Eloisa James - Desperate Duchesses - 6 (38 page)

For all his liberal notions, the duke didn't seem quite as pleased with her mother's announcement, once he realized that Gideon's wife was barely in the grave. He was a nice man, Eleanor thought.

Too nice, perhaps. If he'd placed more of a curb on Lisette...She sighed. There was no use thinking about it.

Anne squeezed her hand under the table. "Almost through," her sister whispered. "One more course."

Eleanor gave her a lopsided smile. "I'm so glad you're with me."

Anne leaned over and said in her ear. "You'll see. We'll get revenge—on both of them. I have plans."

Eleanor didn't care.

At that moment she heard the scribble-scrabble of sharp claws on the parquet. Her heart stopped. It couldn't be. It—

Oyster tore around the corner into the dining room, going so quickly that she heard his claws scrape the wood.

"Oh, no!" she yelped, as loud as Oyster himself.

Lisette was sitting to the left of her father. She leaped up, jumped on her chair and screamed. Of course.

Eleanor was running around the table, trying to catch her puppy, and only learned afterwards what happened. Apparently Oyster bounded onto Lisette's chair as if he'd grown wings.

"He's trying to bite me!" Lisette screamed.

Anne said later that it looked as if he was planning to lick her slipper.

Whatever Oyster's intention, he had only a second before Lisette, without breaking her scream, scooped him up and threw him with all her might across the table and through the air. He didn't even have time to bark as he sailed over Gideon's head and slammed into the wall.

Time became slow, like honey pouring from a spoon. The puppy slid down the paneling and collapsed in a boneless heap of too-large paws. "Daughter!" Gilner roared. Still Lisette screamed.

Eleanor found herself on her knees by Oyster, tears streaming down her face. She was afraid to move him. Not that it mattered. He didn't appear to be breathing. Then Villiers was there, sliding one huge hand under the puppy's neck and the other under his body. "We'll take him into the library," he said, straightening.

He must have caught Lisette's eye.

"Don't look at me like that!" she screamed. "You have no right to look at me like that!" "I'm not—"

Villiers said.

"You are, you are! You look at me the same way that bastard son of yours looks at me!"

There was a curious silence in the room, and a feeling that Eleanor suddenly remembered from Lisette's tantrums all those years ago. It felt as if the air in the room was in short supply.

Villiers didn't say a word, just shifted Oyster closer into his arms. His paw flapped lifelessly and Eleanor's tears came harder. Her sister's arms went around her, pressing a handkerchief to her cheek.

"It's your fault!" Lisette shrieked, turning to her father.

He was on his feet as well, looking miserable and exhausted. "Be quiet, Lisette," he said, his voice heavy.

"It's all your fault—all of it. Everything!" She looked around the table, her eyes as bright and hard as cannonballs. "He took away my baby. He took him away and since then nothing has been right."

She turned to her father. "You are a horrible man! You are a despicable, child-stealing—"

Lady Marguerite's voice cut through the tirade with barely controlled rage. "You will not speak to your father that way, Lisette. You sent away your own child because you said he smelled and cried too much."

"That's a falsehood!" Lisette shouted. "A lie because you're all liars!"

Marguerite's hand shot out and she pulled Lisette down from her perch on the chair and then grabbed her chin. "Look at me!
You
told your mother to get rid of that child. You did that to my poor sister, who never recovered. She was never the same from the moment she gave that child to his father. She did it because she knew you would ruin that boy's life. But don't you ever, ever, blame another soul for that."

"I
will
blame him," Lisette said, her voice a horrible sobbing half shriek. "I will blame him because it is his fault. And
his,
as well." She pointed at Villiers. "He brought that boy here, that horrible boy, who made me think about my own child, the one you took from me. The one my own mother stole from me."

Eleanor couldn't bear another moment. She reached out and plucked Oyster from Villiers's arms before he could stop her. Then she began to walk away.

"And you!" she heard on a rising shriek. "You think I don't know what—"

There was a sound, of the slap of water, and Lisette's voice broke off.

Eleanor glanced over her shoulder. Anne had apparently snatched a pitcher of water from the sideboard and thrown it directly into Lisette's face.

