Eloisa James - Desperate Duchesses - 6 (34 page)

Love afters not with his brief hours and weeks.
. .Perhaps he was right about that, but it was all so much more complex than that simple sentence promised. Gideon still loved her He did. Shakespeare said that love
looked on tempests and was never shaken.

Yet hers was shaken. There was no other way to describe it. Her love had altered. All these years she'd been loving Gideon, and not allowing herself to be angry at him for his cowardice, for not loving her as deeply as she loved him.

But it came down to it, she was the one lacking in true depth of feeling.

After a while, tired of trying to sort it all out, she dropped the book to the floor by the bath. Then she realized it might get wet, and shoved it so hard that it spun under the bed and disappeared.

She wasn't even surprised when the door to the balcony silently opened. It was a relief, really.

Villiers—
Leopold—
wasn't in love with her, so she didn't have to align her feelings for him with the claims made in a love sonnet. She could just enjoy being indecent. Shameful. Outrageous.

When she didn't hear anything more after the soft click of the door, she pulled one leg slowly out of the water and pointed her toe. She had nice legs, if she said so herself. She was particularly fond of the roundness of her kneecap.

After discovering one had a shallow soul, it was very reassuring to be able to retreat to the solid reality of a kneecap.

Though she'd heard nothing, a pair of burning lips suddenly pressed the left side of her neck. She obligingly bent her head to the right to give him more access, and two hands slid around her from behind and cupped her breasts.

"Lookwhat I found." His voice was a low rumble at her ear. "A brassy baggage, waiting in her bath for a man to wander by so she can entice him with her skills." The odd thing was that the sound of his voice sent heat to her legs even faster than the sight of his hands caressing her breasts, even faster than
feeling
him caress her.

"Villiers," she said, dropping her head back against his shoulder and ignoring his foolish comment.

He bit her ear, and growled. "What did you call me?"

It was a command, a brand, a thrilling display of domination and authority. She felt her mouth curve. "Leslie."

One hand slid over her stomach.

"Try again."

"Landry."

He snorted and his hand slid down another few inches, hovering. Eleanor just stopped her hips from arching toward him. Inside, she kept thinking,
Please, please, please...

"Leopold," she whispered. "Leo."

He turned his head and caught her in a kiss, an erotic, dizzying kiss that was so absorbingly like a conversation that she didn't even realize at first that his hand was between her legs. Then it all blended together into the taste of his tooth powder, flavored with something—cinnamon, perhaps—and the smell of him, and the dancing, sleek power of those wicked fingers.

It wasn't until after he made her arch so high that water rolled off her body, until she cried his name aloud, until her body flared into brief, blazing perfection, that she remembered Gideon.

Gideon was back. He was in love with her. Why was she lying in a bath waiting for a different duke to prowl illicitly through the door?

What sort of woman did that make her?

Obviously Leopold was wasting no time thinking about Gideon, or his own fiancee, for that matter.

Before her knees had regained strength, he bundled her out of the bath, wrapping her in a towel. She swayed on her feet, her body still singing with pleasure, her mind confusedly trying to sort through her moral iniquities.

"No going to sleep," he muttered at her.

"That felt so good. I could do it all night."

He laughed. "Just what a man most wants to hear."

"Untrue," she said, opening her eyes. He had put her on the bed and was rubbing her hair dry with a towel.

"I assure you that it is."

"Men don't want their wives to be too desirous," she said flatly. "I believe it makes them nervous."

"Never having been married, I couldn't say. But just in case you're right, I'm glad we're not married,"

Villiers said, throwing aside the towel and standing back as if he were a pirate about to ravish a fainting maiden.

"Don't be like Lisette, and pretend that rules don't matter," she said, raising her head and then letting it flop back down because he wasn't looking at her face. "They matter.

We're not supposed to make love like this without marriage, because marriage matters." "I agree. It does."

She studied him for a moment, but he had bent over so he could run his lips over her ribs, and tease the curve of her breast. He wasn't following the conversation very closely. "Immoral, illegal—and yet so—beautiful." She sighed. "Come on, princess." Villiers pulled her upright.

