Tears were running down his face again, so Eleanor pulled him a little closer.
“Shit,” he muttered, reasserting his masculinity.
“I agree,” she said.
“He’s not waking up.” Despair cracked his voice. He said an even worse curse word, one that Eleanor had only heard once before.
“Give him a moment,” Leopold said.
Popper reappeared, waving a vial of smelling salts. The duke twisted the cork, putting the bitter smell directly under the puppy’s nose.
“Ew!” Tobias said, turning his head away.
In so doing, he missed the moment when Oyster opened his eyes and looked blearily around. But he didn’t miss Oyster’s weak lick.
“He—He—He—”
“He’s alive,” his father said in his measured way. But Eleanor knew to look past the magnificent ruby velvet coat, past the thick eyelashes. The Duke of Villiers was watching his boy bury his face in Oyster’s fur, and she saw love in his eyes.
“Tobias,” Eleanor said softly, “Oyster is yours now.”
Tobias raised his head. “What?”
“I’m giving you Oyster.” She smiled at him. “He loves you, and you love him.”
“But he loves you best!”
“I don’t take him looking for rats.” She ran her fingers through Oyster’s short hair. The puppy suddenly trembled all over, as if a stiff wind had ruffled through his fur. “He’s pretty bored with me. And when I thought he was dead—well, I think he’s going to live to a good old age now. But just in case, I want him to do all the ratting he can.”
“You don’t have to,” Tobias said. “We could share him. Maybe he could sleep with me sometimes. I know you like him in your bedchamber at night.”
“I’m afraid that wouldn’t really work.”
Oyster tumbled off her lap. He seemed a bit wobbly, but gave himself a vigorous shake.
“He’ll love living in the nursery with you. You have to let all the other children play with him, though.”
Tobias nodded. Oyster put his paws onto Tobias’s knees, and he hoisted the dog into his lap.
“He would really be your dog, even if the other children can play with him,” Eleanor said, watching Oyster lick Tobias’s teary face.
“But you’ll be right there,” he burst out. “Won’t she?” He looked at his father. “Won’t she? You said you were going to choose between them, and now you have to admit that the one out there is cracked. That Lisette, she’s a bleeding nightmare!”
“I would be honored,” Leopold said, looking up and meeting her eyes.
Eleanor’s throat ached. She’d seen his eyes rest on her arm, encircling Tobias. And he finally understood what Lisette was like.
But she wanted more. She wanted someone who loved her for herself. Who didn’t think she was good enough to bed but not good enough to mother—and who changed his mind only when she proved herself maternal enough. She wanted to be married for herself.
“Come on,” Tobias said, sounding as if he were pleading with Oyster again. “You’ll marry him, won’t you? He’s not so bad. That way, Oyster can stay with both of us.”
She shook her head, taking a deep breath. “I can’t, Tobias.”
“Please!” The word sounded wrung from his chest.
“It will be all right,” she said, oddly touched. “I promise you can keep Oyster.”
“But I—I like you,” he said, the words dropping into the silent room. “An’ the girls do too. You’ll see, we’ll be good. You’ll like Violet. She’s not real pretty, like Lucinda and Phyllinda, but she’s—she’s nice. And—”
“I can’t,” she said, standing up. “I just can’t, Tobias. I’m sorry.”
Leopold made a sharp movement, but said nothing.
Oyster jumped down and started frolicking around her ankles. Obviously his little brain had completely forgotten what had just happened to him. “Stay, Oyster,” she said.
Wonder of wonders, he actually sat down and wagged his tail.
“Good dog.”
It seemed a very long way to the door, but that was probably because of the silence behind her.
Chapter Thirty
Knole House, country residence of the Duke of Gilner
June 23, 1784
“I can’t fight with you,” Leopold said flatly. The sun was barely over the horizon and the air was surprisingly chilly.
“I didn’t give you a choice,” Astley said. He was pacing out the wet grass, his rapier unsheathed and ready.
