“Mother,” she said, stepping forward to put a hand on Villiers’s arm. “The duke has done me the inestimable honor of asking me to marry him.”
There was a moment of frozen silence. Even the gentle rattle of Anne’s tossing the knucklebones ceased. The only sound Eleanor heard was the muttering of two footmen stationed in the hallway.
“I have accepted,” she added, just to make everything clear.
Villiers’s eyelashes flickered as he glanced around the group. Really, his eyelashes were too thick for a man. “I was overcome by joy,” he said solemnly. “I shall never forget the moment that she accepted my hand.”
He drew Eleanor’s hand under the crook of his arm and gave her a smile. She retaliated by giving him a little pinch.
Lisette looked between them. “Are you saying that you’re going to be a duchess, Ellie?”
Since her mother was still paralyzed, trapped between outrage and ambition, Eleanor smiled down at Lisette. “Yes.”
Anne leaped to her feet and gave Eleanor a kiss. “What a surprise!” she cried, throwing a soulful look at Villiers. “Ah, Duke, you’ll never know what a treasure you’re stealing from those of us who love Eleanor best.”
Eleanor wished she had her hand free so she could pinch Anne as well.
“Isn’t that lovely,” Lisette breathed, rising as well. “I adore weddings. So pretty. So festive.” She waved at the footman who had just entered the room. “Champagne, James!”
James obediently trotted back out.
Apparently, that was the extent of Lisette’s interest in Villiers’s announcement. “Why don’t we start our game?” she asked, dropping back to the floor. Anne immediately sat back down, skirts spreading in an elegant circle around her.
Eleanor’s mother cleared her throat and turned to Villiers. “I will be blunt. I am not particularly pleased, given the circumstances.”
“I have six illegitimate children,” Villiers informed her, not kindly.
She visibly paled.
“Mother,” Eleanor said, “I know this has been a terrific shock.”
“My daughter is marrying a duke,” the duchess said between clenched teeth. “True, he apparently has the morals of a squirrel, but that’s my cross to bear.”
“Actually, the children will be Eleanor’s cross to bear,” Villiers said all too cheerfully.
“I gather you have this particular boy with you for a purpose,” the duchess said. “I must suppose you are conveying him to an appropriate household in the country. Surely you need not have effected this errand in person?”
Eleanor intervened before Villiers could deliver a death blow by informing the duchess that he intended to raise the children under his own roof. “There’s no reason to discuss such particulars now.”
Her mother’s eyes snapped to her. “Eleanor, you must forget that you ever heard this discussion. If your father were here, he would talk to the duke himself. But since he is ungrateful enough to be in Russia with your brother, I shall undertake that task myself. Duke, we shall discuss this tomorrow. In private!”
“I live in anticipation,” Villiers drawled.
His future mother-in-law gave him a look of extreme dislike, but she held her tongue.
“Do join us!” Lisette called from the floor.
“Are you suggesting that I sprawl about on the floor?” the duchess demanded.
At that moment the door opened and a thin boy in a brown velvet suit entered. He was dressed like any boy of the aristocracy, Eleanor thought, though he clearly wasn’t one of them. There was something wild and proud in his face, as if he were more duke than the duke.
He walked forward and bent his head.
“Bow,” his father said, though not sharply.
He bowed.
Anne and Lisette both looked up. “Sit next to me!” Lisette caroled, patting the floor. “I am having a terrible time catching this little ball.”
The boy was like a miniature version of Villiers, from his cool gray eyes to his extreme self-possession. “May I present my son,” Villiers said. “His name is Tobias.”
The boy turned his head and looked at his father.
“He prefers to be called Juby,” Villiers added.
It was the first time she had ever seen Villiers bested, and by someone less than half his weight. Eleanor stepped forward and smiled.
“Lady Eleanor,” Villiers said. “My future wife.” There was just the slightest edge of irony in his tone.
