“But what of love?” Lisette said, cocking her head to one side and regarding her aunt as if she’d never seen her before.
“Love is all very well in its way—Eleanor, dearest, do have one of these small tarts; they are delicious—as I was saying, love is fine, but friendship is much more important.” Marguerite shot an amused smile at Bentley. “Which is not to say that there can’t be love in friendship…at least devoted friendship.”
“Without marriage no one would have children,” Bentley said. “Family, what? Important, that sort of thing.”
“Bentley has two children, though of course they’re grown now,” Marguerite informed the rest of them, speaking for him in a comfortable way that made it clear that while she may have declined to marry Bentley, the contours of their relationship weren’t unfamiliar.
“One can certainly have children without marriage,” Lisette said, with her unerring gift for saying what most people think, but never utter. “Just look at Villiers’s children. Your girls have startlingly beautiful eyes,” she said, turning to him.
“Children? Didn’t know you were—what, ho!” Bentley said, stopping in some confusion.
“I’m not married,” Villiers said calmly. “But I do have children. Three of whom are upstairs, and about whom Lady Lisette has kindly expressed some admiration.”
“Do you have any children born outside your marriage?” Lisette asked, turning to Bentley. “You must have had a wife earlier in life, before you met Marguerite, I mean.”
Bentley was clearly used to Lisette; he didn’t even flinch. “My wife died many years ago. I don’t have any children other than those Marguerite mentioned, but a brother has one. Nice lad; we set him up as a cartwright and he’s as fine as fivepence. A sturdy fellow too, not at all like my nephew.”
Marguerite laughed. “Poor Erskine! Bentley’s nephew is in love with the daughter of a colonel, and all he does is mope and carry on for the love of her.”
“They are both your nephews,” Lisette pointed out.
Eleanor felt very glad that her mother felt a toothache; this was not a conversation that she would enjoy. What’s more, the Honorable Lawrence and Marguerite were holding hands now, and the duchess wouldn’t approve of that either.
And Villiers was smiling at Lisette, likely because of her defense of the illegitimate cartwright. Eleanor felt a stab of jealousy. He was hers—except he wasn’t. “Did Sir Roland happen to stop by while we were at the orphanage?” she asked Marguerite.
“Of course he did,” Marguerite said with a wicked twinkle. “I gather you have captivated the attention of our local bard. I invited him to join us after supper for a musical interlude. Which reminds me, we really should go to supper now. Popper seems to be quite unnerved. I think it’d be best if we do exactly as he requests tonight.”
“Did you bring back any interesting stories from London?” Lisette implored, after they were seated around the table.
“Your papa sends his best wishes and said to tell you that he’ll be coming home in a week or so.”
“Not that sort of news,” Lisette said impatiently. “Interesting news. As when you told us about Mrs. Cavil eating a bushel of cherries.”
“That was a sad story,” Marguerite said, “given what happened to Mrs. Cavil the next day.”
“Exactly,” Lisette said, grinning.
“Well, along the same lines, but Popper just told me that Gyfford’s brew house burned down. It’s a village over,” Marguerite explained to Villiers and Eleanor. “Half the village is insisting that it was Gyfford’s dead wife, come back for revenge. The other half of the village is much less poetic, and feels that Gyfford was smoking his pipe in bed.”
“What does Gyfford say about it?” Lisette inquired.
“Unfortunately, he’s cinders,” Marguerite said.
Lisette blinked. “He was our neighbor.” Her lower lip started to tremble.
“Stow it,” Marguerite said, rapping Lisette sharply on the hand with her spoon. “You didn’t know him, and by all accounts he was a hoary old bastard.”
“Now, now, Marguerite,” Bentley said. “Lady Eleanor is not used to your lively ways. You’ll shock the poor lass.”
“I’ve never seen that particular lass shocked,” Villiers drawled. “Do go ahead and see if you can do so, Lady Marguerite.”
“I am rarely shocked or frightened,” Lisette announced. “Except by dogs, of course. Fierce dogs.” She threw a meaningful look at Eleanor.
