“Even I don’t know,” Roberta said, giving her husband a mock scowl. “Damon promised to tell me on our wedding night, and then he reneged.”
The earl tightened his arm around his wife and dropped another kiss on her head. “I remembered that it wasn’t my secret to tell.”
“But you two are supposed to be one body and soul now,” Lady Nevill put in, just the faintest edge to her voice implying the impoverished nature of her own marriage.
“I don’t want to know her identity,” Roberta said, leaning against her husband. “That way I needn’t think of her as a real person. Teddy is mine now.”
Damon was smiling down at Roberta with such a foolishly loving look that Villiers felt nauseated.
Louise caught his eye and laughed. “I gather you plan to indulge in marriage, but not for love, Your Grace.”
“Marriage is for the courageous, but love is for the foolish,” Villiers said. “I have doubts regarding my own bravery, but I have long been convinced that I have at least a modicum of intelligence.”
“In that case you will fall in love quite soon,” Roberta announced. “Such monumental arrogance must necessarily be answered by the gods.”
Villiers walked away thinking of marriage. He could imagine nothing more repellent than the idea that his wife might fall in love with him. Or worse, far worse: that he might lower himself to worship a woman the way Gryffyn apparently did his wife.
A civil, practical union was far preferable to a messy pairing involving adoration.
That was an obvious point in favor of Lady Eleanor. She was in love with someone else. There was a courteous indifference about her that was remarkably peaceful.
It could be that he’d found his perfect match…as long as she decided to pay a visit to Kent, of course.
If not, he’d be stuck with the lady rather indelicately referred to as witless.
Chapter Four
Eleanor found her mother in the refreshment tent, surrounded by her friends. The moment the duchess caught sight of her eldest daughter, she rose with the air of a mother cat shaking off a litter of nursing kittens and bustled Eleanor to the corner.
“Well?” she demanded.
“It seems quite possible that Villiers will offer for me,” Eleanor admitted. “He implied as much.”
“I am astonished,” her mother cried, releasing her grip on Eleanor’s arm. “Astonished!” She dropped into a chair in a dramatic flourish of her hands. “This will surprise you. I thought you were a fool.”
The response that sprang to her mind seemed rather abrasive, so Eleanor said nothing.
“All these years, I thought you were a fool,” her mother continued. “And yet here you are, marrying a duke, just as you always insisted you would. I suppose one is never too old to correct one’s mistakes.”
“I suppose not,” Eleanor murmured.
“I made a mistake!” the duchess announced, patently dumbfounded at the very idea. “It never occurred to me, not even once, that you would have a chance at Villiers. For goodness sake, child, he is among the richest men in the kingdom.”
At least until he endows all those illegitimate children, Eleanor thought to herself.
“He must be very high in the instep, given his search for a woman of equal rank. Everyone has been predicting that he will have to widen his focus to include the daughters of marquesses. But I always insisted that you should be the one, even given your age. Oh Eleanor, I am so very grateful to you!”
“For what, Mother?” Eleanor sat down.
“For not putting him off, of course. When I think of all the matches you could have made over the past four seasons! Here you are, past your first blush, and still dodging gentlemen. I was fearful, Eleanor. I know I kept my fears from you, as a mother should, but I was frightened for your future.”
Eleanor smiled, as much from the idea that her mother kept any emotions to herself as anything else.
“I just couldn’t bear the idea that I, the most beautiful woman of my year, would produce an ape leader for a daughter!”
Eleanor’s smile withered.
“Thank goodness, you are the only eligible duke’s daughter this season. I must write to your father and brother immediately and order them to return from Russia for the wedding. And we must order a new gown tomorrow morning. In fact, we should probably—”
“Villiers plans to pay a visit to Sevenoaks,” Eleanor said.
Her mother frowned. “Sevenoaks, in Kent? Why? What—No!”
“Lisette.” Eleanor nodded.
