“Thou art a Nebuchadnezzar, a very Nebuchadnezzar, come to mock me!” Mrs. Busy said.
One of the pot boys giggled.
“Sister Busy,” Popper implored.
“I must take my leave,” Villiers said with a flourishing bow. “Thank you for this charming conversation.”
Popper ran after him down the corridor. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace,” he said, panting.
Villiers stopped. “What relation is she to you?”
Popper rang his hands. “She’s my sister, Your Grace. We were raised Puritan, you see, but she took to it fiercely, and then she married Zeal-of-the-Land, and I’m afraid that she became rather rigid. She needs this position. She has nowhere else to go, and Zeal-of-the-Land left all his possessions to the church.”
“He left everything to the church?”
Popper nodded. “With a request that they say prayers for his soul four times a day for a year. Which they will, because it transpired that Brother Busy had acquired quite a large estate. But unfortunately his will left my sister destitute and in need of a position. Please, Your Grace, I know that she’s a fierce woman. But Brother Busy’s death left her soured.”
“I can imagine,” Villiers said, pushing open the baize door that led back to the foyer.
They emerged into chaos. Oyster was barking hysterically and running in circles, Eleanor was shouting, one of the footmen was chasing the dog, and Lisette was standing on the second or third step of the staircase, screaming. Into all of this rushed Popper, uttering useless admonitions in a shrill voice.
“Quiet!” Villiers bellowed.
Everyone obeyed him except, characteristically, Eleanor. She whipped around, hands on her hips, and said through clenched teeth, “Escort Lisette elsewhere before I do something I may—or may not—regret.”
Oyster had dropped onto his haunches and was gazing at him in a rather charmingly attentive position, so Villiers raised a finger to the footman, who scooped up the dog. “Take him outside,” he commanded before turning to Lisette.
She was clinging to the banister, her face absolutely drained of color. Although she had stopped screaming, she was obviously paralyzed with fright.
“Lisette,” he said, coming to the bottom of the stairs.
She looked at him, her face pathetically wan, her blue eyes huge.
“Poor scrap,” he said, and held out his arms. She fell into them and he scooped her up. She put her head against his shoulder, as trustingly as if she were a child.
“Take her into the drawing room,” Eleanor said. “I’ll go outside and make sure that Oyster is out of sight and sound.” She said it flatly, without an edge, but Villiers could read her voice easily enough.
He looked down at Lisette’s spun-gold hair. She wasn’t the bravest of creatures, but there was no point in defending her at the moment. Besides, Eleanor had already stamped out the door after Oyster.
So he walked into the drawing room and sat down on a sofa. After a moment Lisette eased off his lap and onto the bench beside him. “I’m quite irrational when it comes to dogs.” Big tears made her eyes glisten. “I hate being such a coward.”
“Many people are afraid of dogs,” he said, trying to sound consoling, although sympathy wasn’t exactly his forte. “There’s no need to apologize.”
“Oyster is likely a quite nice dog.” She was twisting her fingers around and around each other. “It’s just that I had such a terrible experience last year in the village. A feral dog was threatening everyone, and there were children in the square. I had to protect them.”
“Terrible,” Villiers said, only half listening.
“If we marry,” Lisette said, “you must promise me that we will have no hounds on the premises.”
“If we marry?” he echoed, snapping to attention.
It was the second time in as many days that a woman had announced their imminent marriage without bothering to wait for his proposal. In this case, he hadn’t even broached the idea of marriage, which made her announcement seem truly presumptuous.
“Yes,” Lisette said, apparently unmoved by the surprise in his voice. “I am truly considering it, Leopold. I like your children so much.”
Of course, that was why he was considering it too: because she would be a bighearted, wonderful mother to his motley brood.
She smiled up at him. “I think we should suit, especially because you don’t own a dog.”
No dog but six children. Most women would run screaming in the opposite direction, so it seemed he had found the perfect woman.