“I’m a father.”
“You should have thought of that before you debauched Eleanor. Before you made her fall in love with you and then chose a raving lunatic over her.”
“I might well kill you. I rarely lose.”
Astley started pacing in the other direction, measuring the ground. “Ada’s dead. Death doesn’t frighten me.”
“I thought you were in love with Eleanor.”
Astley’s face crumpled for a moment. “I am. But I loved Ada too. Eleanor was right about that. It’s all so complicated…” He shook himself and kept pacing.
“If I kill you, I’ll have to leave the country. But the children—”
“Cart them away with you. You can’t tell me that anyone will care if you leave, let alone them. You? The Duke of Villiers? You have no family, other than your clutch of bastards. Everyone will be glad to see you take them away from decent society.”
“Are you ready to fight?” Villiers said, a wave of ice filling his veins. Astley was right. Well, almost. Elijah and Jemma would care if he had to leave England permanently. But no one else would.
It would probably be better for Eleanor, actually. She wouldn’t even have to see him. He hadn’t been able to sleep, slowly taking himself though an understanding of his catastrophic idiocy. He had spurned Eleanor because he thought Lisette would be a better mother for his children. But Lisette, he now understood, looked upon children as if they were playmates—or worse, playthings.
All the time, Eleanor was just the mother they needed: a woman who looked problems straight on, who didn’t ever lie or pretend. Tobias had known that. Hell, even Oyster knew how perfect she was.
So why was he such an idiot? Why was he the only one who didn’t know what motherhood looked like?
But even that was just a digression: the real question was why he was the only one who didn’t know what love looked like. Who didn’t realize that his heart, that stubborn organ that he’d always ignored, would be seared with agony by the idea of never seeing Eleanor again?
Why couldn’t he have known that was—that was love. Real love. The kind of love that never goes away.
“En garde!” Astley cried.
Leopold raised his rapier, still thinking.
“I fully plan to kill you,” Astley said pleasantly. “Perhaps you should pay attention.”
Leopold met Astley’s eyes and saw his determination. “In which event, you’ll be the one to leave the country.”
“No one cares what I do,” Astley said. “My mother’s dead. My father’s dead. Eleanor doesn’t love me anymore. I don’t want to sound like a sniveling schoolboy, but I no longer have the faintest interest in seeing tomorrow. And if I happen to be around for it, it won’t matter whether I’m in England or India.”
“Hell,” Leopold muttered. The man was mad with grief. He’d seen that look once before, on his aunt’s face—at the funeral for his five-year-old nephew.
He assumed his stance.
Obviously, Astley wasn’t practiced. And he didn’t even fight that well. In less fraught circumstances, Leopold could have chosen a spot to insert his blade and injured the duke within a minute. But passion, it seemed, changed everything.
He found himself fighting defensively, parrying Astley’s inexperienced lunges. It was surprisingly difficult, perhaps because Astley didn’t respond like a trained fencer. He simply slashed away as if Leopold were a hedge he had decided to prune.
Within ten minutes
they were both sweating in the still-cool air. But Leopold couldn’t keep his mind on the duel, no matter how he tried. He just kept thinking what a fool he was. He didn’t seem to be able to trust his instincts.
His heart.
He took a step back. Astley bounded toward him, sword raised like some sort of avenging angel.
Leopold threw down his rapier.
Astley tried to stop, but slid on the wet grass and ended up on his back, sword in the air. Leopold offered him a hand. Astley ignored it and came to his feet, breathing hard. “What in the holy hell are you doing?” he demanded.
“I refuse to fight,” Leopold said, certain of the absolute rightness of that decision.
“Do I have to slap you again?”
“You can try. But I will not fight you. A duel is for protecting one’s honor,” he said painstakingly.
“You don’t think you need to protect your honor, after what you did?”
“I don’t think I have any.” He picked up his sword and untucked his shirt from his breeches in order to wipe the dew from the blade.