“Oh, don’t go on about that puppy again,” Marguerite said, earning Eleanor’s gratitude. “Let’s see, what else can I tell you. The dowager Lady Faber has had a horrible accident.” She paused dramatically.
“Do tell,” Lisette said, clapping her hands together.
“She saw an advertisement in the London Gazette for a depilatory.”
“Any story beginning on that note will end badly,” Villiers said.
“What’s a depilatory?” Lisette asked.
“A medicine to remove hair,” Marguerite told her. “Lady Faber rubbed it all around her mouth, and unfortunately everywhere it touched turned bright garter blue.”
Lisette went off in a peal of laughter.
“And while it is not funny, did you hear about the Duchess of Astley?” Marguerite added. “Yes, thank you, Popper, I will have just a trifle more. Please tell Cook that the baked carrots are extremely good.”
Villiers’s head swung up and he met Eleanor’s eyes. “What on earth has happened to the duchess?” he inquired.
“I do hope you weren’t close to the poor dear,” Marguerite said. “Yes, Popper, I think we could move on to the next course now.”
“The duchess?” Villiers repeated.
“You appear quite dismayed,” Lisette observed. “Was she a friend of yours, Leopold?”
“You are addressing the duke by his first name,” Marguerite said, narrowing her eyes and looking from Villiers to Lisette. “That is inappropriate. You are a betrothed woman.”
Villiers blinked, and Eleanor felt a perverse satisfaction. Not that a betrothal would stop Villiers, if he decided he wanted to marry Lisette.
Lisette gave her a lazy smile. “Leopold is a devoted friend. And since my fiancé hasn’t set foot in England for six years, I hardly feel he deserves the title.”
“Please, Lady Marguerite, how is Ada?” Eleanor asked.
“I am so sorry if she was a friend of yours, darling. Why, I’m afraid she’s dead. She couldn’t breathe…what day was that now? Oh, it must have been last Friday. I suppose they just put her in the ground, the poor dear. Not that I knew her, but by all accounts she was a kindly person. And so young. What a loss.”
“She was kindly,” Eleanor said. She felt sick. She had never wished ill of Ada. Never.
“The duke was at the Beaumonts’ benefit for the Roman baths when it happened,” Marguerite said with a kind of grinding cheerfulness that made Eleanor’s nausea increase. “Apparently his wife didn’t suffer. She just coughed once or twice and then collapsed. The doctor said he wouldn’t be surprised if something in her brain had simply burst.”
“Lady Eleanor is not feeling well,” Villiers said, sounding to Eleanor as if his words came from far away and underwater. She gripped the edge of the table hard because the roaring in her ears made her dizzy. It was stupid to feel responsible, even the slightest bit responsible. She had never wished ill of Ada. She had…she was sure of it.
“I’m a beast! I’m a bear!” Marguerite was lamenting. “Of course I should have known that the young duchess would have friends. I never met her about London, so I’m afraid I didn’t think…Popper, Popper! Get a footman—”
“I’ll escort her upstairs,” Villiers said, cutting her off.
Eleanor let go of the table and rose from her chair. “I’m perfectly all right. It must have just been the shock. I do believe I shall retire, however.”
“Please forgive me!” Marguerite called imploringly after her.
Eleanor
’s heart was beating a guilty rhythm.
“Don’t be a fool,” Villiers said harshly, behind her on the stairs.
She waited until they reached the landing. “I never wished her ill. But I—I wished to be her.”
“Well, be grateful that you didn’t get your wish,” Villiers said, as unemotional as ever. “You’d be measuring a plot of ground right now.” But she was learning to read those gray eyes, and they said something. Not that she was sure what.
The image of Gideon standing over Ada’s body was so heartbreaking that Eleanor actually swayed and caught hold of the railing.
Villiers swore and plucked her up as if she weighed no more than one of his daughters.
“You needn’t,” she said feebly.
“Be quiet,” he ordered.
