“Oyster is Eleanor’s puppy,” Anne put in.
“In that case, it would depend on Oyster’s breed,” Villiers said. “Unless you have a pet poodle, I am fairly sure that I exceed expectations on both counts.”
“I can also assure Lady Eleanor that you never smell like urine, although I gather she is gracious enough to overlook that in a spouse,” the duchess said with a giggle. “Now if you’ll forgive me, I must introduce Mrs. Bouchon to my second cousin’s daughter; the poor dear hardly knows a soul in London. And you must tell me all about your marriage and the wonderfully successful season you’ve had…” She drew Anne’s arm through hers and began leading her away without further farewell.
“It appears that we are both looking for the same thing,” Villiers observed.
“A spouse?” Eleanor still felt so shaken by her conversation with her sister that she could hardly formulate a coherent thought. She had thought of herself as presenting a modest appearance. Demure. Virginal. But Anne made her feel like a balding old maid.
“A spouse of a certain rank,” Villiers qualified.
Eleanor felt a stomach-churning qualm of embarrassment and took recourse in sarcasm. “Now all that is left is to assess each other against such criteria as the weight of a sow, or the brains of a poodle.”
“In truth, I would rather not marry someone with less intelligence than the aforementioned Oyster.”
“I never pee on the floor when irritated,” Eleanor told him.
“You can have no idea how pleased I am to hear that,” Villiers said. Perhaps his eyes weren’t quite as frosty as they first appeared. “In that case, I have no cause to query the intelligence of our future offspring.”
Her sister was wrong. She could talk to men without sniping at them. Absolutely she could. “You play chess, don’t you?” she ventured. It was one of the few things she knew about Villiers: that he was ranked number one in the London Chess Club.
“Yes. Do you?”
“I used to play with my brother when we were young.”
“Viscount Gosset? He’s a decent player.”
Eleanor personally thought that her brother was a terrible player, but she smiled anyway.
“I am more curious about why you set your cap for a duke, to use the vulgar phrase,” Villiers said. “When I first heard of your requirement, I assumed you were driven by pride. But you don’t appear to be quite as high in the instep as a young woman with such stringent ambitions ought to be.”
Anne was right. Her foolish comment had given her the reputation of a turkey cock. She managed a smile. “Ducal marriages are a matter of precedence and fiscal responsibility. Since I am uninterested in forging an alliance based on anything less practical, I decided quite early that I would like to marry a duke.”
“Admirably succinct.”
If quite untrue. Eleanor raised an eyebrow. “And you? Why do you care for the status of your wife, given that you will make her a duchess by marriage?”
He looked her directly in the face. “I have six illegitimate children.”
Eleanor felt her mouth slip open, and snapped her teeth together. Was she supposed to congratulate him? “Oh,” she ventured.
“I wish to marry someone who will not only mother my bastards, but launch them into proper society when the appropriate time comes. The Beaumonts have assured me that no woman below your rank will be able to cow the ton to the extent that I demand. You needn’t look so surprised. I assure you that many men at this ball have a bastard or two being raised in the country.”
There was something extraordinarily annoying about the way he paused after that, as if expecting her to scream and faint. “One or two…versus six,” she said musingly. “I gather you have led a life of rather extraordinary dissipation.”
“I’m not as young as I look.”
“You don’t look very young,” she observed.
“I see you’re not expecting to charm your way into a title.”
“Given your family situation, I think most people would agree that the burden of charm falls on you. Are you planning to legitimize your children?”
“I couldn’t do that without marrying one of their mothers.”
“More than one mother is involved?”
“Dear, dear,” Villiers said. “That was almost a yelp, Lady Eleanor. We seem to be attracting some attention; perhaps we might stroll down a path.”
She glanced to one side, only to meet the avid eyes of Lady Fibblesworth standing with the Earl of Bisselbate. Of course, their meeting would be extraordinarily interesting to most of London, given the rumors about Villiers’s hunt for a wife. She threw the couple a stiff smile and tucked her hand into the duke’s arm.
“I had assumed that the children were the offspring of your mistress,” she said a moment later, when they were far enough away to be out of earshot.
“Oh, they are,” he said. “Four mistresses. Have you examined the baths yet?”
“The baths are not open to the public until after restoration,” Eleanor said. “I understand that the tiles are in delicate condition.”
“Surely you know that marriage to a duke allows one to flagrantly ignore rules of this sort?” he asked, turning toward the ruined baths at the entrance to the gardens.
“My father is quite punctilious.”
“No breaking the rules constructed for ordinary mortals?” He sounded bored.
“And no illegitimate children,” she said, allowing her voice just a touch of frost.
“Touché!”
The Roman baths were guarded by a phalanx of footmen, but apparently they knew the duke. At any rate, they moved silently to the side as Villiers approached. Eleanor looked about her with some curiosity. The baths had been fully enclosed at some point in the past, of course. But now a wall had fallen in and was replaced by a thick hedge of what seemed to be lilac, though it wasn’t blooming.
