Eloisa James - Desperate Duchesses - 6 (14 page)

"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 like 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.

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 fiancee, 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 Grinders 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.

She threw the ball, scooped—and the sixth knucklebone slid, smooth as butter, under her spreading skirts. She closed her fingers around the bones.

"You won!" Tobias cried, looking utterly shocked. "But I never lose."

She took a second to savor her victory. "That's likely because you've never played a woman before."

"You think girls are better at knucklebones than boys?" She'd seen that jutting jaw before. Villiers had it. Well, every boy had it when they were confronted with an unpleasant reality.

"I'm better than you are," she pointed out. "Why shouldn't the two of us stand as emblems for our sexes?"

He thought his way through that language. "I've played lots of girls before," he reported. "And I always win."

"Pride goeth before a fall," she said. And then she relented, grinning at him. "I cheated."

"What?"
His voice suddenly dropped a register, taking on, in its disbelief, his father's low voice.

She whisked aside her skirt and showed him the hidden jack. "You should always count the bones when someone claims victory."

"I do always count the bones!" he cried. "Well, normally. But you're a lady!" His voice swooped from high to low. He would have his father's deep velvet tones someday.

"Your mistake," she said cheerfully. "I cheated—but I still won. You tried to cheat and you lost.

When I decided to cheat, I won because you didn't see it."

Tobias narrowed his eyes. "You're a strange lady."

"Very strange," Villiers said from above her shoulder.

"I have thought Eleanor strange since our nursery days," Anne laughed. She sounded a little drunk.

"Tobias," Eleanor said, ignoring them, "do you suppose that you're strong enough to haul me into a standing position?"

He jumped to his feet. "You're not so large." He had decided to like her, she guessed. Now that she had cheated. Men were strange, no matter the age. "I'll be taller than you in a month or so."

"You're as boastful as my dog," she told him. Sure enough, he managed to get her to her feet. She twitched her skirts so they flowed over her panniers.