Eleanor dropped a curtsy. The boy bowed his head again. He was fiercely beautiful in the way some young males are, as if their whole life were being lived through their eyes, and their large noses, and their ungainly limbs.
“Bow,” his father said unemotionally.
He bowed.
“Lady Eleanor’s mother, the Duchess of Montague.”
This time Tobias bowed without being told, which made Eleanor feel better. If this wild boy interpreted her mother’s murderous gaze properly, then perhaps she herself wasn’t such an incompetent coward for having given in to her so many times in the last twenty-two years.
“On the floor are Lady Lisette and Mrs. Bouchon,” Villiers continued. “Bow.”
Tobias bowed. Lisette looked up again and patted the ground. Naturally, Tobias dropped instantly into the place she indicated.
“I shall retire until supper to compose myself,” the duchess announced, her voice indicating that she was on the very edge of a swoon. She paused, clearly to allow Villiers and Eleanor to chorus their protests. Their eyes met.
“You must be exhausted by the long trip, Mother,” Eleanor said.
“Though one certainly couldn’t tell,” Villiers put in. “You look as exquisite as ever, Duchess.”
She automatically raised one shoulder in a coquettish gesture. “Oh, how can you say so!” she said, though without her usual vigor. “The dust! The dryness. We were easily half a day in the carriage.”
“Only a woman of remarkable fortitude could look as fresh as you do after a journey,” Villiers said.
“I’ll walk you to the stairs, Mother,” Eleanor said. “A footman will inform you the moment that the squire and his family arrive.”
As they walked into the entrance hall they came face-to-face with an enormous gilded mirror. Eleanor saw herself and stopped short.
“Just look at yourself!” her mother snapped. “What you’ve done to your eyes makes you look shameless.” She clutched Eleanor’s arm a little tighter. “I never thought I’d say such a thing, but I’m not certain you should marry Villiers, Eleanor.”
She kept talking, but Eleanor wasn’t listening. The kohl black that Anne had put on her lashes and smudged around her eyes made them look twice as large as they normally did. She looked…
Beautiful. Mysterious. Sensual. Anything but a virgin.
“Your curls are in terrible disarray,” her mother said. “You shall come upstairs with me, Eleanor, and I shall have a word with Willa. That sort of tawdry effect she’s created simply won’t do. If we do decide that you should accept Villiers’s proposal, you’ll have to find someone who understands the consequence of your position.”
“No,” Eleanor stated. She couldn’t pull her eyes away from her own face. Her small, ordinary face was transformed. Her lips looked naughty, like a woman who kissed in corners and laughed inordinately, rather than with the kind of constrained emotion that befit a duke’s daughter.
She didn’t look like the kind of woman who stood around, moping after her former lover. She looked like the kind of woman whose former lover pined for her.
“What on earth do you mean?” her mother demanded.
She turned to her mother, chin high. “I like the way I look, Mother.”
“You don’t look like a duchess.”
Eleanor knew perfectly well that her mother loved her, and that she only wanted the best for her daughters. But she was finished with the pretense that she was a perfect daughter.
“I don’t want to look lik
e a duchess,” she stated.
“Villiers pays more attention to his appearance than the queen herself does. You wouldn’t catch him going about with his hair falling out of its ribbon. I’ve never even seen his neck cloth in less than pristine condition. He must assign a footman to follow him with spare cloths.”
“Quite likely,” Eleanor said. “But if he wants to waste his time being perfect in dress, he’ll have to do it alone.”
“Eleanor!”
It was harder to withstand her mother when she was pleading rather than browbeating. But Eleanor didn’t want to dress like a wilting virgin any longer. “You’ve often criticized me for not being appealing enough to gentlemen,” she pointed out.
“I never criticize,” her mother said stoutly. And the worst of it was that she believed it.
“You have called me foolish,” Eleanor replied. “And you were right. I simply wasn’t interested in getting married. I couldn’t picture myself doing it.”
“Until Villiers changed your mind. I suppose every gentleman has peccadilloes. I’ll just have to impress upon him that he may never mention those children in your presence or mine again.”