The duke led her across cracked tiles scattered higgledy-piggledy on the ground. Eleanor slipped her hand from his arm and stooped to pick one up. It was indigo blue and painted with a silver arabesque.
“How lovely!”
“That deep blue color seems to be rare,” Villiers said. He looked around on the ground. “Pity; I don’t see more of the same.”
Eleanor sighed and bent to put it carefully in its place.
“Don’t you like it?”
“Of course.”
“Take it.”
Eleanor raised an eyebrow. “We’re at a ball to benefit the baths’ restoration. As I recall, the king just described it as one of the nation’s greatest unknown monuments. And you’re telling me to steal part of the floor?” She began walking forward again.
There were fewer torches here, and the sound of a minuet being played by the orchestra grew fainter as they walked among the pillars. Some were broken, but many remained, the starry sky seeming to offer a fanciful roof.
“The actual bath is down here,” the duke said, taking her arm again to steer her down a shallow flight of stairs.
“It’s delightfully warm.” Moist air was rising from below. Eleanor walked down the last step and stopped. “And beautiful. Like a purple sea.”
The bath was a large square basin, surrounded by soft cushions. Its entire surface, every square inch of water, was covered with violets. Their scent rose gently from the warm water.
“I gather that Elijah plans a private celebration this evening,” Villiers said behind her.
She turned her head. “Elijah?”
“The Duke of Beaumont.”
“Of course.”
“I expect you don’t know his personal name since he married years ago and thus wasn’t eligible as a husband.” His voice was silky but annoying.
She cast him a glance. “I don’t know your name either.”
“That seems remarkably careless,” he remarked. “Narrowing your choices to dukes, and then not bothering to investigate their personal details.”
“There aren’t so very many of y
ou,” she observed.
“But I would have expected that fact might make your research on the subject more passionate. After all, you are no debutante, Lady Eleanor.”
Apparently he also shared Anne’s opinion of her advanced age. “I am two-and-twenty. I will be three-and-twenty in a matter of a month or so.”
“And you reached this age without investigating the limited group of men into which you had vowed to marry?”
“Yes.” She walked down the last few steps. Pulling back her skirts, she scooped up a few violets in her hand.
He followed her. “You’re not really interested in marrying a duke, are you, Lady Eleanor?”
“Not particularly.” She pretended to smell the wet blossoms in her hand.
“Why not?”
The words hung in the damp air. She instinctively looked about the baths to see if there was anyone who might be able to hear them.
Villiers descended another step and stopped beside her. “Are you already married?”
She smiled faintly. “No.” She met his eyes. “Quite the opposite.”
“The opposite?” He knit his brow. “Am I to understand that you have announced your intention to marry a duke so as to lower expectations regarding your availability for marriage?”
“Exactly.”
“And yet you are willing to consider matrimony with me? After all, you didn’t turn on your heel, not even after my alarming revelation.”
She let one of the flowers drift from her fingers, watching it rather than meeting his eyes. “I was young and impetuous when I announced my ambition to marry a duke.”
“Surely you knew that the chance of a nobleman of the correct rank declaring himself was slim.”
“Of course.”
“You declared that you would marry a duke or no one, knowing full well that no one was likely to propose, since there are so few of us. I see.”
“You do?”
“As you reminded me, I’m not young. I have seen a great deal and I certainly understand desire.”
“Oh.” Eleanor was a bit uncertain about what had happened to the subject of their conversation. “Are you saying that you understand my desire?”
“You should not throw your life away, Lady Eleanor, simply because you love elsewhere.”
“How did you know that?” She looked up at him.
“You just told me.”
“I did?” He had remarkably heavy-lidded eyes, lazy and seemingly uninterested, and yet apparently they saw everything.
“I am not a conventional man,” Villiers stated.
With a start, Eleanor realized that if she did decide to marry the duke, she’d have to discuss the question of virginity or, specifically, her lack thereof. “Given your promiscuous progeny, I agree that you have no claim to conventionality.”
One corner of his mouth quirked up. It had a remarkably beautiful shape, actually. “Oh, you’d be surprised. Men do the most interesting things in their private time and yet disparage women who commit even a tenth of the follies they enjoy.”
“That’s true.” Gideon was the only man she knew who was punctilious as a Puritan when it came to virtue, as passionate about his honor as he had been about her.
“My point is that I am not a prude when it comes to human desire. I know how inconvenient it can be.”
Inconvenient was an odd word for the way love for Gideon had shaped her life, but she saw his point.
Villiers tipped up her chin. “If you help me with my children, rear them, be kind to them, and fight society’s belief that they are unworthy of the huge settlements I intend to give them, I will be lenient with regard to your personal life.”
“You mean—”
“I would ask you to tolerate me only long enough to produce an heir.”
“In fact, I want children,” she said. She did want children. And for all Villiers’s tolerance, she had no intention of straying from her marital vows, once she made them. After all, Gideon showed no interest. He had barely met her eyes these last three years. She knew he was at the ball tonight only because Anne told her. He hadn’t searched her out, and of course she hadn’t looked for him.
