Eloisa James - Desperate Duchesses - 6 (33 page)

"Tobias will not participate in the treasure hunt," Villiers stated.

Lisette's brows drew together. "Of course he will. He's just the right age to win, and he's already excited about it. You can't disappoint the boy. I was in the nursery this morning and he talked of nothing but the hunt."

"Tobias talked of nothing else?"

Eleanor knew what Villiers meant. Tobias was eminently his father's son: he would never babble.

"In his own particular fashion," Lisette said airily.

"It's not appropriate for him to compete against orphans to win fifty pounds," Villiers pointed out.

"I know!" Lisette exclaimed, clapping her hands. "If he wins, you can simply tell Tobias that he can't keep the money."

"You might want to inform him of that salient fact ahead of time," Anne noted. It seemed to Eleanor that her sister was enjoying the dinner a good deal more than she

herself was.

"I will instruct him that it would be improper for him to participate," Villiers said, accepting a partridge served on a
croustade
from the footman. Lisette huffed but went back to her list.

"What sort of things are the children supposed to fetch?" Anne inquired. "I told you. An egg from the henhouse, that sort of thing." Impish pleasure lit up Lisette's face. "But they have to bring the egg home without breaking it!" "And when will the treasure hunt begin?"

"As soon as Aunt Marguerite arrives," Lisette said. "And my father, of course." Eleanor resolutely turned up the corners of her mouth into something approximating a smile.

"I won't say a word to Marguerite about the Duke of Astley's clandestine visit," Lisette said, turning to her. "Though of course you'll want to tell everyone, I'm sure."

"Actually, no," Eleanor said. Villiers's head swung up and she avoided his eyes. "His Grace's whereabouts are his own business."

"You'll disappoint the gossip lovers," Lisette said, looking back and forth between two pieces of foolscap. "Do you think that the winning orphan should be crowned in gold or with laurel leaves?"

"Gold?" Eleanor asked, still avoiding Villiers's eyes. "How on earth would you manage that, Lisette?"

"Well, there is an old crown in the west wing," she said. "It's locked up, but of course I could get it out. I think Queen Elizabeth left it here when she was on progress years ago. Something like that."

"Your family never returned it?" Anne asked. "You'd think that Queen Elizabeth would have missed the crown."

"Apparently there is some sort of letter she wrote in the library, asking for the crown back, but my ancestor pretended he'd never seen it. I'm due in the nursery to say good-night to your little girls, Leopold. Do come with me."

He looked down at his half-eaten partridge. "I'm still eating."

"You can finish later," Lisette said cheerfully, holding out her hand.

"Anne and I don't mind if you both leave," Eleanor put in, without being asked. "I'll just finish my plate and retire upstairs."

"Well, I do mind," Villiers said coolly. "If you must leave the table, Lisette, you might ask Lady Eleanor or Mrs. Bouchon to act as hostess in your place."

Lisette laughed, but there was a dangerous edge there, an edge that Eleanor remembered from tantrums of years ago. "Why on earth would I adhere to such stuffy rules? I don't run my household that way! It's time to say good-night to the girls, so I shall go. And I know that you want to come with me."

"I don't," he said flatly, looking up at her.

Her hand dropped.

"I wish to finish my fowl, and then I plan to have some of that excellent lamb that Popper has on the side table," Villiers said. "And after that I shall likely have some sugared plums, since I see them waiting as well."

There was a dangerous, trembling moment when peace hung in the balance. But then Lisette's face cleared and she burst out laughing. "You men!" she said, half shrieking with laughter. "You're completely worthless if you haven't finished your meal. I know that." She shook her head. "My papa is exactly the same. Cross as a bear until he's had his morning tea and toast."

"Exactly," Villiers said, taking a bite of fowl. "Do give the children my best."

"I'll tell them you'll be upstairs in ten minutes," she said blithely, trotting out the door.

"I won't—" he said. But she was gone.

"Popper," Villiers said to the butler, "wait until Lady Lisette has left the nursery, and then inform the children that! will visit them in the morning, just as I told them a short while ago, would you?"

"Of course, Your Grace," Popper said.