Eleanor just kept going, down the hall to the library. The footman threw open the door, such an appalled expression on his face that she realized everything must have been audible in the entry.

"My lady," Popper said, hurrying to her as she sat down on a sofa. "I'll bring a cold cloth."

"There's no need," Eleanor said, icily calm in her grief. "It won't help." Oyster's head had fallen over the crook of her arm and she couldn't see his eyes. She closed her own for a moment, and opened them to find Tobias standing before her. All color had drained from his face.

"It was me," he said hoarsely. "I did it."

"You didn't do it. Lisette threw him against a wall."

"I did it," he repeated, his shoulders back as if he faced a magistrate. "I rubbed a beef steak on the bottom of her slippers, and then I took Oyster out of your room and let him go"

Eleanor swallowed. "Why?"

"Because I wanted the duke to see what she was like. I never thought she'd kill him. I never thought that!"

He looked like a boy who had never cried in his life. His skin was drawn tightly over the bones of his face.

Tears slipped down Eleanor's cheeks again. She slipped one arm out from under Oyster and held it out to him. "I know you didn't. And Oyster knows you didn't."

He stood there, frozen, and she thought, My God, he's never been hugged. But then suddenly his wiry body was pressed against hers, and a not very clean hand fell on Oyster's fur, and they were both crying.

Someone handed her a large handkerchief of such fine quality that it could belong only to one person. He slipped a hand under Oyster's body. "Don't," she said. "Not yet."

His eyes met hers over the head of his weeping child. "But I think he's breathing," Leopold said softly. "Tobias, he's breathing. Oyster isn't dead."

Popper trotted up with a wet cloth. They turned Oyster over. His legs seemed boneless, so limp that Eleanor secretly lost hope again. Tobias began gently rubbing the cloth around Oyster's closed eyes and around his muzzle, crooning, "Come on, boy. Come on, old boy. Open your eyes, boy."

Oyster didn't stir. Eleanor pressed her lips together.

"Smelling salts!" Popper said, and left the room again.

"I can feel his heart," Leopold said, his deep voice steady. "Just keep doing it, son. Oyster will wake up."

"We'll go running as soon as you wake up," Tobias said, his voice hoarse from crying. "I'll take you out to the raspberry bushes and you can look for a rat. Remember when we looked for a rat?

Remember that, Oyster? Come on, old boy, wake up!"

Tears were running down his face again, so Eleanor pulled him a little closer.

"Shit," he muttered, reasserting his masculinity.

"I agree," she said.

"He's not waking up." Despair cracked his voice. He said an even worse curse word, one that Eleanor had only heard once before. "Give him a moment," Leopold said.

Popper reappeared, waving a vial of smelling salts. The duke twisted the cork, putting the bitter smell directly under the puppy's nose. "Ew!" Tobias said, turning his head away.

In so doing, he missed the moment when Oyster opened his eyes and looked blearily around. But he didn't miss Oyster's weak lick. "He—He—He—"

"He's alive," his father said in his measured way. But Eleanor knew to look past the magnificent ruby velvet coat, past the thick eyelashes. The Duke of Villiers was watching his boy bury his face in Oyster's fur, and she saw love in his eyes.

"Tobias," Eleanor said softly, "Oyster is yours now."

Tobias raised his head. "What?"

"I'm giving you Oyster." She smiled at him. "He loves you, and you love him." "But he loves you best!"

"I don't take him looking for rats." She ran her fingers through Oyster's short hair. The puppy suddenly trembled all over, as if a stiff wind had ruffled through his fur. "He's pretty bored with me.

And when I thought he was dead—well, I think he's going to live to a good old age now. But just in case, I want him to do all the ratting he can."

"You don't have to," Tobias said. "We could share him. Maybe he could sleep with me sometimes. I know you like him in your bedchamber at night."

"I'm afraid that wouldn't really work."

Oyster tumbled off her lap. He seemed a bit wobbly, but gave himself a vigorous shake.

"He'll love living in the nursery with you. You have to let all the other children play with him, though."

Tobias nodded. Oyster put his paws onto Tobias's knees, and he hoisted the dog into his lap.

"He would really be your dog, even if the other children can play with him," Eleanor said, watching Oyster lick Tobias's teary face.