And more to the point, if she took vows, she would keep to them. Just as she had tried to keep to the vows she and Gideon had said to each other, private though they were.
Villiers smiled and the shape of his mouth caught her eye again. “I appreciate your saying so.”
“You appreciate it?”
He nodded. “Like any other duke, I need an heir. But other than that, I must say that I have no deep desire for children.”
“And yet you have so many,” she observed.
“Carelessness,” he said.
“Stupidity,” she said, before she could bite her tongue.
“That too,” he agreed. “I need an heir, but I would be perfectly happy to live an amicable existence with a wife who had no interest in my charms, such as they are. Although I would ask that you be discreet.”
Without question this was the most shocking conversation she had ever had. Her mother would have fainted a good five minutes ago. “Will you do the same?”
“Will I add even more miscellaneous children to the household?” And, when she nodded, “Absolutely not. I am keenly aware of the idiocy of my imprudent attitude toward conception.” He paused. “You might not be aware of this, but there are ways to prevent conception; as a young man, I simply didn’t care to employ those methods.”
She nodded again. She knew them.
His eyes narrowed. “What an interesting young lady you are, Lady Eleanor.”
“Why have you decided to house your own children?”
“I nearly died last year of a wound sustained in a duel.” His voice was flat, uncommunicative. “I fought that duel for the honor of my fiancée, and lost.”
“Apparently, you lost the fiancée as well,” she put in dryly, trying to avoid any sort of melodramatic revelation.
Sure enough, his mouth eased. “True. The Duchess of Beaumont’s brother, the Earl of Gryffyn, won the girl and the duel, leaving me with a wound that nearly carried me off.”
“Whereupon you made a deathbed vow to marry?”
His eyelashes flickered. They were very long eyelashes.
“No,” she guessed. “You made a deathbed vow to rear your own children.”
“That was it,” he confirmed. “The damnable thing about it was that I turned out to be not entirely sure where those children were.”
“Beyond carelessness,” she said. “That’s disgraceful.”
“I had been paying for them.” He abruptly stooped down and snatched up a handful of flowers, sending a small wave across the pool. “When I demanded their addresses, my solicitor handed me a partial list and disappeared, along with many hundreds of pounds, I might add.”
“How very odd.”
“It seems that he had gradually removed the children from their lodgings and placed them elsewhere, pocketing the money I provided for their upkeep.” Villiers threw the blossoms back toward the pool. They rained down into the blanket of violets.
“Not the workhouse!”
“Less scrupulous places,” he said evenly. “A workhouse might have explored parentage, after all. To this point I have located my son Tobias, who was working as a mudlark, gathering valuables from the bottom of the River Thames.”
“Damn,” she said. Quietly, but she said it.
“A lady who swears?” He had that mocking tone in his voice again.
She ignored him. “How old is Tobias?”
“Thirteen. I recently found Violet, who is six, living in a brothel. I believe she is too young to know what lay in wait for her. She is untouched.”
Eleanor shuddered. “Horrible.”
“Colin is eleven years old, and had been apprenticed to a weaver.”
“That’s three…where are the others? And where are their mothers?”
“Well, you see,” he said grimly, “I offered to take the children away f
rom their mothers at birth. I thought that they would be better off under my care than they might be under the care of a courtesan.”
“The irony is rather distressing.”
“One of those mothers refused; Genevieve lives with her mother in Surrey.”
“So Genevieve is well.”
“Yes. My solicitor had ceased to pay support for the child, but her mother managed to scrape by.”
“In her former employment?”
He shook his head. “Taking in washing.”
There was something quite hard about his voice, the kind of hardness that concealed deep shame, she guessed. Since he deserved every ounce of that shame, she didn’t bother with soothing pleasantries.
“So that’s Tobias, Genevieve, Colin, and Violet. What fanciful names. There are two more? Why haven’t you fetched them?” Which was a tactful way of asking why he was at the ball at all, under the circumstances.
“They are twin girls. And I’ve been looking.”
“You can’t find them?”
“I have Bow Street Runners searching for them. They did find the woman who originally cared for them, but she has no idea where they were taken. She was merely told they were being sent to an orphanage. It turns out there are a great many orphanages in England, and a surprising number of twins.”
“Surely…their surnames, their parentage?”
“My solicitor, Templeton, never shared information as to their parentage. Apparently that is common practice, as it does not allow the nurse to appeal directly to the father, who prefers to ignore the child’s existence.”
She sighed and walked back up the stairs. The air was too moist, and the last thing she needed was for her inadequately powdered hair to start curling in all directions.
Villiers kept pace with her, his long legs sending him effortlessly upward. “I heard just this morning that twins of approximately the right age are living in an orphanage in the village of Sevenoaks, in Kent.”
“Lady Lisette Elys, daughter of the Duke of Gilner, lives nearby and might be able to help you. She does a great deal of work with the poor.”