Eleanor allowed a footman to take away her sole, since it was rather salty to her taste, and accepted a slice of Milanese flan in its place. "That was awkward," Villiers said after a time. "Lisette has never cared much for eating," Eleanor said.

"Yes," Villiers said thoughtfully. "I, on the other hand, care a great deal for eating. You seem to share my preference."

Eleanor was instantly conscious that she was far more curvy than Lisette, and likely could stand to lose some weight.

"Do you suppose that the Duke of Astley will really return for the treasure hunt?" Anne asked.

Eleanor felt a deep certainty that he would. In her opinion, Gideon had gone slightly mad. He had always been so prudent and principled...but no longer. "Of course he will," Villiers said. "He's in love."

"In love," Anne said, as if tasting the words. "What an extraordinary concept for such a tiresome man. You know," she said, turning to Eleanor, "I really do owe both you and him an apology."

"I can't think why," Eleanor said, endeavoring to end the conversation the way their mother surely would have.

"I told you that the man never loved you enough, that he was a weak-chinned milksop. I was obviously wrong."

"Did you indeed?" Villiers said. "Interesting."

"As I said, I was wrong," Anne said, ignoring him. "The fact that Astley snapped back to your side shows that he does love you—is
in
love with you, in fact. How romantic." "Yes, very," Villiers chimed in.

Eleanor just concentrated on eating her flan. She had wished, years ago, that Gideon was brave enough to risk his reputation in order to marry her rather than Ada. She couldn't have asked for more than what he was doing now. If he appeared at that treasure hunt, and particularly if he showed a marked preference for her, the scandal would ricochet across the
ton.

"At this rate, everyone will be discussing the treasure hunt for the next month," Anne said, confirming Eleanor's anxiety. "I am very happy that I accompanied you. I shall be
so
popular."

"Perhaps we should give Mother an extra laudanum dose that morning," Eleanor said. And she was half-serious.

"If Astley has decided that you are worth more than the world's opinion," Villiers said, his voice very even, "your mother will simply have to get used to that fact. I don't expect he will wait for a full year of mourning before marrying you."

"He must," Eleanor said firmly. "He's Ada's only close family member, since her father passed away last year."

"He won't."

"Why not?" Anne put in. "My sense is that he is making sure Eleanor doesn't end up married to you while his back is turned. But he seemed genuinely fond of his wife, in a lukewarm kind of way."

"Astley is in the grip of passion," Villiers said. "Yes, I will take some of that lamb now, Popper.

Thank you."

"Passion needn't last more than a week," Anne said with her usual cynicism.

Villiers glanced at Eleanor. "It will in this case."

"A tiresome subject of conversation," Eleanor said. "How are your daughters settling in, Villiers?"

But Anne wasn't diverted. "Why do you think Astley won't settle down and wait once he is certain that Eleanor won't marry you?"

"Because he's had a few years to realize what he threw away."

Back to the immeasurable charms of the Whore of Babylon, Eleanor thought dismally.

Anne was relentless. "What exactly do you think he's realized?"

"He thinks that there's no reason to eat breakfast unless Eleanor is there to give him that silly wide grin of hers. He wants to have an argument with her just so he can kiss her into a good mood again.

He wants to sleep with her every night, see her holding a baby with brandy-colored hair like hers."

Eleanor's mouth fell open.

"He wants her forever," Villiers continued. Their eyes met and his were as cool as ever. "He can't bear the idea that she might ever love another man. I'd bet my entire estate that he will arrive tomorrow."

Anne sighed. "If I wasn't so prodigiously fond of my husband, I'd probably fall in love with you just for that description, Villiers."

Eleanor's mind was whirling. If his face hadn't been so impassive, so composed, she would have thought...

"Since you inquired about my daughters," he said, turning to Eleanor, "Lisette spent several hours with them today. I expect they will be very sad when we return to London."

"You ought to leave soon, before she tires of them," Anne said, proving her voice could be just as emotionless as Villiers's.

"That seems an unnecessarily unkind assessment," Villiers said. "I believe that Lisette genuinely enjoys the girls. And she is looking forward to being their mother."

