Eloisa James - Desperate Duchesses - 6 (35 page)

But Leopold was doing something far more difficult: forging rules from the mistakes he had made.

He was building an ethical life from the consequences of his not-always-ethical choices, and consciously pursuing a course designed to ameliorate the wrongs he had committed.

It was causing him no end of trouble, of course, given those six children. And it had to be said that his mistakes seemed to be more grossly evident in the world than those of other men:
six
children, after all. Though the sum total was, in fact, five, if one deducted Lady Caroline's contribution, Eleanor reminded herself.

Her own ethical standing was just as confused. She had flagrantly broken the most important precepts of church and society that pertained to women when she slept with Gideon the first time .though in her own defense, she scarcely remembered those rules in the tumult of first love.

She thought for a moment about the implications of the phrase
first
love. No matter: the point was that her youthful shame was compounded by her extraordinary folly in making love to the Duke of Villiers. One could not be more shameless than to do so in the out-of-doors.

The problem—the real problem—was that the rules governing women's behavior explicitly structured things so that women protected themselves from men. Because women were supposed to be designed along the lines of Ada: submitting to their husbands from a sense of duty, angelic in their desire to please.

She was out of bed and drawing back the drapes covering the door to the balcony, just so she could see the two chairs Leopold had placed there, before she realized that there should be no shame.

She had hurt no one. Gideon was none the worse for her seduction—indeed, she had the distinct feeling that he would consider himself the better for it. She had not injured Leopold by seducing him—or yielding to his seduction, however one wished to put it. And Leopold had not injured her, either.

She knew instinctively that Gideon was already in his coach on the way to the house, having said a hasty farewell to Ada's great-aunt. And Leopold was in the chamber next to hers, and she had a shrewd suspicion that he had felt as hungry and aching as she had the previous evening, when she'd crawled into her bed and found it woefully empty.

And she was sure of another thing too: that a life in which there was no réévaluation of beliefs and behavior was a life not worth living.

Both men, both dukes, were doing just that. Gideon was laying his reputation and his fortune at her feet, to make up for the error of having turned his back on her years earlier. And Leopold was marrying Lisette because he believed that she would be the better mother for the children he had carelessly brought into the world, without love or even great affection. With women whose names he seemed hardly to remember.

That was
the problem, to Eleanor's mind. He would marry a woman without love, to nurture the children he had created without love.

It seemed wrong to her, deeply wrong, as surely as the way her own erotic impulses had never seemed wrong. It was almost a relief to feel something so strongly. At least she had
some
sort of moral compass, though it wasn't one of which the church or her mother might approve. Leopold did not love Lisette, so he should not marry her.

With a scratch on the door, Willa entered, full of household news. "Lady Lisette is tired of the very idea of the treasure hunt," she reported. "And she's not interested in the orphans anymore either, though her maid, Jane, says she will regain interest when it's time for the Ladies' Committee to meet. But right now she doesn't want to hear a word of them
or
Mrs. Minchem."

There was nothing surprising in that. "Has she a new passion, then?" Eleanor inquired.

"Why, it's those two little girls of the duke's," Willa said. "She was in the nursery with them for hours yesterday, playing as if she were a little one herself, so Jane says. She took breakfast with them today, and has started teaching the quieter one the lute. Phyllinda, I think her name is."

"How nice," Eleanor said.

"She's dressed them up as beautiful as if they were little daughters of the manor," Willa continued.

"She had three seamstresses working at their costumes all night long."

"I'll wear that blue gown that Madame Gasquet had time to alter," Eleanor said, not wanting to think about Lisette's appropriation of the twins. "The one ordered by another customer."

Willa brought out the gown. "Lady Lisette insisted that each girl must have her own maid, which upset the housekeeper because she has only two downstairs maids now. Their hair is piled
that
high; the maids were given special wool pads to give height."

"Wool?" Eleanor exclaimed. "But that's so hot and the sun is already shining!"

"It's a bit strange because Lady Lisette herself doesn't ever wear such things, but she ordered the maids to dress the girls' hair with them. I hear the children aren't that pleased."

