Eloisa James - Desperate Duchesses - 6 (13 page)

Her mother appeared at her side. "Why?" the duchess whispered, horror in her voice. "Why?"

"I am wearing Anne's gown, precisely as you bade me," Eleanor said to her, sacrificing her sister without guilt. "You instructed me to listen to her advice as regards men, Mother. You said that I must learn from her experience." "But—But—"

"Doesn't Eleanor look absolutely ravishing?" Anne put in.

"She does!" Lisette crowed, joining them. Lisette had never expressed a stick of jealousy, as far as Eleanor knew. "I wish that we had more visitors to admire you." The smile fell from her face. "We never seem to have visitors anymore. My aunt, Lady Marguerite, tends to discourage our neighbors from joining us for dinner. Oh, I know!" She waved madly at Popper.

He was mixing rum punch at the sideboard.

"Popper!
Popper!"

The butler turned around. "Yes, my lady?"

"Send a footman to Squire Thestle immediately, if you please. Do beg him the courtesy of joining us for supper, he and his lovely wife. And Roland, if he's at home." She turned back to Eleanor, smiling. "Sir Roland would be perfect for you, dearest. He has a Roman nose. Yes, and a Grecian chin."

"Perhaps you could turn him to currency and trade him on the Exchange," Anne remarked. "Villiers, how kind of you to finally decide to greet us. You appeared frozen in your place, as if you had turned into a Roman statue yourself."

"I was struck dumb by your beauty," Villiers said, bowing.

Eleanor just stopped herself from rolling her eyes.

"My lady," Popper was saying in some distress."! am not sure... in Lady Marguerite's absence—"

"For goodness sake," the duchess burst out. "You'll forgive me, dear Lisette, if I observe that a strong hand is needed in training this household." She rounded on Popper without pausing for breath. "I do hope that you are not questioning Lady Lisette's direct order? We will, naturally, wait for supper until the squire and his family arrive. I am not hungry, although I trust your cook can bring us something to nibble on."

Eleanor was hungry, but she took a sip of her rum punch instead. It was surprisingly good, rather sweet and fruity. She had always thought men drank fiery drinks, meant to straighten the backbone.

Popper had a noticeably wild-eyed look, but he trotted into the hallway. "That looks very good,"

Lisette said, noticing Eleanor's glass. "What is it?"

"Rum punch," Anne said. "It's utterly delicious, which is why gentlemen tend to gulp it all themselves. Here, darling, you may have mine. I haven't even touched it. Villiers, you know none of us can match you at chess, and besides, it's such a deadly boring game that we would fall over with fatigue if you started a match with one of us. Do you know any other games, perhaps something all of us might play?"

"No," Villiers said. He wasn't the sort of man who could be easily flirted with, Eleanor noted.

Anne didn't seem to notice. "I expect we have at least an hour before the squire arrives," she observed. "We could have an interval of improving conversation." Her tone made it clear that she'd rather jump into a lake.

"I know exactly what we should do to amuse ourselves," Lisette said. "What do you propose?"

Villiers asked, bending solicitously toward her. Eleanor drank some more of her rum punch. "We'll play knucklebones!" Lisette said, smiling at him.

There was a moment's silence.
"Knucklebones?"
the duchess asked. Her tone was not friendly, but Lisette was oblivious.

"You might know it better as dibs," she said happily. "It's no end of fun." She waved at a footman and a moment later was holding a pile of knobby bones and a small wooden ball.

Eleanor peered at the bones with some interest. It went without saying that her mother had never allowed a game so unsanitary and altogether common in the ducal nursery.

"Now," Lisette said, "we must make ourselves comfortable. Of course we need to be able to toss the bones properly, and that means a wood floor. Perhaps I should have that big rug taken up." She looked over at the remaining footman as if about to order him to get to work on the spot.

"Not tonight," Anne said. She looked distinctly amused. "There's plenty of bare floor; we are standing on some at this moment. But where do we sit, Lisette?"

"On the floor, of course," Lisette said.

"On the floor," Anne repeated. "Of course." Without hesitation, she gracefully sank to the ground, and beamed up at them from the wide circle of her skirts. "Do join me."