“It wasn’t Villiers who changed my mind.”
“Whatever it was, I don’t see why that change entails dressing like a shameless wagtail,” her mother said, reverting to her former theme.
“Wagtail, Mother?”
“You know precisely what I mean!”
Eleanor smiled at her reflection. “I like that word.” She gave an experimental wag of her hips. “And more to the point, Villiers likes the way I look.”
“It is true that he proposed to you immediately.”
“There’s the evidence, Mother,” Eleanor said, cheerfully ignoring the truth of the matter. Unfortunately, Villiers hadn’t turned a hair when he saw her transformation. He must have noticed her face paint, but it certainly hadn’t warmed his heart, given the way he had been hovering over Lisette.
As if her mother read her mind, she gave her a little shove. “You’d better go back in the sitting room, now that I think of it. Lisette is the same as she ever was, but she’s so pretty that one hardly notices at first.”
“Poor Lisette,” Eleanor said.
Her mother snorted and headed up the stairs.
Chapter Eleven
Villiers looked down at his son’s head. Tobias—he’d be damned if he’d ever call him Juby—was sitting on the floor throwing the knucklebones. The boy had inky black hair that was just like his own. He’d have to warn him about the white streaks; they’d showed up just past his eighteenth birthday.
At first, as a boy, he’d been afraid that he would turn as white as an ostrich. Then he realized that the ducal picture gallery held a portrait of an ancestor from years back, who had the same hair. The same face too. Nasty cold-eyed bastard, he looked, and so Villiers didn’t have any illusions about his own visage.
The whole idea that Tobias had his hair and eyes gave him a queer feeling.
Lisette looked up and gave him the lavish smile with which she seemed to greet everyone. He’d seen many beautiful women—his former fiancée, Roberta, was exquisite—but Lisette was extraordinary. She was like some sort of chaste and joyful goddess.
“Join us,” she cried, gesturing toward the floor. She was seated in the middle of a puddle of shimmering silk, looking like a flower. It was refreshing to see someone with no regard for convention, as opposed to the Duchess of Montague, a woman whom he would personally nominate as the person one most doesn’t want to welcome into the family.
“I’ll wait for Lady Eleanor to return from escorting her mother,” he said.
Lisette gave her charming little shrug. It seemed she’d forgotten about Eleanor.
Whom he was apparently marrying. From all appearances, Eleanor had decided to kick over the traces, but he didn’t have any real belief that she had actually decided to marry him. She had announced that merely to silence her mother.
He couldn’t think of another woman in all of England who would dare to announce their engagement without waiting for him to propose.
Eleanor walked back into the room. If Lisette glowed with a kind of concentrated gold, Eleanor had the crimson lips and sultry look of an English harem dancer, if such a thing existed.
Without a word to him she dropped on the floor next to Anne. Her side panniers were too large for the indignity of sitting on the floor. One of them bounced into the air and he caught a glimpse of a deliciously slim ankle before she slapped it back down.
“I was about to ask if I might offer you a chair,” he said, just for the pleasure of having her scowl at him.
Her eyes were as sooty as a fashionable strumpet’s. But she was trained to be a duchess, and so she sat straight upright, even though seated on the floor. A ducal doxy, that’s what she was. A dissipated duchess. Whatever she was, his body responded to her signals as if he really were in a brothel—not that he ever entered those establishments.
He should probably join the group on the floor, but he loathed that sort of informality. And he didn’t trust Popper’s housekeeping skills, either.
“What do you do besides throw the bones and try to catch the ball?” Eleanor was asking. She had the ball in hand and seemed to be catching it easily enough.
“Juby says he and other boys make up their own rules,” Lisette put in. “I don’t see any reason why we should have to be precise. I want to try riding the elephant.”
Riding the elephant? Villiers realized he had clearly missed an important part of the conversation. It was a pity that his blood was at a slow boil, all due to Eleanor’s pouty lips. It made him think of bedding her.