There was an odd little silence in the meadow, broken only by the song of a lark over the river.
“You can kill me if you want,” Leopold added.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Astley sat down on a large rock at the side of the stream, then observed, “My arms ache.”
“You should get a fencing master,” Leopold said. “You’re not bad.”
“Why? In case I find some honor of my own somewhere?”
Their eyes held the same rueful acknowledgment. They were the two luckiest, and two most brainless, men in the kingdom.
“She loves you. You can get her back,” Astley offered.
Leopold shook his head. “She’ll never believe that I love her now. She thinks that she’s nothing more than a second-best mother, that I never wanted to marry her until I saw how much Tobias cared for her.”
“Even worse, she likely thinks that you want her now only because Lisette proved herself stark raving mad.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
Astley stood up with a little groan. “My back!”
“Find an instructor,” Leopold said, looking up. “Not for defending your honor, but because it’s fine exercise.”
“I see that,” Astley said, moving slowly toward the house.
He stopped and looked back. “If I were you, Duke, I would fight for her.”
Leopold’s eyes fell on his rapier.
“Not that way,” Astley said with disgust.
And he was gone.
Chapter Thirty-one
London residence of the Duke of Montague
August 6, 1784
It took almost six weeks for the Duchess of Montague to plummet from the heights of maternal bliss to utter despair. At first she didn’t believe Eleanor’s declaration that she had refused Gideon’s proposal, even if he followed the strict protocol of a year of mourning. After finally grasping and accepting that, she leapt on the idea of her daughter marrying Villiers, bastard children or no. Resigning herself to the finality of Eleanor’s edict regarding the second duke led to wailing and gnashing of teeth. Literally.
Melancholy hung over the house like a shroud. The duchess took to drifting from room to room, her face a combination of dejection and rage.
“Don’t imagine that you can live with your brother for life!” she said shrilly one morning at breakfast. “I won’t have his life destroyed by having to live with a spinster sister. It would have ruined my marriage had your aunt lived with us.”
“I mean to marry,” Eleanor said steadily, repeating what she had said a few hundred times in the past weeks. “Just not a duke.”
“Two dukes! Two dukes asking for your hand in marriage and you refused them both!” The lament sounded like a lullaby to Eleanor now, so familiar that she didn’t even distinguish the words in the general flow. “The only good thing to emerge from this disaster is that you’ve got rid of that horrid dog, though I vow the Aubusson in the morning room still has an odor.”
Then the letter arrived.
Dear Lady Eleanor Lindel,
I hope you will excuse the audacity of this missive. We danced together once in the past, although I am quite certain that you hardly noticed my presence. For my part, I was unable to express my admiration as I was engaged abroad on His Majesty’s behalf. I am now returned to England, and thus I am bold enough to inquire, as I would have three years ago, if you would be so kind as to accompany me on a drive to Kensington Gardens.
Hon. Josiah Ormston
“You might as well go,” Anne said, reading over her shoulder. “He’s obviously been nursing a tendre for you all this time. It will cheer you up. Do you have any idea who he is?”
“No, I don’t. And it won’t cheer me up,” Eleanor said evenly.
Dear Mr. Ormston,
No lady can consider it an affront to learn that a gentleman has remembered her name over the span of three years. However, I must beg you to excuse me. Since I do not have the same memory of you, it would feel odd indeed to join you for a drive. Perhaps we shall renew our acquaintance when the season begins again.
Lady Eleanor
“Never mind the fact that you’ll be a burden on the family for life!” the duchess wailed, upon learning of the letter. “The least you could do would be to marry someone above the merchant class. Though if your father ever returns from Russia, I shall direct him to inquire amongst that sort. Beggars can’t be choosers.”
Anne, who was kindly sharing most of her meals with them, doing her best to blunt the flow of recriminations, said, “Mother, you can’t mean to say that you intend to sell Eleanor to the highest bidder.”