The duchess cleared her throat with a sound of utter disbelief.

Eleanor didn't want to sit on the floor. Her side panniers were likely to spring into the air and throw her skirts over her head. On the other hand, she didn't want to align herself with her mother, especially given that Villiers was apparently finding the whole idea charming.

At least, that was what she gleaned from the laughter in his eyes. Naturally, he said nothing. Lisette, meanwhile, had dropped to the floor, scattered the bones, and was now practicing throwing the ball in the air and catching it.

"Knucklebones is a game for children," the duchess pointed out.

Lisette's mouth drooped. "I know. I do wish we had children in the house."

"But we do have a child in the house," Villiers said.

Lisette blinked up at him. "They all went home."

"My son is here."

Being Lisette, she didn't wonder how Villiers had a son, given as he had no wife. "Leopold, how wonderful you are," she crowed, as if he had produced that son solely for her pleasure.

Eleanor's mother had been occupying herself by glaring at Anne's bent head, but now she jerked around to stare at Villiers instead. She, if not Lisette, knew perfectly well that Villiers had never married.

"Award perhaps?" she asked, her tone just this side of glacial. "Surely the word
son
was a slip of the tongue, Duke?"

"In fact, Tobias is my son," Villiers said. He turned to the footman. "Summon my son from the nursery, if you please."

"How lucl

"Mother,"
Eleanor said, feeling a pulse of sympathy. She had realized long ago that her mother found situations even slightly out of the ordinary to be frightfully upsetting. It wasn't that the duchess had a puritanical attitude toward sin, precisely—but she had a positive loathing for irregularities of any sort.

"Hush," her mother said, rounding on her. "You are far too innocent to understand the implications of this—this—of—" She ground to a halt, and then said, "Your son should not be in the vicinity of decent gentlewomen, Villiers. I should not have to emphasize such a common point of decency.

You have offered your hostess a monstrous insult."

Villiers's gray eyes rested thoughtfully on the duchess and then moved on to Lisette. "I have an illegitimate son," he explained. "I apologize for insulting you by bringing him under your roof."

Eleanor felt like applauding. Villiers's voice was so composed that not even a tinge of irony leaked into his words.

Since Lisette cared nothing for irregularities and indeed created them on a regular basis, she smiled up at Villiers. "You're very lucky."

"You see what you are doing?" the duchess hissed at Villiers. "Contaminating the ears of the innocent. She doesn't even
understand your
effrontery." If Villiers had himself under such tight control that he appeared emotionless, her mother was on the verge of losing her temper altogether.

Eleanor glimpsed the bleak look in Villiers's eyes, and the unmindful—though not innocent—smile playing around Lisette's lips. She hated the choking sense of inferiority she felt whenever her mother was about to call someone stupid. It didn't even matter that she herself was not the subject of the diatribe.

What she hated, and had hated since childhood, was the moment when her mother lost control of her temper and flayed all those in her path.

"I have half a mind to leave this house immediately," Her Grace said now, her voice rising.

"Villiers, you are a fool if you believe that—"

Something snapped inside Eleanor: that same frail thread of patience that had carried her through twenty-two years of her mother's bouts of irritability. She was tired of hearing people called stupid.

She was tired of agreeing with her mother's pronouncements simply because opposition took effort.

"Mother," she said, stepping forward to put a hand on Villiers's arm. "The duke has done me the inestimable honor of asking me to marry him."

There was a moment of frozen silence. Even the gentle rattle of Anne's tossing the knucklebones ceased. The only sound Eleanor heard was the muttering of two footmen stationed in the hallway.

"I have accepted," she added, just to make everything clear.

Villiers's eyelashes flickered as he glanced around the group. Really, his eyelashes were too thick for a man. "I was overcome by joy," he said solemnly. "I shall never forget the moment that she accepted my hand."

He drew Eleanor's hand under the crook of his arm and gave her a smile. She retaliated by giving him a little pinch.

Lisette looked between them. "Are you saying that you're going to be a duchess, Ellie?"

Since her mother was still paralyzed, trapped between outrage and ambition, Eleanor smiled down at Lisette. "Yes."