At least from that particular point of view.
“Why don’t you kiss me now?” Lisette asked. Her eyes were the exact color of sky outside the window. Of course he wanted to kiss her.
He leaned over and placed a gentle kiss on her lips. They were pale pink, very soft.
“I like kissing,” she said, sighing a bit. She put a hand on his chest. “Do you like kissing, Leopold?”
“Of course,” he said, wondering what the hell he’d gotten himself into. It was her fresh sweetness that made her such a perfect choice for a wife. He would have to be slow and kind, and hope that he didn’t wilt from pure boredom during the act.
“Of course, I like other things about bedding men,” she said.
He blinked.
“Kiss me again,” she cooed, pursing her lips. He obliged, settling his lips over her soft ones. She couldn’t have meant that comment the way it sounded.
“What do you like about bedding men?” he inquired.
She looked up through her lashes modestly. “I’m certain that you can teach me a great deal.”
Lisette was the very model of a respectable virgin. Not like infuriating Eleanor, who had clearly slept with Godless Gideon before he ran off to marry Ada. And not like her in other ways too, because Eleanor had that trick of setting a man’s blood on fire just by looking at him.
Whereas Lisette’s sweet blue eyes were restful.
“Kiss me again,” she said, placing a slender arm around his neck.
He bent his head again and this time ran his tongue along the seam of her lips. He was a little afraid that she might be prudish in her approach—weren’t virgins always nonplussed by their first real kisses?
But she opened her mouth readily enough. They played with their tongues for a while, and she even stroked his shoulders.
They’d be fine in bed.
The fact that he kept thinking about Eleanor, and the way she uttered those absurd little noises when she kissed him…that was unacceptable.
He had made his bed the moment he allowed Tobias to be conceived. He couldn’t undo those wrongs after all these years, but he could make a level-headed choice for wife, rather than choosing someone based on lust.
Because damn it, he felt lust for Eleanor. Even thinking about her made him harden. Remembering the way he bent over her on the balcony, and her bottom tucked—
He woke to himself to find that Lisette was protesting the strength of his mouth. “Really, Leopold,” she said a bit querulously. “I know that you have a man’s desires, but there’s no need to be immoderate.”
Never, in the length of his misspent life, had he kissed one woman while arousing himself with thoughts of another. He had horrified himself—not an easy task. “I will never do that again,” he stated. “I apologize.”
Lisette dimpled at him. “Actually, I’m quite happy to see the strength of your—” She coughed delicately. “—desire. I have seen you looking at Eleanor and I thought perhaps you had feelings for her.”
“The decision not to marry was mutual,” he said, his voice coming out more sharply than he intended.
“I’m glad to hear that!” Lisette said, her dimples appearing again. “Not that I would normally worry about competition, but Eleanor is so witty. And she has a kind of je ne sais quoi that makes her very attractive to men.”
“I know.”
“And,” Lisette continued, “she’s truly intelligent. When we were all
children here we used to have chess tournaments and she always won. She would beat her brother and my father as well.”
“Chess?” Villiers said. “She plays chess?”
“Didn’t you know? I thought Marguerite told me once that you have quite a penchant for it yourself, don’t you?”
“You could say that,” he said. Since he was one of the three top players in the kingdom.
“You see, one of my other aunts is a quite good chess player. So she taught everyone chess in the summer, and she would organize us into tournaments.”
“What is her name?” Villiers said, squinting through the window. A carriage had just drawn up, but he couldn’t see if it had a crest on the door.
“Rosamund Patton,” Lisette said. “Have you ever met her?”
“I’ve played Mrs. Patton at the Chess Club,” Villiers said. “She was the only woman who had won entrance to the club until very recently, when the Duchess of Beaumont won a place.”
“Well, if that’s the case, I’m sure that Eleanor could do the same. She used to beat Rosamund all the time. I think Eleanor is probably the most intelligent woman I know.”