So she was quiet and stopped thinking about how she felt about Ada when she was alive, and just remembered her quiet smile, the sweetness in it, and the happiness with which Ada would show her newest embroidery project. Tears began to roll down her face.
Willa pulled open the door to her bedchamber and left immediately when Villiers jerked his head. He sat down in the chair and tucked her head against his shoulder, and Eleanor sobbed as if she were no older than one of his little girls. He handed her a white handkerchief but he didn’t say a word.
After a while she stopped crying, sat up, and blew her nose. “I’m sorry she’s dead.”
“I know you are.”
“I must look awful,” Eleanor said, remembering all her makeup.
“It’s interesting,” Villiers said. “The shoe black around your eyes has run in little streaks down your cheeks. You look like the sister to a zebra.”
“It’s not shoe black,” she protested, wiping it off with his handkerchief.
“I should return to the supper table,” he said, not moving, staring at her with his curiously beautiful gray eyes.
“Tobias has exactly the same eyes you do, have you noticed?” she asked.
“The same temperament as well. And the same brute nose.”
“He doesn’t have a brute nose.”
Villiers leaned closer, so slowly that it seemed an eternity before their noses touched. “Yours is quite patrician,” he said. “Slender, straight, narrow. Like the pathway to heaven, now that I think of it.”
“Then yours is as short and wide as the path to another place,” she whispered.
“Nothing about me is short.”
“Nothing about you is humble.”
“False humility is one of the seven deadly sins.”
He snatched a kiss, the kind that made Eleanor realize just how much she loved kisses. How much she wanted more. How—How desperate she felt. And if that wasn’t humiliating, what was? She had to regain her composure.
“We shouldn’t be kissing like this when Ada is just buried,” she said.
“I expect at least four women around the world died during the time I kissed you. If not more.” He was frighteningly good at speaking in an utterly unemotional voice.
“It’s not the same.”
“Why not? Are you telling me that you were genuinely fond of Ada?”
That question was a mistake, because she thought again of how critical she had been, thinking that she herself would have been a more affectionate wife, and tears welled in her eyes again. “If I wasn’t fond of her, it was my own shortcoming and my own stupidity,” she said, getting off his lap rather clumsily. She walked over to the black window and looked blindly out. “She was a very kind person.”
“Why do her virtues mean that I can’t kiss you?” Villiers said, rising from his chair.
“It doesn’t seem respectful.”
“Or do you think we shouldn’t kiss because Ada’s death leaves an opening for a new duchess?”
It took a moment for that to sink in, and then she spun about, took one step and slapped him. They stared at each other for a moment.
“I apologize,” Villiers said finally. “I should not have implied that you wept for any reason other than the obvious. I met the duchess only once, but I cannot imagine her uttering an ill-natured comment.”
“That was her greatest accomplishment,” Eleanor said. “She must have known…”
Villiers’s eyes didn’t even flicker. “Must have known what?”
She was tired of all the lies she had told her mother, all the lies she had told everyone. “That Gideon and I were devoted friends,” she said. “Before.”
“Devoted. And yet—he married Ada.”
“She had every accomplishment,” Eleanor pointed out. “And as I told you, his father’s will dictated his choice.”
“She had every accomplishment, except that of making people love her,” Villiers stated.
“Of course people loved her.” But she knew what he was saying. Ada was so acquiescent and sweet that one easily turned a shoulder to her, walked away, forgot she was in the room. “I’m sure that Gideon loved his wife,” she added, giving it emphasis.
“Perhaps,” Villiers said, without a smile. “More to the point, now that she has passed away, I believe that you have two dukes to consider as potential husbands.”
“Of course not!”
“He may be a fool, but not that much of a fool. I saw the way he looked at you.” Villiers pulled her into his arms again, which was just what she wanted him to do. “It was damnably close to the way I look at you,” he whispered. His mouth silenced her before she could utter her deepest fear: that Gideon had chosen sweet Ada because she was so sweet.