Anne leaped to her feet and gave Eleanor a kiss. "What a surprise!" she cried, throwing a soulful look at Villiers. "Ah, Duke, you'll never know what a treasure you're stealing from those of us who love Eleanor best."

Eleanor wished she had her hand free so she could pinch Anne as well.

"Isn't that lovely," Lisette breathed, rising as well. "I adore weddings. So pretty. So festive." She waved at the footman who had just entered the room. "Champagne, James!"

James obediently trotted back out.

Apparently, that was the extent of Lisette's interest in Villiers's announcement. "Why don't we start our game?" she asked, dropping back to the floor. Anne immediately sat back down, skirts spreading in an elegant circle around her.

Eleanor's mother cleared her throat and turned to Villiers."! will be blunt. I am not particularly pleased, given the circumstances."

"I have six illegitimate children," Villiers informed her, not kindly.

She visibly paled.

"Mother," Eleanor said,"! know this has been a terrific shock."

"My daughter is marrying a duke," the duchess said between clenched teeth. "True, he apparently has the morals of a squirrel, but that's my cross to bear."

"Actually, the children will be Eleanor's cross to bear," Villiers said all too cheerfully.

"I gather you have this particular boy with you for a purpose," the duchess said."! must suppose you are conveying him to an appropriate household in the country. Surely you need not have effected this errand in person?"

Eleanor intervened before Villiers could deliver a death blow by informing the duchess that he intended to raise the children under his own roof. "There's no reason to discuss such particulars now."

Her mother's eyes snapped to her. "Eleanor, you must forget that you ever heard this discussion. If your father were here, he would talk to the duke himself. But since he is ungrateful enough to be in Russia with your brother, I shall undertake that task myself. Duke, we shall discuss this tomorrow.

In private!"

"I live in anticipation," Villiers drawled.

His future mother-in-law gave him a look of extreme dislike, but she held her tongue. "Do join us!"

Lisette called from the floor.

"Are you suggesting that I sprawl about on the floor?" the duchess demanded.

At that moment the door opened and a thin boy in a brown velvet suit entered. He was dressed like any boy of the aristocracy, Eleanor thought, though he clearly wasn't one of them. There was something wild and proud in his face, as if he were more duke than the duke.

He walked forward and bent his head. "Bow," his father said, though not sharply. He bowed.

Anne and Lisette both looked up. "Sit next to me!" Lisette caroled, patting the floor. "I am having a terrible time catching this little ball."

The boy was like a miniature version of Villiers, from his cool gray eyes to his extreme self-possession. "May I present my son," Villiers said. "His name is Tobias."

The boy turned his head and looked at his father.

"He prefers to be called Juby," Villiers added.

It was the first time she had ever seen Villiers bested, and by someone less than half his weight.

Eleanor stepped forward and smiled.

"Lady Eleanor," Villiers said. "My future wife." There was just the slightest edge of irony in his tone.

Eleanor dropped a curtsy. The boy bowed his head again. He was fiercely beautiful in the way some young males are, as if their whole life were being lived through their eyes, and their large noses, and their ungainly limbs.

"Bow," his father said unemotionally.

He bowed.

"Lady Eleanor's mother, the Duchess of Montague."

This time Tobias bowed without being told, which made Eleanor feel better. If this wild boy interpreted her mother's murderous gaze properly, then perhaps she herself wasn't such an incompetent coward for having given in to her so many times in the last twenty-two years.

"On the floor are Lady Lisette and Mrs. Bouchon," Villiers continued. "Bow."

Tobias bowed. Lisette looked up again and patted the ground. Naturally, Tobias dropped instantly into the place she indicated.

"I shall retire until supper to compose myself," the duchess announced, her voice indicating that she was on the very edge of a swoon. She paused, clearly to allow Villiers and Eleanor to chorus their protests. Their eyes met.

"You must be exhausted by the long trip, Mother," Eleanor said.

"Though one certainly couldn't tell," Villiers put in. "You look as exquisite as ever, Duchess."

She automatically raised one shoulder in a coquettish gesture. "Oh, how can you say so!" she said, though without her usual vigor. "The dust! The dryness. We were easily half a day in the carriage."