Eloisa James - Desperate Duchesses - 6 (22 page)

"Here," he said, plucking her off the seat.

Her body went rigid, but he scooped her against his shoulder and backed out of the carriage.

It was only when he turned around that he realized what an audience they had drawn. By now, most of the Duke of Gilner's household had emerged from the house and were watching transfixed.

Eleanor bent over Lucinda, now sitting on the ground with Oyster in her lap. "If you stand up and come with us, Oyster will come as well," he heard her say.

The coachman was staring straight ahead, as was proper, but Villiers could see his ears practically wiggle as he listened.

"This is Lucinda, and this is Phyllinda," he said. "Lucinda, stand up." She scrambled to her feet.

There was a little rustle among the servants, as if wind blew through a pile of straw.

"Does anyone know where my son is?" Villiers inquired. They all looked around, as if someone else was sure to know. "He left for the orphanage this morning," Villiers continued. "Did anyone see him go or return?" No one said a word. "Is he in the nursery?"

Popper gestured and a footman dashed up the stairs.

"What would Tobias be doing at the orphanage?" Eleanor asked, knitting her brow. "He—"

"He said he was going home," Lucinda put in, looking up from the dog.
This
was unexpected. All eyes turned to the little girl. "You know Tobias?" Eleanor asked.

Lucinda grinned, and Villiers looked past the streaked dirt and dog spit and who knows what to discover that his daughter was an extraordinarily beautiful girl. "He got us outta the sty this morning," she said. "We heard a banging."

"We thought it was Mrs. Minchem coming again," Phyllinda said, her voice high and thready.

He tightened his hold on her. "Mrs. Minchem is incarcerated." "Where's that?" Lucinda asked.

"The Clink," Eleanor explained. "And she's not coming out either."

"Tobias unlocked the sty and took you out," Villiers said, rather stunned. "And then he stowed you in the blanket box."

"He put the blanket down and said as we should just go to sleep and he'd walk home and then sneak us out of the box later."

"So you've been asleep?" Villiers asked, suddenly remembering talk of virginity in the carriage.

"We couldn't sleep last night because of that old sow," Lucinda said. "But I would have just
kicked
her
good if she tried to bite us!" "I was too scared," Phyllinda whimpered.

"We stayed awake all night instead," Lucinda said. "An' then we slept in that box until we heard this doggie barking."

"Don't let Oyster lick your mouth," Eleanor told Lucinda. "Your cheek is all right, but your mouth, no."

"Send someone out on horseback to look for Tobias," Villiers said to Popper. "It's quite a few miles, and he has to have stowed the girls after Lisette sent the carriage back."

"Why didn't he just climb in the carriage and wait for us?" Eleanor said. "He could have told any of the groomsmen and they would have fetched us."

"It's a surprise," Phyllinda whispered against Villiers's cheek. "We weren't supposed to move even after the carriage stopped."

"Why not?"

"We was going to have a bath first," Lucinda said. "We still needs to have that bath. He said our pa won't like us if we aren't clean." She gave Oyster a final pat. "If you don't mind, mister, we'd better have that bath because our pa might be along at any moment."

The entire household went utterly quiet, every eye fixed on Villiers.

He looked down at Lucinda. She stood almost as high as his waist. She had one hand on her hip, and she looked five going on forty. Phyllinda was staring at him expectantly.

"What on earth is going on out here?" Lisette cried, bouncing down the front steps and waving at her maid. "Beatrice, I've been looking for you everywhere! Please fetch my painting materials; I had a fancy to paint a portrait of young children." She smiled at Eleanor. "How could one not want to paint youth, after seeing those beaming faces this morning?"

"Yes, well," Eleanor said, "they did beam after we dispatched with Mrs. Minchem, of course."

"Their joy was wonderful," Lisette said, sighing.

Eleanor turned away and Villiers noticed that she had a remarkably jaundiced look on her face, which wasn't quite fair. Lisette had no way of knowing the particular conversation she was interrupting.

He pulled himself together. "I am your father," he stated, looking first at Lucinda and then at Phyllinda.