“But Lisette is mad. Poor girl,” she added, but then returned to her main point: “The girl is mad as a March hare. Cracked. Moonstruck. And I say that not merely because I know the girl. Everyone knows it!”
“She’s not precisely mad,” Eleanor protested. “She’s merely—”
“She’s mad,” the duchess repeated flatly. “That will come to nothing.” A frown crinkled her brow. “Of course she is quite pretty.”
“Lovely,” Eleanor supplied helpfully. “Her eyes are a lovely blue, if you remember.”
Her mother’s eyes narrowed even further. “By now she must be fit for Bedlam. People never get better, only worse. Look at your uncle Harry. We used to think it rather charming that he believed he was a general. But now that he’s taken to thinking that he’s a Russian prince, your aunt Margaret has such an uncomfortable time. He’s always insisting she wear furs and trundle about in a sleigh.”
“Lisette has improved. She sends me quite cheerful letters.”
“Villiers plans to visit Knole House, you said?”
“I told him that I had been planning to pay Lisette a visit.”
Her mother’s head snapped up. “Eleanor! That’s the first intelligent thing I’ve seen you do in years!”
Eleanor involuntarily twitched but didn’t reply.
“We’ll leave tomorrow. Well, at the latest by the following day. I wonder if Gilner himself is home, though it hardly matters. I’ve lost touch with Lady Marguerite over the past few years, ever since Lisette’s mama died. What an unfortunate life dear Beatrice had! Only one daughter, and the child deranged.”
“Lisette has improved,” Eleanor repeated.
“Nonsense! Pretty is as pretty does, and your Lisette is not fit to be a duchess. I trust the duke will realize that himself, but just in case, we’ll be there as well.”
Eleanor hated the times when the world gathered itself up and began hurtling toward a goal that she hadn’t envisioned a mere five minutes before. She’d had the same feeling back on Gideon’s eighteenth birthday, when he paid a sudden visit, his face as white as a sheet of paper. She remembered being surprised that he had sent in his card and requested a formal visit. Gideon had never been formal…
Gideon was always formal now that he was married to another woman.
Which was fine, because she, Eleanor, was going to be married to the Duke of Villiers. Just then her mother squealed with delight. “Duke!” she caroled, springing to her feet with a huge smile.
Eleanor jerked her head up, expecting to see Villiers—but it was Gideon. Gideon, the Duke of Astley, who never approached her if he could possibly avoid it.
A combination of kindness and genuine affection on the part of Eleanor’s mother had caused her to insist that her son’s closest friend, a poor motherless boy, spend his school holidays with them. Which was why Eleanor felt as if Gideon had grown up with them, scrabbling and squabbling around the estate as if he were another brother—until the day they looked at each other and he wasn’t. He just wasn’t.
Now he walked toward them, as lean and beautiful as ever. When he was just a boy, he had been rail thin. Later, muscles started to conceal his ribs. Her memory gave her an unbidden and unwelcome recollection of how soft to the touch the first dusting of hair covering his chest had been.
It was practically a sacrilegious thought. The man was married.
“Where is your lovely wife?” her mother was demanding. “Do tell me tha
t she’s indisposed due to an interesting event?”
“I’m afraid the duchess was too tired to leave her chambers tonight,” Gideon replied in his calm voice. He nodded to Eleanor and bent to give her mother a kiss that made the duchess beam. It was the sort of kindness that marked his ways.
Eleanor held out her hand to be kissed. He bowed, touching his lips lightly to her glove. She considered whether he gave it a special pressure, but she couldn’t delude herself.
Since the very moment that Gideon had discovered his father’s will included a marriage contract wrought between the late duke and Ada’s father, he had never touched her in any sort of intimate way. Never.
“We have such exciting news for you!” her mother burst out.
“Mother!” Eleanor protested. “It isn’t—”
“Oh tush, Eleanor, the duke is part of our family.” And, turning again to Gideon, “Our own Eleanor is finally going to take a husband.” She caught herself. “Not that I mean finally as it sounds. Of course, Eleanor could have married any time in the last few years, but she’d never chosen to do so. And now she has agreed to a husband.”
