Eloisa James - Desperate Duchesses - 6 (18 page)

It didn't have anything to do with his ducal crest, as he seemed to think. It was the moment when the immaculately dressed, starched and beruffled duke suddenly turned wild, his mouth hot on hers, his hands gripping her hard.

This kiss was unlike any she'd shared with Gideon. There was nothing sweet about Villiers's kiss.

And
Villiers
didn't feel like the right way to think about him.

She broke free and his lips slid, hot, across her cheek. "What's your name?" she whispered, knowing it perfectly well. Leopold was too accustomed to women's avid attempts to claim intimacy with him.

He was spoiled by too much adoration.

He said it against her lips. "You do remember my title?"

"I don't care about your title any more than—" But she didn't want to talk, so she turned toward his mouth again, starving as a new-born chick. He made a growling sound in his throat, and their tongues tangled. She was shaking, she thought dimly, pushing her fingers into his hair and pulling it free of its ribbon so that it slid like rough silk across her skin.

"Leopold," he said.

She wasn't listening because she was burning, breathless. "Leopold," he growled.

She turned her mouth, wanting more of
him,
not words.

"You are a surprise," he said a moment later, pulling back again.

Men never wanted to kiss as long as she did, she thought, and then pulled herself together. "A surprise?"

Instinctively she knew instantly that she had to—
must
—cover up the extent to which she was unable to think because of this craving. For him. For this man who was looking at her with absolute self-possession, pulling his hair back and swiftly retying its ribbon. Apparently the duke didn't tolerate being unkempt for long.

She managed a shrug. "Because I enjoy your kisses? Since you imply that every woman falls prey to the ducal title, how do you know that I'm not belatedly captivated simply by your crest?"

"Are you? After all... I am the second duke with whom you've cavorted, if we count Astley. And I think we must count Astley, mustn't we?"

There was just the subtlest insinuation to his voice. "I was in love with Gideon," she said, not bothering to try to fix her own hair. It was probably a mess, but she refused to care. Instead she picked up the anisette, but it tasted sickly sweet now, and she put it down after it had barely touched her tongue. "I suspect that I loved him more than you loved Bess."

"I can't imagine how we would determine such a thing," Villiers—no,
Leopold—
said.

"I wanted to marry him," she confessed. "I thought we would marry."

"So I surmised. Since I can't imagine that Astley chose his languid wife over you, I gather that fate intervened."

The pleasure of that compliment warmed her. "Fate in the form of his father's will."

"I expect you did love him more than I loved Bess, then," Leopold said. "For I never thought to marry her. I was infatuated with her laugh. She had a wonderful chuckle. I wanted all her laughter for myself."

Eleanor raised an eyebrow. "I would have thought that most young men felt possessive about other attributes of bonny Bess."

"Oh, I wanted those too," he said wryly.

"You mean you didn't—" She stopped.

"Elijah intervened before my adoration of Bess could lead me to convince myself that I should offer her money," Leopold said. "I'm afraid that I merely stood about the inn adoring her, and never thought about money until it was too late."

"Oh."

"Elijah, of course, didn't need to offer money because he was so very pretty."

He would hate sympathy, but she felt a flash of it anyway, followed by a wave of rage at stupid Bess for following the luscious Duke of Beaumont wherever he willed her. Presumably to Beaumont's bed.

"I must take another look at Beaumont in the future. I'm afraid that I always dismissed him—he has that tiresome puritanical look—but now that I know he stole your barmaid's attentions..."

He laughed, and Eleanor liked the sound. "Your problem is not choosing between myself and Beaumont, but choosing between myself and young Roland."

"And yours," she countered, "has nothing to do with a barmaid. Instead you are faced by two nubile daughters of dukes."

"You think I should consider Lisette?"

She knew perfectly well that he was considering Lisette. She'd seen the way he watched her, with a kind of fascination, as if she were a fairy plaything. "She's exquisite," she said. "I would marry her, too."

He raised an eyebrow at the detachment in her voice. With luck, that meant he hadn't guessed that she was lusting after him with embarrassing heat.