Lucinda's eyes narrowed, and Phyllinda's eyes grew round, and Villiers thought he learned quite a lot about each of his daughters in that moment.

He learned even more just seconds later when Tobias appeared around the edge of the carriage, limping slightly. Lucinda dashed over and threw her arms around him, and Phyllinda began struggling and gave Villiers a solid kick before he realized that she wanted to get down.

From a safe position behind Tobias, Lucinda shook her head. "You're not our pa," she said. "We've got the same one as Tobias. He promised us, and so—" "Sorry," Phyllinda said to Villiers, peeking around from behind Lucinda. "He is your father," Tobias said cheerfully.

"is
he?" Lisette said, turning her large eyes on Villiers. "My goodness, but you're very virile, Leopold." There was a little snigger from one of the footmen, which died instantly.

Villiers tried to arrange his face into what he imagined to be a nicely paternal expression. "I am your father. I accidentally lost you when you were quite small, and only found you today."

"You lost both of us," Lucinda said pointedly.

Phyllinda was hiding behind Lucinda, who was behind Tobias. "Yes," Villiers said, trying to meet Phyllinda's eyes. "I lost both of you at the same time, of course." "Remarkably careless," Lisette put in, not helpfully.

"I'm sorry," he said. What else could he say? He held himself as stiffly as he always had, except it was only lately that he felt stiff. Before, he just felt ducal.

Tobias hauled Lucinda out from behind him. "He's not so bad," he said, so that every servant could hear him. Villiers was used to living out his life in front of the household, but this was ridiculous.

The sting of humiliation was practically Dantesque.

He turned to Lisette. "Can you summon your housekeeper to take care of these children? They need baths."

"Nonsense, I'll bring them to the nursery myself," she said. With one look at her smiling blue eyes, both girls trotted away with Lisette, who was promising baths, hot soup, and Lord knew what else.

Villiers walked silently into the house, drawing back to allow Eleanor to climb the stairs before him.

He occupied himself by noticing how small her waist was, and mocking himself for responding in an altogether physical way to the effect achieved by her corset.

At the very top she paused. "Do you know what I keep thinking?" A wildly mischievous smile spread across her face.

"Please don't feel that you have to share it with me."

"Oh, Lucifer, angel of the morning, how art thou fallen,"
she said. And then whisked herself off, grinning.

Two could play at that game. He went straight to his room, out onto the balcony, and, after pausing at her window to make sure her maid wasn't in the room, walked into Eleanor's chamber.

She was washing her hands, and turned around with an undignified squeak.

Villiers wasted no time. Her maid might arrive at any moment. He pulled her into his arms and took that sweet hot mouth of hers, kissing her so hard that he expected a protest, or a shove, or even a curse.

Not from Eleanor.

Her arms went around his neck and one hand curled into his hair; his ribbon fell to the floor and her body came against his with joy. She squirmed against him, she sighed into his mouth, she gave a little moan when his hand stroked her back.

It wasn't that women hadn't done the same before. He knew how to turn a woman's body into molten liquid, to shape and mold her so she couldn't stop panting, so she couldn't remember her own name, let alone his.

But Eleanor's breathing was unsteady before he tried his practiced caresses. It didn't have to do with his title, because he'd already learned that she didn't care about it. It didn't have to do with his beauty, because he didn't have much. And it didn't have to do with his money, because the way she was rubbing herself against him, without shame, without guilt...that had nothing to do with money.

A thought occurred to him and he broke free even as her lips clung. "Are you thinking of
him?"
he demanded.

"Yes," she breathed. "What?"

His heart thudded and he pulled free of her hands.

She pulled him back. "Kiss me again." He looked at her half-open eyes and groaned. There was something about Eleanor—something about the contrast between her composed, snappy personality and the wildness she unleashed in him that made him unable to control himself.

Even if it meant kissing her while she fantasized about someone else.

He kissed her as if to convince both of them that he owned her, that he controlled her. Eleanor was too free to be controlled. And yet when she pressed against him and craved him, obviously craved him...he believed.

He couldn't not believe. He was only a man, after all. He couldn't stop his hand from stroking down her back, circling that small waist.

"Are you wearing a corset?" he murmured in her ear.