"But you'll be right there," he burst out. "Won't she?" He looked at his father. "Won't she? You said you were going to choose between them, and now you have to admit that the one out there is cracked. That Lisette, she's a bleeding nightmare!"

"I would be honored," Leopold said, looking up and meeting her eyes.

Eleanor's throat ached. She'd seen his eyes rest on her arm, encircling Tobias. And he finally understood what Lisette was like.

But she wanted more. She wanted someone who loved her for herself. Who didn't think she was good enough to bed but not good enough to mother—and who changed his mind only when she proved herself maternal enough. She wanted to be married for herself.

"Come on," Tobias said, sounding as if he were pleading with Oyster again. "You'll marry him, won't you? He's not so bad. That way, Oyster can stay with both of us."

She shook her head, taking a deep breath. "I can't, Tobias."

"Please!" The word sounded wrung from his chest.

"It will be all right," she said, oddly touched. "I promise you can keep Oyster."

"But I—I like you," he said, the words dropping into the silent room. "An' the girls do too. You'll see, we'll be good. You'll like Violet. She's not real pretty, like Lucinda and Phyllinda, but she's—she's nice. And—"

"I can't," she said, standing up. "I just can't, Tobias. I'm sorry."

Leopold made a sharp movement, but said nothing.

Oyster jumped down and started frolicking around her ankles. Obviously his little brain had completely forgotten what had just happened to him. "Stay, Oyster," she said. Wonder of wonders, he actually sat down and wagged his tail. "Good dog."

It seemed a very long way to the door, but that was probably because of the silence behind her.

Knole House, country residence of the Duke of Gilner

June 23, 1784

"I
can't fight with you," Leopold said flatly. The sun was barely over the horizon and the air was surprisingly chilly.

"I didn't give you a choice," Astley said. He was pacing out the wet grass, his rapier unsheathed and ready.

"I'm a father."

"You should have thought of that before you debauched Eleanor. Before you made her fall in love with you and then chose a raving lunatic over her." "I might well kill you. I rarely lose."

Astley started pacing in the other direction, measuring the ground. "Ada's dead. Death doesn't frighten me."

"I thought you were in love with Eleanor."

Astley's face crumpled for a moment. "I am. But I loved Ada too. Eleanor was right about that. It's all so complicated..." He shook himself and kept pacing. "If I kill you, I'll have to leave the country.

But the children—"

"Cart them away with you. You can't tell me that anyone will care if
you
leave, let alone them. You?

The Duke of Villiers? You have no family, other than your clutch of bastards. Everyone will be glad to see you take them away from decent society."

"Are you ready to fight?" Villiers said, a wave of ice filling his veins. Astley was right. Well, almost. Elijah and Jemma would care if he had to leave England permanently. But no one else would.

It would probably be better for Eleanor, actually. She wouldn't even have to see him. He hadn't been able to sleep, slowly taking himself though an understanding of his catastrophic idiocy. He had spurned Eleanor because he thought Lisette would be a better mother for his children. But Lisette, he now understood, looked upon children as if they were playmates—or worse, playthings.

All the time, Eleanor was just the mother they needed: a woman who looked problems straight on, who didn't ever lie or pretend. Tobias had known that. Hell, even Oyster knew how perfect she was.

So why was he such an idiot? Why was he the only one who didn't know what motherhood looked like?

But even that was just a digression: the real question was why he was the only one who didn't know what
love
looked like. Who didn't realize that his heart, that stubborn organ that he'd always ignored, would be seared with agony by the idea of never seeing Eleanor again?

Why couldn't he have known that was—that was love. Real love. The kind of love that never goes away.

"En garde!"
Astley cried.

Leopold raised his rapier, still thinking.

"I fully plan to kill you," Astley said pleasantly. "Perhaps you should pay attention."

Leopold met Astley's eyes and saw his determination. "In which event, you'll be the one to leave the country."

"No one cares what I do," Astley said. "My mother's dead. My father's dead. Eleanor doesn't love me anymore. I don't want to sound like a sniveling schoolboy, but I no longer have the faintest interest in seeing tomorrow. And if I happen to be around for it, it won't matter whether I'm in England or India."