She hadn't realized that he was wearing a wrapper. It was deep black velvet, embroidered with pearl arabesques.

"I don't like this garment," she said, tracing an embroidered design with her finger. "I didn't buy it for you."

She eased the thick velvet apart in the front. Suddenly she wasn't in the least sleepy. Leopold's chest was broad and ribbed with muscle. He didn't say a word, so she put her face against him and just inhaled.

He smelled wonderful. Faintly of starched linen. But also of decadence, and privacy, and plain dealings.

Even better, of private sin.

She slid her hands inside the robe and the fabric fell over her arms, too thick, too luxurious. "I don't like this wrapper," she murmured. She found his nipple and licked it. The tiniest shiver passed through his frame.

"I didn't ask for sartorial advice," he said. He managed to sound indifferent, but she wasn't fooled by him any longer. Leopold had perfected a blase, ducal manner. But he wasn't indifferent.

"You care," she said, nipping him with her teeth because he had done the same to her. And, she discovered, he liked it as much as she had.

So she slid her hand down to his bottom. It was firm and muscled and about as different from her rear as it could possibly be. She kept kissing him, exploring all the curves and angles of his body, the places that made him suddenly draw in breath, or sway toward her.

A brutal-looking white scar marked his right side. "Your duel?" she asked, tracing it with her fingers.

"It doesn't seem large enough, does it?" "For what?" "For death."

She reached out and pressed her lips to the mark. "I'm so glad you didn't die."

"At this moment," he said, and the fervency in his voice couldn't be mistaken, "so am She sipped and nipped and experimented until he was muttering something that sounded like a prayer or a curse, but with her name tangled in... and then with a quick twist, she rose and pushed him back on the bed.

"I need to—" he gasped.

"Not yet," she said, grinning.

"Enough practice for you," he said, grabbing her wrists.

"I—" He seemed intent on getting up, so she cut him off. "There may not be a tomorrow, Leo. You know that."

He shook his head as if to clear it. "What are you talking about?"

"My mother, Anne, and I will leave for London in two or three days at the most."

His grip tightened. "You can't."

She waited a split second and realized he wasn't going to say more. "I must," she said, pulling out of his grip. He let her go, of course.

But she wouldn't drown in the sudden bleakness that threatened to engulf her. It wasn't as if they were in love, that unshakable, unalterable thing. She could alter, and she would alter. Once she had slaked herself with him.

His brow was drawn, and he looked as if he were trying to coerce his foolish male brain into figuring out what she was thinking. So she slid down to her knees, which put her right where she needed to be.

He tasted hot, and male, and faintly like soap. Even putting her lips on him made heat shoot to her groin. It wasn't because of his taste, or the fact that he felt like heated honey against her lips.

It was the power of it, if she were honest. Leopold obviously stopped thinking, was unable to think.

Every time she tightened her lips, he let out a groan. In just a few minutes he seemed to be struggling for breath. Every time he groaned, a scalding wave of desire washed down her legs.

Suddenly his strong hands caught her and he pulled her up to face him. All the cool self-possession was gone from his face, from his eyes. He kissed her urgently, desperately, falling back on the bed and pulling her on top of him. The French letter took a moment and then she slid down, taking him as if they had always belonged together, as if the rhythm they forged was the rhythm of life.

She braced her arms on either side of his head and looked down through the screen of her hair. "I know why you wear such elaborate clothing," she told him.

He wasn't listening. Instead he thrust up, his fingers biting into her shoulders. She fell for a moment into voluptuous, toe-curling pleasure, and then recovered. "It's because you're hiding your eyes," she whispered.

"What?"

"You don't want anyone to see your eyes, so you dress like a peacock."

He grunted and thrust up again, sending a shock of white heat through her body. "I suppose you think you're very clever?"

"I am very clever," she said. "For example, it takes a clever woman to figure
this out...'