Eleanor shot Anne her most ferocious look, the one copied from their mother. Anne twitched an eyebrow but said in a sweetly musical voice, "Of course it will all be different this time, Villiers. I quite forgot that the two of you are to be married."

"Don't try for a life on the stage," Villiers said flatly.

"I think we should go back to discussing Astley," Anne said. "That's afar more fascinating subject than your marital mishaps." "There is no marriage yet," he snapped.

"Then we can save the discussion of your unhappiness for the next time we meet," she said brightly.

Eleanor rose. "If you'll excuse me."

"Do tell me that you're going to succor some orphans," Anne said, fluttering her eyelashes. "Or perhaps you plan to distribute food among the starving villagers?"

"I am retiring to my chamber," Eleanor said, with what she considered a masterful control of her temper. "I plan a tedious night with a bath and my book."

"Ah, Shakespeare's sonnets," Villiers said. "Love that lasts ages, into which category we must now place the Duke of Astley. A good choice."

Eleanor managed to get herself out of the room without saying something she might later regret.

The two people remaining at the dining table stared at each other. Then Villiers looked at Popper and jerked his head, so the butler and his footmen quickly left.

"A touch of the bourgeois," Eleanor's sister said mockingly. "I didn't know you cared about servants'

talk, Duke."

He ignored that. "I was under the impression that you were not in favor of my suit."

"What suit?" Anne said. "You're marrying Lisette. And, in case I haven't said it already, congratulations. Your life is certainly going to be interesting."

He narrowed his eyes.

"All those children," she said innocently. "What a responsibility. It'd be one thing if you were planning to bundle them all off to the country with fifty pounds and a package of bread and cheese, but to bring them up as nobility? To pitch them onto the civilized world as if birth and illegitimacy didn't matter?"

"I know they matter."

"Well, of course, they don't matter to Lisette."

He didn't know why he was defending himself to Anne, whom he hardly even knew. He had a flash of nostalgia for the old Villiers, the one who tolerated no insolence of any kind. The duke who was coolly uninterested in anyone's opinion except his own.

What had happened to him? He had given Mrs. Bouchon a look that would have silenced anyone from the queen to a scullery maid, and she paid him no heed.

"That is precisely why Lisette will be a perfect mother for them," he said, wading into the sort of explanations he never would have made a mere year ago. "She cares nothing for the formalities of the
ton,
for its strictures and rules."

"She can't afford to care for them," Anne said. "She is considered mad."

"She's not mad," Villiers said sharply. "She seems eminently sane to me."

"I agree," Anne said, rather surprisingly. "I've known Lisette for years, and I've never considered her to be cracked. Not in the way that Barnabe Reeve went mad. Did you ever know him? You must be about the same age."

"Yes," Villiers said, placing his fork and knife precisely on his plate. "Reeve told me when we were both at Eton that he thought he might be able to fly someday. At the time, I considered it a boyish ambition that I rather shared. His later conviction that he was growing wings was a surprise."

"So, there's madness like Reeve's, and then there's Lisette."

"There is no comparison," Villiers said. "None."

"Reeve doesn't listen to the people who tell him repeatedly that people rarely, if ever, grow wings.

Lisette doesn't listen to people who tell her anything that she doesn't want to hear."

"The difference between will and wings is the difference between madness and its opposite,"

Villiers pointed out.

"Exactly." She beamed at him. "Reeve thinks he can grow wings and he can't. Lisette thinks she can spend her life doing exactly as she wishes, no matter the amount of human wreckage she leaves behind her—and she can.
That
is the difference, my dear Villiers."

One had to say that Eleanor's sister understood a good exit line. She hopped to her feet and dropped into a deep curtsy. "Your Grace."

Villiers stood, but only because the rules of society were drilled into him. They were second nature at this point.

He remained standing even after she left the room.

Until it occurred to him that Eleanor was in her bedchamber. And she was likely taking a bath. That ridiculous excuse for a man, Astley, was returning for the treasure hunt, and that was—

That was very soon.

Eleanor lay in the bath once again staring at her book of sonnets, but only because that's what she had told everyone she was going to do. She hated Shakespeare. What did he know about real human relationships? About how complicated they were?