter of no particular difficulty to cause the lady to withdraw from it herself. That was the nature of a brilliant game…to put forward one’s pieces and see what came of them.

  “The particular breach I was thinking of comes after marriage,” he said, “and has to do with spurious issue versus lawful issue.”

  “Bastard children,” she stated.

  “I would prefer—nay, I must insist—that you have none.”

  “I had no plans to do so.” She was silent for a moment.

  “I trust this was not too unromantic?” Villiers enquired.

  “Indeed, Your Grace, it shows a decidedly unromantic lack of faith in my character.”

  “I meant no imputation about your character. Did you think that we would have some sort of conventional union, like a pair of bakers who fall in love over a floury board and swear never to part?”

  She shook her head. “Not exactly.”

  Roberta forced herself to sit for a second and collect her thoughts. Her future husband clearly loved the subtleties of rhetoric and law. “Will you do me the same honor?” She raised her head and looked straight into his eyes. “My understanding is that you have spurious issue with several women. Are you intending to create more of these children after our marriage is celebrated?”

  “If you’re asking me to start giving a damn what the world thinks, I won’t and I can’t. I never have.”

  Roberta took a deep breath. “I am asking you to be faithful to me,” she said clearly.

  Villiers was silent. She watched the dark shadow of his eyelashes, his swarthy, almost harsh features. “Faithfulness has always struck me as an unreasonable concept,” he said, finally. “I would greatly prefer if you were faithful until we raised a brat or two for the estate. It seems unreasonable to give another man’s son my grandfather’s land. But a clever woman can always prevent conception.”

  “And after that?”

  “I would give you precisely the same freedom I would take for myself. I would do you the great honor of swearing—on my honor—that I will never fall in love with a woman. That any attachments would be a matter of impulse and pleasure, never of true intimacy.”

  She could hardly understand what he was saying.

  “You, of course, would need no excuse other than les caprices de jolie femme, a beautiful woman’s right to commit a folly,” he continued.

  She looked directly at him. “Won’t you be enough to captivate my follies?”

  “I much doubt it.”

  This was a level of emotionless control that was indeed the opposite of her father’s blatant adorations. She drank in the devil’s slant of his eyes, the weary wrinkles at the edge of them, his palpable lack of interest. Her heart beat quickly. “All right,” she whispered.

  His voice lashed her. “I’ve seen you look at the Earl of Gryffyn with a giddy sort of pleasure that belies your words.”

  “That’s—” she caught herself. “That’s nothing. Child’s play.”

  “No doubt,” he said, sounding bored. “I would certainly have to reach some sort of second infancy to contemplate a liaison with Gryffyn myself.”

  “I do not contemplate a liaison! I would never—”

  He raised a beringed hand, and the words died in her throat. “For God’s sake, play me no scenes. I don’t give a damn about the purity of your body or your soul. I would advise you, though, to act with a queen’s munificence toward those for whom you feel desire. Any other circumstance is likely to breed resentment. And resentful wives are so very tiresome, to themselves and others.”

  She barely suppressed her shock.

  His eyes laughed at her. “Shaken, country mouse? It must be the poet’s soul you inherited from your father.”

  That stung her. “My father does not belong in this conversation.” It made her feel almost queer, to realize how much h
er father would dislike the whole topic. How much he would loathe Villiers, if he heard his concept of marriage.

  “And yet your father has such a fascinating liberal attitude toward pleasure, given his attachment to the estimable Mrs. Grope.”

  It gave him obvious pleasure to utter Mrs. Grope’s name; Roberta felt a flash of bitter resentment. It was so easy to make mockery of Mrs. Grope, so difficult to see what a true and loving relationship her papa and his courtesan shared.

  “I would that Papa would marry Mrs. Grope,” she said, keeping her voice steady with an effort.

  “He won’t.” He wasn’t looking at her anymore. In one clean movement, he pulled a long shining rapier from the interior of his polished cane.

  “Oh!” she cried.

  “Sword stick. Beautiful, isn’t it? I had it made for me by Parisians; they understand duels in a way that no Englishman can hope to do. You see how I favor you as my future wife. You are the only person in England who knows the secret of this cane.”