"I wouldn't marry a woman for her beauty," Villiers said. She caught just a trace, just the smallest trace, of the unlovely boy thrown over for his handsome friend. "I need a mother for my children."

"Lisette loves children," Eleanor said, meaning it. "She truly loves them."

"I can tell. And she does so much work with those orphans. I believe that she wouldn't be put off by illegitimacy."

"Absolutely not. Lisette would never think twice about a person's origins."

"She could teach them to care as little about society as she does," Leopold said. "I asked her why she was never presented, for example, and she just laughed. She didn't care."

"Lisette has never cared for convention. It's not in her nature to kow-tow to someone because he is of high rank."

"I've seen that in Quakers. But never in a woman of the aristocracy. It's unexpectedly alluring."

"Yes," Eleanor said, gathering her wrap. "Lisette is definitely alluring." She was
not
going to say anything about Lisette's inability to care for anything for very long. Or, for that matter, about her betrothal.

"Do you really mean it?" he said. Now he didn't look like a Leopold any longer: she was faced once more by the Duke of Villiers.

"Mean what?"

"That we might treat our betrothal as something of a... temporary state, perhaps to be dissolved by either of us."

"Of course," she said quickly. "I am certainly looking forward to Roland's visit tomorrow."

"So he is Roland. And I?"

"Villiers," she said.

He didn't like that. His gray eyes turned cold, and she was glad that Roland had made an appearance, glad that she didn't care too much. "You are the Duke of Villiers," she told him.

That glare of his probably withered other people. Those who cared more. But she was determined not to care—in fact, never to care that much about any man again, she reminded herself. "That's not to say that I'm not interested in marrying you." "Then call me Leopold."

"Perhaps, if we decide to marry," she said, standing up. "But I think that you are far more Villiers than you are Leopold. My mother always calls my father by his title." "And yet you refer to Roland by his first name."

She took her time winding her wrap around her breasts, even though Villiers had never given her the satisfaction of knowing that he was looking at them. "Roland is a Roland," she said finally.

"And I'm a Villiers?"

"Lisette is a Lisette," she pointed out. "It's a lovely, flirtatious name, perfect for someone with flyaway curls and a giggle."

He raised an eyebrow at that description. "Remind me not to cross you. Does your name suit you?"

"Oh, Eleanor," she said. "I'm certainly an Eleanor." Or at least she was from her mother's point of view.

"Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, and Queen of England," he said, sounding amused again.

That didn't make her amused, so she said her good-night and retired to her chamber

Knole House, country residence of the Duke of Gilner

June 18, 1784

Villiers never woke early in the morning. Finchley, his valet, knew better than to even appear at his door before eleven. His ideal day consisted of playing chess most of the afternoon and then making love most of the night. He never paid calls, and he had discovered as a youth that a gift for chess translated into a gift for numbers; he gave his estate manager an hour a week, and within a few years his net worth had grown to one of the greatest in England.

He pulled himself out of sleep thinking that someone was beating down the door, only to suppose groggily that rain was crashing against his window. A moment later he realized that mere rain couldn't be causing that amount of noise. The window seemed about to shatter.

It must be hail. The worst hailstorm to hit southern England in years.

Villiers threw back the covers, fought his way through the bed hangings, and staggered out of bed.

Another blast of hail hit the window, shaking it so hard that the drapes actually shuddered. He walked over to the waiting basin of water and thrust his face into it. Then he straightened up and shook himself, chilly droplets flying in all directions. Finally he pulled back the drapes, expecting a sour gray light.

But instead there was sunshine. He closed his eyes and raked his hands through his hair. No hail.

That implied...

He grabbed his towel and wound it around his waist, unlatched the door, pushed it open and stepped onto the stone balcony that looked over the gardens.

A thirteen-year-old boy was standing on the grass below, eyes bright.

"For Christ's sake," Villiers snarled, squinting down at Tobias. "What hour is it?" "Late," Tobias said cheerfully. "You don't have any clothing on." He leaned against the balustrade and stared down at his progeny. "What in hell's name do you think you're doing?" "Waking you up."