“I think that you are one of the nicest women I know,” Villiers said, dropping a kiss on her mouth. “There aren’t many ladies who would praise another woman the way you do.”
Lisette’s whole face lit up when she smiled. “Women can be so silly to each other! Men are easy to come by, but female friends are not. Goodness, look at that! We have another visitor.” She clapped her hands, jumping to her feet. “What fun this is! I haven’t had visitors for a month of Sundays, and now it’s positively raining people.”
“There’s a crest on the carriage door,” Villiers said.
“Oh well, then I expect it’s Astley,” Lisette said.
“What?”
She turned to look at him. “The Duke of Astley, of course. Didn’t you hear at dinner last night? His wife has died. He will have come for Eleanor.”
Villiers grabbed her arm. “What do you mean?”
She frowned until he loosed his grip and then she bestowed a smile on him. “I said, it’s the Duke of Astley, come to fetch Eleanor, of course.”
“But—”
“Oh, I forgot. You probably don’t know. They were in love as children. And then he was forced to marry a woman named Ada. That was so sad.”
“How on earth do you know all this?”
“I told you! We used to play together as children, and we still correspond occasionally. At any rate, Astley—I think his name is Gideon, though I haven’t met him—loves Eleanor. And she loves him. So I expect he’s come for her.”
“He’s come for her?”
Lisette looked up at him. “Eleanor is not the sort of woman whom any man would forget,” she pointed out.
“Of course it’s not Astley,” Villiers stated. “His wife is barely in the ground.” He held out his arm.
“I shall go outside to see,” Lisette said, and she actually dashed off without waiting for his escort.
Villiers decided that the code of gentlemanly behavior did not insist one had to trot after a fleeing woman, so he walked into the entrance hallway at a measured pace.
Never mind the fact that he was fighting an impulse to walk faster and faster. Of course it wasn’t Astley. Though it wouldn’t matter to him if it were. He had no wish to marry Eleanor; he was to marry Lisette. The only thing that bothered him was the fact that there would be a tremendous scandal if Eleanor bolted with the Duke of Astley a few days after his duchess died.
Impossible. He knew Astley. The man defined the word conventional. Astley would think as prudently as he himself had when choosing Lisette as a wife. Astley was a rational man.
Dukes had to be rational men. They couldn’t simply dash off and do whatever they pleased. He quickened his pace. The carriage likely held Lisette’s father, which was all to the good, because he should extend a formal request for Lisette’s hand in marriage. Not to mention the fact that someone had mentioned a purported betrothal between Lisette and the next-door squire Thestle’s son. Not Roland, but another one. That would have to be dealt with, he supposed.
There was always the chance that Gilner would refuse him, based on his bastard children, or Lisette’s existing engagement. But now that he’d had a close look at the Gilner estate, he doubted it. Gilner was clearly not a stickler for propriety. His daughter was chaperoned by a woman who brazenly lived with her devoted friend.
Moreover, from what he could see, Lady Marguerite spent a good deal of her time traveling. No severe elderly relative was part of the household, assigned to serve as a damper so that a suitor couldn’t court Lisette whenever and wherever he wished. In fact, if he wanted, he could probably waltz right into Lisette’s bedroom and deflower her.
No one would even notice, most likely.
Not that he would do it, because—
He walked down the front steps feeling like a fool. The carriage did not have the Gilner crest. A small group was standing in front of the steps, and Lisette turned around, waving.
“Leopold! Do come!”
He walked over, knowing the truth of it in his gut.
“You see?” she said happily, slipping her fingers into his. “I told you so!”
Eleanor was locked in the arms of a man.
Not just any man either. Gideon, Duke of Astley, was a particularly beautiful man. Not terribly tall, but who needed height when he had that profile?
Villiers took a deep breath.