She chuckled and he grew even harder, if that were possible. "What do you think?" His hands, practiced and sure, roamed her back. "I think you're wearing a gown of tobin silk, sometimes called Florentine," he said, nibbling her ear. She shrugged. "I have no idea. My sister ordered it." "This piece at your bodice is gauze, a very thin silk made at Paisley." "But am I wearing a corset?" she demanded. "That is the real question."

There was a scrabble at the door and Villiers sprang to her open window. He looked back for one more drink of her, to see the color in her cheeks, her tumbled hair, her desirous eyes

"I'll discover the answer to that question tonight," he said, and it came out sounding like a vow

Eleanor bathed in silence, her mind whirling. She was playing a dangerous game with Villiers. But there was no reason not to play.

Flirting with him felt fresh... clean. It felt as if all the empty places inside her that had yearned for Gideon these many years were being filled, even if Villiers wasn't another Gideon, and even if she wasn't falling in love with him.

She was falling in lust with him, a thought that would make most of the maidens in the
ton
swoon from shock. Men were the only ones allowed to lust; women were allowed only an impassioned yet mysteriously platonic "love." Not to be consummated, naturally, until all the necessary papers and ceremonies were tidied up.

Gideon had been slender, young, and beautiful. Villiers was hard, masculine, and—not bitter, but sardonic. There was a dark core to him that she would never know. Not that she needed or wanted to know it, she reminded herself.

She wanted his body. She couldn't bring herself to feel shame over that, though the world would think she ought to. But she'd never been able to feel particularly shameful when she loved Gideon either.

Villiers's very touch made her melt and shudder. It brought out the same side of her that had enticed Gideon into a haymow, the side of her that dared Villiers to wonder whether she was wearing a corset.

"I'll wear Anne's chemise dress," she told Willa after her bath. The gown was made of pale lilac taffeta, so delicate that the fabric flowed to the ground without pleats or folds. It fit very close on the bodice and buttoned from the bosom to the hem with small canary-yellow buttons.

"Are you sure, my lady? You said that you would never wear it, because we couldn't fit a corset under that bodice," Willa said.

"I have changed my mind." She would wear the gown for Villiers's sake. Willa knew the reason, but they preserved the fiction, the way polite women do. Willa buttoned her up and then went off to borrow Anne's face paints.

"Lady Anne will not be at supper," she reported, coming back with a small box in hand.

"Is she ill?"

"Marie says that she was up and about for a short time this morning, but she felt so poorly that she went back to bed and has been able to take nothing but chicken broth."

Eleanor grinned. "She overindulged last night." She picked up Anne's face paints and began experimenting. First she tried brushing dark lines around her eyes, the way Anne had the night before, but somehow she looked more badger-like than mysterious.

"You've overdone it," Willa said dubiously.

"I look like a badger, don't I?"

"More like someone with the Black Death. Not that I've ever seen the illness, but you look mortal with all that around your eyes."

Eleanor shuddered and rubbed some off. Then removed a little more. Drew some more back on. Put color on her lips and on her cheeks. Rubbed some of that off. Put a little flip of black at the outside edges of her eyes.

Rubbed some off.

Stood up for one final glance...and smiled.

Her gown was the opposite of the stiff satin gowns that had been in style so long. The French chemise had been introduced only last year, and she hadn't even thought of buying one. But her sister had.

Thank goodness for Anne and her predilection for fashion. Willa had piled her hair in waves of curls, with small sprays of violets tucked here and there. And after all that work, her eyes were perfect. Smudged, but not so much that she looked like a dying person. Or a badger.

Her lips were crimson. She made a kissing gesture to the mirror, and Willa burst into laughter.

"Do you think I'm too extravagant?" Eleanor asked, just before turning to leave. "No. Not at all. It's as if—well, it's as if it's more
you,
if you see what I mean, my lady." Apparently more of her meant dressing like a hussy, which was a disconcerting thought.

"It's just too bad that we're not in London," Willa went on happily. "Because those gentlemen would go absolutely mad. They would fall at your feet." "I don't know that I want men at my feet. Would you?" "That's not for me," Willa said. "Why not?"