She was a fierce, sharp-tongued little thing who would probably turn into her mother. And if that wasn’t enough to frighten a man into flaccidity, nothing would.
“Juby?” Eleanor said to Tobias. “That name makes you sound like a boiled sweet.”
Villiers had to stop himself from grinning. She might be sharp-tongued, but she was echoing his opinion. He pulled over a chair and sat down behind his son.
Eleanor cast him one of her bird-quick looks. “Why do you get to sit in a chair while we’re on the floor?”
“You chose to sit there,” he said pleasantly. “I choose not to join you.”
“What a stick-in-the-mud you are, Leopold!” Lisette laughed. She put her arm around Tobias. “We like being on the floor, don’t we?”
Tobias edged away. He wasn’t old enough, or young enough, to want to be hugged. But it was pleasant to see how charming she was with him. Obviously, Lisette was completely unaffected by the circumstances of Tobias’s birth. She was treating him as she would any child: with that artless joy she brought to her daily life.
She was laughing now, and clapping at the way Tobias was catching knucklebones on the back of his hand.
After five or six minutes Lisette was out of the game and so was Anne, who in fact had taken herself out. She had lit a cigarillo and was leaning against one of Villiers’s chair legs and blowing smoke rings at the ceiling.
“This is boring,” Lisette said, looking up at him with a pretty pout.
“Villiers,” Eleanor said, without even bothering to glance at him, “Lisette wishes to do something else.”
She really would turn into her mother if she didn’t watch out. Still, he helped Lisette to her feet, noticing that she was as lithe as she appeared. “You have a vast array of musical instruments on the far wall,” he noted.
Her eyes brightened immediately. “I’ve learned to play all of them; I adore music!”
His own mother had loved music as well, and used to spend hours playing a harpsichord in the drawing room. He smiled down at Lisette, imagining for a moment what their children might look like. All that gold delicacy would offset his dark, brutish looks.
Not that Tobias looked terrible, but he had to admit that his daughter Violet was no—Well, she was no violet. She had an oddly lumpy look, and a huge chin. He didn’t know
how he’d ever marry her off, but he figured that enough money would do it.
And maybe being around Lisette would teach Violet to be charming and happy. Lisette was doubly beautiful because she was so cheerful.
He glanced back at Eleanor, who was scowling at Tobias. She could use the same lesson. Still, common sense told him that Tobias didn’t care about a scowl or two. Not after the abuse he had suffered at Grindel’s hands.
Villiers’s hands involuntarily curled into fists. He’d knocked the man out, taken all the boys away, and then spoken to a Bow Street magistrate he knew. Grindel was now in prison for life, but still he lay awake at night thinking about ripping the man’s head from his body.
“Leopold!” Lisette called prettily. “Will you help me take down this lute?”
Normally he would have frozen out any person with the temerity to call him by name. Yet somehow Lisette disarmed his every criticism. It was an interesting realization that warranted further thought.
Out of the corner of her eye Eleanor saw Villiers trot after Lisette, but she didn’t spare him a withering glance. Not that he’d be looking; the pathetic awe in his eyes when he looked at Lisette told its own story.
Instead, she hunched over and watched like a hawk to make sure that Tobias didn’t try to palm any of the bones. She’d already caught him with one under his leg and another up his sleeve.
Across the room Lisette began tuning the lute. She had an angelic voice, and never seemed more the perfect lady than when she was singing. That was the sad thing about Lisette: it was no act. She was a lady…when she was a lady.
With an effort, Eleanor banished Villiers and Lisette from her mind. For the moment she just wanted to trounce this ill-tempered, ill-mannered, miniature Villiers. There was something about him that she liked. For one thing, he had been completely uncowed by her mother’s glare.
They were tied going into the final game. He threw a perfect round. She countered. They switched to left-handed throws. Luckily, she was actually left-handed. He threw another perfect round, and again she countered. He returned to his right hand, but with a handicap of a bent little finger. Finally he missed. It was her turn.