She had loved Gideon, but she also wanted him, and her desire disturbed Gideon. It made him uneasy. That certainly wasn’t the case for Villiers.
Villiers kissed her with the sort of passion that demanded that she respond, forced her to respond. Even now his breathing was ragged, and yet his hands were shaping her, teasing her, caressing her—trying to make her mad with desire.
What had frightened Gideon about her pleased Villiers. Though she really ought to call him Leopold, given the fact that he was rapidly becoming her closest…friend. If not quite devoted, yet.
As if he read her mind, he broke away and said, “Say my name.”
“Villiers.”
He pulled her against him so hard that she could feel every button in his coat, and below that, lower still…
He was hard, and he was big, and he made sure she knew it.
“Leonard,” she whispered.
He nipped her lip.
“Leander.”
He really bit her this time, on the lobe of her ear. She shivered and felt a wash of heat over her body. Their eyes met and there was a slow smile in his. He bent his head and she didn’t move, held her breath as he pushed aside the soft silk of her chemise dress. Of course…there was no corset. His lips closed over her nipple and he suckled her until she sagged against his arm.
“Say my name,” he growled.
She was the master of herself. “I know!” she said, voice shaky. “Lloyd!”
“You’re a danger to yourself.” Her chemise gown gave way easily on the other side, and she leaned against his shoulder again, trembling, eyes closed. He scraped his teeth across her breast and she gave a little scream.
“Say it.”
“Leo,” she said, and her voice broke into a throaty cry. “Leopold!”
His hand replaced his mouth, gave her a rough caress that made the blood race from her head.
“Why won’t you call me Leopold except when I kiss you into submission?” He was kissing the corners of her mouth, the line of her jaw, and all the time, his hand…She arched forward in case he wanted more of her.
“It’s not proper,” she gasped. “You heard Lady Marguerite.”
“Perhaps not in London, but in this house…with Marguerite and her devoted Lawrence? One of Lisette’s most charming virtues is her utter disregard of etiquette.”
“Propriety is important.” She pushed away his hand, remembering. “You should go downstairs. They might be wondering where you a
re.”
“Too late for that,” he said with a lopsided smile. “They know exactly where we both are.”
“But they don’t know what we’re doing. You must return; I shall retire for the evening.”
“Risqué Roland will be heartbroken if you miss the scintillating musical interval that awaits us.”
“He will have to suffer,” Eleanor said, pulling her bodice back into its crisscross shape. Her whole body was pulsing a little, as if her very blood was dancing.
Villiers was adjusting his cravat in front of the glass. “You’ve crushed my neckcloth. I’ll have to stop by my chamber to fetch another.”
“Why bother?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Go downstairs with a crushed cravat?”
She mimicked him. “Call you by your first name in public?”
He took one step toward her and the light in his eyes made her knees weaken. “I can make you do it.”
“I can crush all your cravats,” she said loftily.
“For the right cause,” he said, turning toward the door, “a man might discard any number of cravats. There are two armchairs in my chamber.”
“I would never visit your chamber,” Eleanor said. “How can you even ask?”
“I didn’t ask,” Villiers pointed out.
“Oh.”
“I merely commented that there are two such chairs, and then I was about to add that I intend to instruct Finchley to place those chairs on the balcony. That way, should anyone desire to join me, it would be possible to have a glass of brandy while looking at the stars.”
“That sounds monstrously improper,” Eleanor observed.
“My favorite kind of activity.”
Chapter Eighteen
She should probably stop by her mother’s room and inquire about her toothache. And she ought to write a note of condolence to Gideon. Instead Eleanor called for a bath, added essence of jasmine, and climbed in holding Shakespeare’s Sonnets.
Willa took down her curls and brushed out all the wilting violets. Then she poured a bit more hot water from the jug into the bath.
“Would you mind if I went down to the kitchens to finish ironing your linens, my lady?” she inquired.
“Absolutely not,” Eleanor said. “This bath is deliciously warm. Just leave me a towel and I’ll get out when I wish.”