  “You will forgive me,” Roberta said, “if I reveal that knowing the secret of your cane is hardly an intimacy to which I aspire.”

  “I do like you,” he said, grinning at her. “I never expected that in a wife.”

  “Why do you think that Papa won’t marry Mrs. Grope?” Roberta said, ignoring what felt like a very thin compliment.

  “We don’t marry the women we screw,” he said, running his sword across the red velvet of the sofa cushion, to polish it, she had to suppose. “You surely have noticed that I have not made any movements toward your bed, haven’t you?”

  She felt giddy. Was she supposed to be honored? “Because…Because I am not a woman to screw?”

  “Not by your husband. And please do not think you must share with me the history of pleasure harvested by others.” He flipped the sword and ran it swiftly against the cushion again.

  He must have tilted the edge a trifle too much because a gash followed the cut of his blade, widened, gave birth in an instant to a cloud of floating feathers. He swore.

  “I wish to understand precisely what you are saying,” Roberta said in a small, wooden voice. “Do I understand you to mean that my chastity—or lack thereof—is of no interest to you?”

  He tossed the gaping pillow to the side. A bridge of feathers briefly shaped themselves in the air before falling to the floor, to the couch, and a single feather, to his hair. “You seem to think that chastity adds to your attractions. I assure you that your beauty needs no such ornament. Of course, until we decide to create an heir, I shall expect you to behave in an entirely circumspect manner, using precautions, as I noted before. But I would never have offered for you, Roberta, were I not well aware that you are a woman of honor. Women of honor do not offer their husbands a cuckoo.”

  It seemed that honor—to Villiers—had everything to do with children, and nothing to do with virtue.

  “You must be sensible, of course,” he continued. “Cuckold is such an ugly word, even in this easy day and age.”

  “Yet you are telling me to cuckold you,” she said flatly.

  “Cuckolds are men who are too stupid to realize that their wives will stray,” he said. “I am not so foolish. Cuckolds are men whose wives make a jest of them by displaying their affections around the town. If I understand your character correctly, Roberta, you will never flaunt your affections.”

  She sat silent, knowing he was absolutely right, knowing that he had picked her as nimbly as she had picked him—and, it seemed, for some of the same reasons.

  “I have fought several duels, though never over a woman’s honor. It would be a grave disappointment to both of us if I had to defend your honor, Roberta, since I am generous enough to put it into your own keeping. I trust that you are no sprig from your father’s tree. Do not cuckold me, and I will not confine you.”

  “I should dislike confinement,” she said. Suddenly she couldn’t bear another minute of his emotionless drawl. She rose, as did he. He towered above her, exquisite and controlled as the day she met him, but in truth so much more complex, scornful and erotic than she had understood. She felt young and inestimably stupid. She, who thought that life with Papa and Mrs. Grope had taught her everything there was to know about men and women. She knew nothing.

  Her father bellowed and shouted and uttered his ridiculous poetry. He didn’t have it in him to speak with such silken mockery. To discuss unfaithfulness as if it were no more than a moment’s impulse.

  Her Papa, her foolish, foolish, Papa, loved Mrs. Grope, with all her terrible headdresses, and her grandiose ambitions to go back on the stage. Papa was the opposite of her husband-to-be. Which was just what she wanted, of course.

  “Your Grace,” she said, sweeping her future husband a deep curtsy.

  He was so beautiful, complex and devilish, that her heart reeled slightly watching him bow. And yet…

  And yet.

  Chapter 27

  The windows in the small back ballroom were open to the night air. Lilacs were flowering in the gardens, somewhere in the dark, and their perfume was intoxicatingly sweet.

  Caro had decorated the room with lemon trees incongruously hung with crystal pendants. Now she sat at the pianoforte. Damon hoped he was the only one who realized that the dangerous sparkle in the secretary’s eye had resulted in bawdy French tavern songs, translated into great sweeping dance measures. Damon danced with Miss Tatlock, and then with Harriet. He danced again with Harriet, because she was at his elbow and he couldn’t say no. He talked to his sister. He talked to his brother-in-law.