What she did then made the Duke of Villiers actually cry out.

And those eyes, the eyes he hid from the world behind a screen of ice and a mask of gold thread...

they were almost black with desire and yet he never closed them.

He kept looking at her, and she kept looking down at him.

"I know what is dangerous about you," he said suddenly, a few shuddering moments later.

"What?" she gasped.

"You see me too clearly." He flipped her over in one smooth motion, pinned her down, bit her lip.

"You're damned dangerous, Eleanor, Lady Eleanor."

It made her feel shy...to be dangerous for other reasons than her own desire. "My Eleanor," he whispered.

And she didn't correct him because her heart was singing the same tune, and there was no need to speak about it.

Knole House, country residence of the Duke of Gilner

June 21, 1784

By the next morning Lisette had lost interest in the treasure hunt. The piles of paper had disappeared. At luncheon she airily announced that the housekeeper would be handling all the rest of the details, from the children's whereabouts, to the refreshments, to the—

"All of it," she said, with a wave of her hand. "I shall spend the day in the nursery with Phyllinda and Lucinda."

"Those are not their names," Villiers said with a distinct chill in his voice. "Mrs. Minchem assigned those names."

"I must call them something," Lisette said, reasonably enough. "The girls do not seem to know other names."

"Villiers, you can perform a truly paternal action," Anne put in. "You can name your children."

In answer, the duke got up and left the room.

"I positively detest such bad manners," Lisette said.

Eleanor detested the pain she'd seen in Leopold's eyes.

"I have half a mind not to marry him after all," Lisette continued fretfully. "Marguerite returns this afternoon and I doubt she will be pleased."

"What will your father say?" Eleanor asked.

Lisette hunched a shoulder. "He won't be pleased either."

"Don't they wish for you to marry?"

"No." Lisette pushed her potatoes to the side. "They don't."

"Because... because of what happened years ago?" Eleanor thought back to the scandal that had ended her mother's visits to the estate, and coincided with the
ton's
perception of Lisette's madness.

"I can't have children," Lisette said, darting off on a tangent, as she was wont to do. "I'm sorry,"

Eleanor said.

"Leopold has a family already, so he won't care. If only that boy Tobias wasn't part of it. I don't like him. He thinks he's clever but in fact he's only rude. I can quite see bringing the girls up as ladies, but that boy will never be a gentleman."

"The fact that Tobias doesn't care for others' opinions makes him only more akin to a gentleman,"

Eleanor suggested.

"I shall marry Leopold, but I'll tell him that the boys have to be apprenticed. That's reasonable.

There are three girls, or perhaps four. More than enough children for one household, given the number of maids they need and such."

"I don't think that Villiers will be happy with that bargain," Eleanor said.

Lisette suddenly laughed, but the sound was jarring, like bells falling to the ground. "Must you keep to such affectations?"

"Such as?"

"Calling him Villiers! Remember, I've seen the way he looks at you!"

She was in a dangerous state that Eleanor remembered from years ago. It would take only one unwary remark to send her off into a towering rage followed by a passionate fit of crying.

"I shall do my best to please you," Eleanor said. And she whisked out of the room.

Knole House, country residence of the Duke of Gilner

June 22, 1784

The morning of the treasure hunt dawned bright and clear. Eleanor had gone to sleep puzzling over love, and woken up, thinking about the shape of Leopold's hands, and from the two constructed an understanding that made her sit up straight in bed.

Gideon was an exquisite male animal, a finely drawn, beautifully painted specimen with whom any healthy young woman would be hard put not to fall in love. Villiers—or Leopold, as she had taken to thinking of him in the inner recesses of her mind—had beautifully shaped thighs and a large nose and even larger parts that she ought to know nothing of... And he was infuriating, fiercely intelligent, and, in his own way, as ethical as Gideon.

Gideon followed rules with precision—at least until he discarded them in his pursuit of her. To him, life was properly lived if one followed the behest of an ethical watchman who combined the precepts of the Anglican church with the dictates of society.