A courteous smile shaped Gideon’s lips, but Eleanor thought she saw pain in the depths of his eyes. It made her feel better.
“It seems I owe you felicitations, Lady Eleanor,” he said.
An uncertain smile wavered around her own lips. She could hardly say, I would have waited forever. “I am grateful for them, Your Grace.” There. That was dignified.
“Surely you heard that the Duke of Villiers is looking for a wife?” her mother burst out.
“I had heard that rumor, but I could not believe that Lady Eleanor would consider such a spouse.”
Eleanor was starting to feel quite cheerful. After years of trying not to watch Gideon with longing eyes, of trying to erase him from her dreams, it was satisfying to see that flash of fire in his eyes.
Let him experience what she had endured, watching him wait at the altar to marry Ada.
“Yes, the Duke of Villiers,” she confirmed, giving him a lavish smile. “I am persuaded the two of us will be remarkably suited. You do remember how I used to beat you at chess, don’t you?”
“You know how foolish my Eleanor has always been,” her mother put in, laughing. “She announced years ago that she would marry a duke or no one. I was beginning to worry, I don’t mind telling you.”
“There was never any reason to worry,” Gideon said. “I’m sure Lady Eleanor has her pick of eligible men.”
“I wanted only a duke,” Eleanor said. “And that meant so many men were ineligible. I suppose it was a foolish restriction to set for myself.”
“Life does not always give us the choices that we might wish.”
He was growing furious, and she rejoiced in every involuntary signal, in the rigid way he held his shoulders, in the firmness of his jaw.
“Luckily for me,” she said cheerfully, “a duke came along just at the moment when I had decided to put away my childish feelings.”
“Childish,” he repeated.
“Yes. You know what it’s like when one is very young. One believes in such foolishness…in men who will throw away the world to be at one’s side. Fairy tales. I had just decided to discard all those romantic notions when, to my great surprise, a duke appeared who seems as charming as I could possibly wish.”
“What does your childhood have to do with anything?” her mother said. “You two were always talking in riddles, but you’re far too old for that sort of thing now.”
“Far too old,” Eleanor said, with a rueful smile just for Gideon. “Those riddles are nothing more than nursery rhymes, to be put away as one matures, along with childish emotions.”
His jaw was clenched. “I was under the impression that the Duke of Villiers suffered a grievous injury last year after losing a duel.”
Gideon didn’t approve of duels, which was no wonder, since he’d lost his father as a result of one. When he and Eleanor were young, they had talked for hours about how unlawful and dangerous these confrontations were. And, since ascending to his seat, he had made it his life’s work to convince society to see the duel as an indefensible and horrific act. She was always reading about speeches he’d given on the subject.
The duel alone would make him despise Villiers. Which was just as well, she thought, because once she married that dark-eyed fallen angel, she didn’t want to think about Gideon ever again.
“So is dear Ada increasing?” her mother was asking. “I do hope you don’t mind my inquiring. I adore her, of course, but she’s so fragile. I must have my cook make up a good strengthening lettuce soup for her.”
Gideon started to reply, but Eleanor’s mother wasn’t to be stopped.
“I expect that she is quite nauseated. When I had my first, I was so sick that I could barely stir out of the bedchamber for days. I drank lettuce soup morning and night. I shall send some over tomorrow. Nay, I shall send over my cook tomorrow to train your—”
“Your Grace.” Gideon’s quiet voice cut across her mother’s rush of speech. “I’m afraid that Ada is not increasing. She’s merely suffering a lung complaint.”
“Oh.”
Eleanor knew she should feel sorry for fragile little Ada, who always seemed to be in her bed or on a settee, coughing delicately. But try though she might, she still resented her. Ada’s father had paid for Gideon, had sewed him up in a marriage contract when Gideon was only eight years old.