  Meanwhile he watched for Roberta. Where the devil had Villiers taken her? If he touched her…

  She walked back into the room with a little wicked smile on her lips and his heart sank to his toes. He felt like vomiting.

  He decided to leave, and then realized that his shoes were nailed to the floor. Villiers followed Roberta, but veered away to talk to Jemma.

  “Not even one dance?” he heard Jemma say. “Oh, come, Villiers—”

  And then Villiers drew Jemma’s hands, both of them, up to his mouth and said something. About chess, no doubt, because a moment later they were tucked in front of a little table in the corner.

  So much for dancing.

  Roberta’s eyes were glittering a bit too fiercely.

  “Cuz!” he said to her. “I gather dancing has gone by the wayside, since Jemma is involved in a game of chess.”

  Roberta didn’t even glance in her fiancé’s direction. Instead she smiled at him. “Would you like to stroll with me?”

  Damon tucked her hand into his and turned toward the door. “Always,” he said. And then: “Jealousy is a dish best served cold.”

  She tossed her head. “I have no reason for revenge.” She stopped suddenly and looked up at him. “Were you implying something about Jemma and Villiers?”

  “No!” he said, hoping it was true. “Jemma would never take your fiancé. Have more faith than that.”

  “I’m sorry; that was horrid of me,” Roberta said. “I should never have thought such an ugly thing.”

  Something that might have been honesty compelled him to add, “Though if Villiers wins the chess match, of course, all bets are off.”

  They walked for a moment and then Roberta turned a stricken face up to his. “I’m a fool. I didn’t realize the implications of their chess game. I am not sophisticated enough for the life of the ton.”

  “We Reeves are particularly degenerate. But truthfully, I do not believe that Jemma intends to dally with Villiers beyond a flirtation. For one thing, they are both far too obsessed by chess to take a true interest in each other.”

  “You said something like that before.”

  “Chess is a mania,” Damon said. “There are those who play with such enthusiasm that they think about it all the time, day and night. My father was one of those. He was brilliant at the game, and he devoted himself to teaching his children everything he knew. Jemma turned out to be the only one of us who found
any enjoyment in the game, however.”

  “I can’t even play whist very well,” Roberta said morosely.

  “Don’t challenge your future husband to a game of dollymop dominoes. I have a feeling that Villiers wins every game of skill he attempts. Would you mind if we went upstairs to say goodnight to Teddy?”

  “Of course…what’s a dollymop?”

  “Mrs. Grope is a refined example of a dollymop,” Damon said.

  “And then what are dollymop dominoes?”

  He glanced sideways at her. “Dominoes with a special twist. Do you know how to play?”

  “I suppose so. I played with my governess as a child.”

  “Not exactly the same game,” he said, grinning at her. “Every time you draw a double bone, you have to take a drink.”

  “Bone?”

  “A domino piece; a double bone has a double number. And every time you lay down a spinner, a crosswise double, your opponent has to remove a piece of his clothing.”

  “Oh!”

  They were on the third floor and Damon pushed open the door to the nursery. “Ransom!” he said. “What on earth are you doing here? Where’s the nanny?” He looked around the room rather wildly. “She hasn’t quit already, has she?”

  “Not to the best of my knowledge,” Mr. Cunningham said, looking up from a book he was reading by the fire. “She is eating. Last night while she was at supper, Teddy evaded capture by a maid and ran from the room. So tonight she enquired whether I would watch him. He is asleep.”

  “I am not!” said a voice, and a tousled head popped up from the bed.

  “Hello, Pumpkin,” Damon said, crossing the room and plucking his son from his bed.

  “Good evening, Lady Roberta,” Teddy said. “Another tooth, I lost it, do you want to see?” And before she could say yea or nea, he pulled down his lip and showed her a red, gaping hole in his gum.

  “That is truly disgusting, Teddy.”

  He grinned as if he had achieved something of notable importance. “I can stick my tongue through the space,” he told her, and did so.