“Why not?” the duchess demanded. “No one can tell me that she isn’t a serpent’s tooth, gnawing on my bosom! Her dowry should be sufficient to buy us a merchant. Perhaps one of the Wedgwoods. I vow their crockery has grown so expensive that they must be worth a fortune.”
“Mo-ther,” Anne said, grinning.
Eleanor said nothing. Her father would never agree to such a scheme. And her mother didn’t really mean it. By refusing two dukes, she had struck at the roots of her mother’s strongest belief: that a title is God’s own way of marking his blessed few. Marrying her daughter to a cit would likely kill her.
“The least you could do is devote an afternoon to this—this Ermster fellow,” the duchess continued. “He’s a gentleman. He might marry you.”
“I don’t know who he is,” Eleanor objected.
“He’s not in Debrett’s,” Anne added.
“Debrett’s, Debrett’s,” the duchess said fretfully. “It can be terribly inaccurate, you know. They completely neglected to note that your great-aunt was related, on her mother’s side, to a Russian prince.”
Eleanor sighed. “If you wish me to accompany Mr. Ormston to the park, I shall, if he asks me again.”
“It’s the least you could do,” her mother said. “The very least. You’ll have to make a true effort now, Eleanor. Everyone will think that Villiers rejected you. They’ll be scrutinizing you to see what he found lacking.”
Despite herself, the back of Eleanor’s throat tightened.
“Mother,” Anne interceded, leaning forward and waving a copy of the Morning Post, “did you read about this extraordinary robbery?”
“There are so many,” the duchess said. “Who can keep account?”
“Yes, but this one happened in our own street!”
“Here?”
“It says that an old gentleman, residing in Arlington Street, was sitting in his front parlor when he was extremely alarmed by the sudden appearance of a man with black crepe over his face.”
“A cape on his face? How extraordinary.”
“No, black crepe. He must have worn it…”
Eleanor stopped listening. She had beaten back the tears, again. Perhaps she should go for a drive with Mr. Ormston. She had made up her mind to marry a mere gentleman, and any man who
didn’t even appear in Debrett’s Peerage certainly qualified.
There was no real point in waiting for the new season. She suspected—nay, she knew—that her heart would never be whole. Yet she would marry, and she would have children, and she would feel joy again.
But she would never love with that kind of ravening, blissful hunger that she felt for Leopold—the kind of hunger that made her want to touch his arm when they were at supper, meet his eyes at breakfast, sleep next to him every night.
Mr. Ormston’s next letter provided something of a relief from these gloomy thoughts.
Dear Lady Eleanor Lindel,
I entirely concur with your dismay at the idea of a tête-à-tête with an unknown man, though I should assure you that I am indeed a gentleman. As the younger son of Baron Plumptre, I took my uncle’s surname in honor of his leaving me a snug fortune. I hope that I do not offend you by speaking so directly of these matters. Though I have little hope of refreshing your memory, as I recall, you wore a gown of some sort of blue stuff, and we talked of Miss Burney’s play, The Witlings. You did not care for the actress who played Mrs. Voluble.
With deep respect,
Hon. Josiah Ormston
“Well, now you must remember him,” Anne said with triumph, waving the letter. “You didn’t like Mrs. Voluble.”
“No one did,” Eleanor said. “I barely recall the play, but every review said that Mrs. Voluble was shrill and unpleasant.”
“What I like about this man is that he remembers everything about dancing with you,” Anne said, dropping the letter and turning to her mother’s Debrett’s, always handy on the parlor table. “It would be very nice for you to experience some adoration. Yes, he’s here, listed not under Ormston, but as a second son to Plumptre. Josiah is not a wonderful name, but a sturdy one, don’t you think?”
“I suppose.”
“You must go,” Anne said. “Mother will never let you hear the end of it otherwise.”
Dear Mr. Ormston,
I would be pleased to accompany you to the park tomorrow.