Which meant that Ada had the one thing that Eleanor had ever wanted in the world.
“Please sit down and tell me all about it,” her mother said, patting Gideon on the hand. “That poor angel. Did she take a chill?”
The worst of it was that Ada didn’t even care for Gideon, as far as Eleanor could tell. She had paid Ada dutiful visits over the past three years and seen the polite, uninterested manner with which Ada greeted her husband.
If she had been Gideon’s wife, she would have leaped from the settee to greet him when he walked into the drawing room. In the first year or so after he married Ada, it was all Eleanor could do to keep herself frozen in a chair when he entered a room, and to stop a besotted smile from spreading across her face.
But Ada just held out her hand to be kissed and then turned away.
And Gideon…Gideon had gone from being Eleanor’s closest friend, the confidant of her heart and the lover of her body, to bowing as if she were nothing more than a remote acquaintance.
“The duchess’s cough has taken a turn for the worse in the last few weeks,” he was saying now. He was endlessly solicitous of his sickly wife.
It was admirable. Really.
Perhaps it was just as well that they hadn’t married. She could never be as punctilious as Gideon, not even if a dead father’s will required it of her. She would have fought bitterly to marry him. She would have climbed a balcony in the middle of the night and lured her beloved into a clandestine elopement, and be damned with the consequences.
She would have…she would have gone anywhere with that lovely, golden boy. In fact, now that she thought on it, she came perilously close to giving up her whole life, remaining unmarried, and never having children merely because he wasn’t free.
What’s the good of being Juliet when Romeo shows no sign of killing himself for love, but instead prances off with Rosalind?
She felt as stupid as Oyster.
There was an audible hum of interest in the room, just as she sensed someone at her shoulder. “Astley,” came the drawling voice of the Duke of Villiers. “Your Grace.” He was bowing before her mother.
The duchess held out her hand to be kissed, doing a magnificent job of pretending that Villiers’s appearance meant little, and that every pair of eyes in the tent wasn’t focused on their little group. “I understand that we might well see each other in the country,” she said, dimpling. “I’m not certain that I can spare the time for such frolicking, but I always try to please my daughters.”
“London is
so tiresome at the tail end of the season,” Villiers said. “And you are so much in demand, Duchess. You must long to escape the throngs of your friends and admirers.”
Since her mother loved nothing more than an admiring horde, Eleanor thought he was overdoing his praise. But her mother giggled, and might even be blushing underneath the permanent blush she had painted on earlier in the day. “That is so true,” she agreed, fluttering her fan madly.
“You’re planning a trip to the country, Duke?” Gideon said in his measured, formal tones.
“I have some business in Kent.” Eleanor held her breath. She was hoping to break the news about his motley family to her mother at some later date. Preferably after the duchess had drunk two brandies. But Villiers said nothing further.
She caught sight of Gideon’s still-clenched jaw out of the corner of her eye. “We are meeting at a house party,” she said, favoring the three of them with a huge smile.
“I expect you’ll be busy in the House of Lords,” Villiers said to Gideon. “Such a pity; the countryside is beautiful at this time of year. But there you are…we grasshoppers will frolic, and the ants must needs keep slaving.” There was a trace of scorn in his voice. Just a trace.
A second stretched to twenty before Gideon said, “Exactly so.”
“What a pity you’ve never taken up your seat, Duke,” Eleanor’s mother said to Villiers, showcasing her profound deafness to conversational undercurrents.
“I can’t imagine why I would,” Villiers said lazily. “I don’t see myself in a room full of bantam roosters strutting and squawking at the dawn.”
“One could describe them as caring for the business of the country,” Gideon snapped.
“Nonsense. The business of the country is shaped by two forces: the king and the market. As it happens, I know a great deal about the market. I can assure you, Astley, that quite frequently the market trumps the king.”
Gideon’s jaw worked. “The market can do nothing when it comes to serious problems. In the House of Lords we fight ethical lapses such as the slave trade.”