Gideon was kissing Eleanor in front of her sister Anne, Lisette, the butler, three footmen, assorted groomsmen—and Eleanor’s own mother, the duchess. Who was smiling, Villiers realized with another jolt. Not with the kind of barbed acceptance with which she greeted the news that he, the Duke of Villiers, was marrying her daughter, but with a kind of wild, surprised joy.
And Eleanor? He could see only the back of her head, but Gideon’s hand was rumpling her hair, holding her with such tenderness that even he, coldhearted bastard that he was, felt…something.
“Isn’t it romantic?” Lisette said, squeezing his hand.
It took everything he had not to pull away from her.
“They love each other so much. She waited for him. And he came to her the very first moment he could. I suppose he’s been thinking of her every day for years.”
He could just imagine that.
Unfortunately.
Chapter Twenty
The Duchess of Montague was smiling with a fierce happiness that Eleanor hadn’t seen since her brother gained his majority. “Just wait until your father learns of this,” she said to Eleanor, more or less under her breath. “He’ll be so pleased.”
They were leading Gideon to the drawing room, since her mother had graciously allowed that her daughter might have a short unchaperoned conversation with the duke.
“It’s utterly mad, of course,” she continued. “We’ll have to deny all rumors. The duke should be mourning Ada; of course, he is mourning Ada. We won’t announce anything. We’ll keep it entirely secret. You’ll have to drop Villiers. But no one knows of your engagement to him; it will be a seven-day wonder.”
“Villiers is going to marry Lisette,” Eleanor said flatly. She glanced back to find that Gideon had been caught by Anne. She felt a qualm, given Anne’s express dislike for Gideon, but her sister seemed to be behaving politely enough.
“Lisette’s father won’t be happy with that. Gilner will have to come home now. I can’t imagine that he wants his daughter to marry Villiers, not with those children of his in the picture.”
“Villiers is a good man,” Eleanor said. “And a duke.”
“What’s more, there’s the question of Lisette herself,” her mother continued, not even listening. “The other night the squire rattled on about his elder son being engaged to Lisette, but it was clear to me that the man was desperate to save his son. The poor boy has been living abroad for years, ducking the marriage.”
The conversatio
n felt both morbid and ill-bred, so Eleanor moved to a sofa and sat down, hands folded.
“I’ll allow you fifteen minutes together,” her mother said. “No more than that, if you please. I can’t have the servants gossiping more than they’re already likely to do. I suppose Astley will spend the night, but I’ll instruct him to leave tomorrow morning. This really is a most disgraceful visit.” She looked entirely happy.
Gideon appeared, and the duchess slipped out, closing the door firmly behind her.
Eleanor felt as if she were having one of those odd experiences described in the papers by people who claimed to have encountered a ghost. Surely this Gideon could not be the living, real Gideon? But there he was, standing in the door frame, apparently solid and real.
Yet the Gideon she had known for the past few years, ever since his eighteenth birthday, was polite, unfailingly mannered, and distant. Entirely correct behavior for a married acquaintance.
This Gideon had feverish eyes, so fervent that her own dropped, which meant that she saw he was holding a sparkling object in his right hand.
A few weeks ago she would have flown to him. Now she sat primly on the sofa. She could feel the weight of her panniers on either side of her legs, holding her down.
Gideon didn’t move either. “You’re so beautiful,” he said finally. All she felt was a wave of embarrassment because his voice was thick with emotion.
She opened her mouth and said just the wrong thing. “I’m terribly sorry about Ada’s death.” His face went slack, as if the only thing holding him together had been the fire in his eyes. “I apologize!” she cried, jumping to her feet. “I didn’t mean to bring up such a painful subject.”
Grief was much easier to sympathize with than love, or whatever emotion he had been displaying before she mentioned Ada. So she fetched him from the doorway and brought him over to the sofa and patted his hand, just as the sister of a good friend would do. Like any acquaintance with a warm affection for a newly widowed man.
“You should know that I concluded all ceremonies for Ada before travelling here,” he said.