"How did you know which window was mine?" "Lisette told me."

"Lisette? Lady Lisette told you which window to throw rocks at? You could have broken the glass."

"Actually, she threw quite a lot of them," Tobias allowed. "She just went around to the side of the house."

"What is happening out here?" came a smol

He actually started. Eleanor wandered from her window onto what he now understood was a shared balcony—her chamber, it appeared, was next to his. Unlike him, she was swathed in some sort of thick wrapper that went from her collarbone to her toes.

Yet her clothing didn't matter. There was something about her that made him want to nibble her all over. It had to be the dissolute appeal of her. Her hair tumbled down her back, not in pretty ringlets, but in the kind of wild disarray that a man wants to find falling around his face as he thrusts up and

—

Villiers jerked his mind away, suddenly aware that his towel had tented in front.

Now Eleanor, too, had discovered that they shared a balcony. She didn't turn a hair at the idea that he was practically naked. No blushing. The corner of her mouth tipped up and she looked him over, so fast that he would have missed it if he hadn't been watching her at precisely that moment.

Villiers had no problem being surveyed. He had no illusions about the beauty of his face. His title and money brought women to his bed, but his body kept them there.

But Eleanor turned away as if he were no more interesting than a grasshopper and called down to Tobias. "You're cracked if you think someone like the duke is going to get up this early."

Tobias smiled, a bit shyly. "We thought—"

"We?" Eleanor asked, straightening up.

"Lady Lisette thought that the duke might like to go riding," Tobias said.

"Can you imagine the duke on a horse without being dressed head to foot in gold lace?" Eleanor said mockingly. She glanced at him for a split second, but he felt it like a caress. "Your father takes so long to get dressed that the sun would be going down by the time he emerged from his chamber."

She had said just the right thing. Villiers watched Tobias's grin get bigger. He was a fool to hope that it was the words
your father
that made the boy crack a smile. Tobias was too serious.

He leaned back against the balustrade again and deliberately crossed his arms, because it made his muscles look even larger and he had the feeling that Eleanor liked muscles. Thank God, there was no way that Tobias could see the tent in his towel from

below.

He moved his legs apart a bit, just in case she wanted to take another look. Obviously nothing would shock the woman.

"Am I to understand that you think I couldn't be ready in less time than you?" he demanded.

She didn't look at him. "Where's Lisette?" she called down to Tobias.

Villiers moved away from the edge of the balcony. He didn't mind showing some skin to Eleanor.

But Lisette was a gently bred lady, with a kind of innocence that made her eyes shine with a deep-down purity.

Eleanor was leaning over the balustrade now, bantering with Tobias. Her bottom was very round under her thick robe. She was the antithesis of innocent. She made a man long to wake her up early enough so they could step out on the balcony with the first dawn light-He wrenched his mind away again and readjusted his towel. This was becoming painful. It was rather fascinating to imagine how Eleanor became the woman she was, given that her mother seemed altogether wedded to convention.

Whereas Lisette, who seemed to be living more or less without a chaperone, was clearly untouched by the baser passions of the body.

"Women take much more time to dress than do men," he told Eleanor, deciding that he ought to give her one more chance to look him over before he returned to his chamber.

"You're not most men," she said flatly. She did turn to face him, but her eyes stayed on his face rather than dropping lower. There was just a tinge of rosy color in her cheeks. Good.

He widened his stance again, daring her to look down. "You're right. I'm not like other men," he said.

Eleanor choked with laughter. "Because your sense of consequence is bigger." "And the rest of me too," he said, wondering if he'd lost his mind. The Duke of Villiers never traded bawdy quips on a balcony. He never—ever—
flirted
"That remains to be seen," Eleanor said saucily.

He bit back a grin. The Duke of Villiers didn't smile in the morning. He squinted at the sky. "What time is it, anyway?"

"Don't look so afraid. I assure you that the sun isn't made out of green cheese," she said to him. "I suppose it's around eight o'clock."