"Wait until the sun heats up that wool," Eleanor said.

"Master Tobias wants to know if he may take Oyster with him on the treasure hunt," Willa said.

"I suppose he may," Eleanor replied. "As long as he keeps Oyster out of Lisette's sight."

"Oh, he will. There's no love lost there, apparently. The little girls just dote on her, or so the nursery maid told me, but Master Tobias was quite snappish with her when she wanted the girls to sleep in her room for the night."

"Why on earth would she wish to do that?"

"She planned to tell them stories of fairies and goblins," Willa said. "Would you like this blue ribbon, my lady, or this dark green one?"

"The blue, please," Eleanor said. "Fairies and goblins?"

"Jane says that Lady Lisette often stays up all night long singing and playing her lute and such, and then she sleeps during the day." "That must be difficult for the household."

"Everyone receives a generous gift on Boxing Day from the duke. Apparently he makes a joke of the fact that his household is better-paid that any other in the county: he says it's the 'Lisette Toll,' as if she were a toll road, you see."

"Has her father arrived yet?"

"Not yet. Lady Marguerite is here, though. She arrived just before breakfast. The squire's family will be coming for the day, and all the ladies on the orphanage committee. It's a proper fête! The house will be bursting at the seams."

"I believe my mother wishes us to leave after the treasure hunt," Eleanor said.

"Not now that the Duke of Astley has returned," Willa said with a knowing look in her eye. "He arrived two hours ago, practically at the crack of dawn, and Her Grace told her maid that we'd stay as long as he does. Mrs. Busy is cooking so you wouldn't believe, as it'll be a grand dinner tonight with Lisette's father here. He's almost never home, you know. They say he can't bear to see Lisette as she is. He never broke off that betrothal with the squire's son because he keeps hoping she'll change."

Eleanor digested that in silence. It was only when Willa had declared her to be quite ready that she asked, "What did Tobias say to Lisette, do you know?"

"He told her to stubble it because she'd give the girls nightmares," Willa said, laughing. "And the whole household is saying how Lisette has met her match at last, because she didn't have a word to say back to him. She knew that a spasm would just make him laugh at her, so she didn't bother, just left the room, and that was the end of her plan."

"I would guess that he will have no problem controlling Oyster during the treasure hunt," Eleanor said. "If he can manage Lisette, he can manage a naughty puppy."

She cast a look out the balcony door before going downstairs. The lawn was already dotted with the white gowns of the committee ladies, their lacy parasols making them look like daisies. The orphans in their blue pinafores were darting and running about, and Eleanor didn't think it was her imagination that they already looked heartier.

She didn't want to go downstairs. She wanted to avoid Gideon, and avoid her mother as well. She wanted to avoid Lisette, because she might be tempted into unkindness, if not violence. She wanted to avoid Roland, because she wasn't in a poetic mood, and she didn't particularly wish to meet his father's hopeful eyes, either.

But she couldn't hide. So she wandered downstairs just in time to see Lisette formally begin the hunt by ringing a little silver bell. A stage had been built in the back garden, and she was prancing about like the Queen of May, handing out flowers to all the children. Apparently the winning child wasn't to wear a gold crown, unless Lisette was planning to take it off her own head. She was wearing a small but unmistakably genuine crown; Eleanor couldn't believe that there were two such crowns in all of Kent.

"Titania, Queen of the Fairies," Roland said, appearing at her shoulder.

"I always pictured Titania clad in gauzy leaves with her hair loose," Eleanor said, giving him a smile.

"Titania was a termagant," Roland said, "and that's the crucial distinction. Remember how Shakespeare says that she fought with her husband so violently that all the corn rotted in the field?"

"You
are
unkind," Eleanor said, frowning at him.

"I will admit that I hadn't conceived of Titania's fairies as bastard children of a duke."

Phyllinda and Lucinda were standing on either side of Lisette, looking like small attendants, if not fairy ones. Their hair was piled so high that they appeared to be wearing airy beehives. They were both dressed in cloth of gold, which seemed utterly inappropriate for such a hot day, but their dresses did match Li sette's crown.

Still, what did she know about children? Perhaps they loved Li sette's reflected glory. Certainly the ladies from the orphanage committee were agog over the girls' beauty. And Lisette was rather carefully not identifying their lineage. Eleanor had a strong feeling that the good Christian members of the Ladies' Committee might not be quite so rapturous

over Phyllinda's lovely eyes if they knew her parentage.

"No child is going to win the prize," Roland said disgustedly, looking up from the page of clues. "I wouldn't be able to solve them. Listen to this:
in marble wails as white as milk, lined with a skin as
soft as silk, within a fountain crystal clear, a golden apple doth appear."

"What?"

"Wait, I'm not done. No doors there are to this stronghold, yet thieves break in and steal the gold.

What ami?"

"I haven't the faintest idea."

"I know that one, but only because my nanny used to tell it to me. The answer is, an egg. Lisette apparently expects the children to figure the riddle and then be able to find the henhouse and bring back an egg."

Eleanor shrugged. "I suppose she'll just give the prizes to whichever children solve one or two riddles, then."

"That will be Villiers's bastards," Roland said with a sneer.

"Why do you say so?"

"Because Lisette isn't playing fair, of course." He nodded.

Sure enough, Lisette was whispering in Lucinda's ear. The little girl dimpled up at her and patted her hand, and then ran off.

Eleanor discovered that she was smiling. The expression on Lucinda's face didn't display adoration, the way Willa had described. She would describe it as something altogether more knowing—and more manipulative. Well, what would she have expected? They were Villiers's daughters, after all.

She looked around again, trying to ignore the way Roland was standing too close to her. Gideon was basking in her mother's smiles. Lucinda had run directly from Lisette over to Tobias, who was lounging by the raspberry bushes. There was no sign of Oyster, to her relief. A great flock of orphans in blue pinafores were clustered together, puzzling over the clues; they seemed to be having as much trouble reading them as solving them.

Villiers was nowhere to be seen. It was ridiculous to find that the day lost its flavor simply because an errant duke had chosen not to participate in the frolic.

Just then a soft voice said, "Lady Eleanor." She looked down to find Phyllinda smiling up at her.

With precisely the same smile her twin had just used on Lisette.

"I don't know the answers," Eleanor said bluntly. "I can't help you."

Phyllinda's smile just broadened and she held up her hand. "Will you help me with something in the house, Lady Eleanor? Please?" The last
please
was tacked on with pitiful emphasis.

Eleanor could hardly say no, even given the fact that the child was clearly up to something. "What?"

she asked.

Phyllinda leaned close and whispered, "It's private. To do with my petticoats."

Since, in her better moments, she was a lady, Eleanor didn't roll her eyes. Instead she took the hand Phyllinda was offering and followed her into the house. They passed Gideon, who casta look at their linked hands and grew a little stiff.

"It's up here," Phyllinda said, lisping a bit.

Having a naturally suspicious mind, Eleanor thought back to the way Phyllinda spoke when she and her sister were first uncovered in the carriage. No lisp. One had to suppose that the lisp had been proven effective in outwitting adults susceptible to mindless sentiment.

"This is your bedchamber, isn't it?" Phyllinda lisped, stepping to the side. She was overacting terribly.

"Yes," Eleanor said, pushing open the door to her room and walking in. "What do you—"

It was with no great feeling of surprise that she heard the door shut behind her and a key turn in the lock. It seemed she had been given a reprieve from the spectacle, just as she wished. She pulled off her blue slippers and wiggled her toes, then strolled over and reached for the bell to ring for Willa, only to find that it had been cut off. Intrepid of them. One might even call it diabolical.

The only thing that made her remotely curious was
why.
She didn't present any particular threat to the children's desire to win the prizes donated by her mother, Lisette, and the Duke of Villiers. Of course she could go onto her balcony and call down to the crowd below. But it seemed ungracious, somehow.