Eloisa James - Desperate Duchesses - 6 (37 page)

Though she did, she did.

He managed to pull away her hand and she froze. "Say a word and I'll leave," she said. He shoved upwards and she easily evaded him. "Right now. I'll leave this room." "It's
your
room!"

She took him with a wave of heat and pleasure, and lost track of her thoughts for a bit, but then remembered.

"I'm not trying to make you marry me," she said, gasping a little because he had picked up the pace.

"Why not?"

That couldn't be hurt in his eyes.

"Because you're doing something honorable," she said. "You feel that Lisette will make a better mother to your children. We're not children, Leopold. We can speak the truth aloud to each other."

"I just—"

"I know," she said, leaning over to give him a kiss. It was almost too tender, though, and she had to sit up again fast, before she kissed him again. "It's easier for me, because I don't have children." She gave him a lopsided grin. "I've decided to marry for love."

This time he froze.

"I don't love Gideon, so I won't marry
him.
I used to love him, but somehow it all changed."

A moment later she found herself flat on her back, and they weren't making love any more.

"Leo," she whispered.

He was braced over her, frowning down through a lock of hair that had fallen over his eyes. He was delicious...heartbreaking.

She nipped his lip. She'd be damned if he'd ever find out how she felt. She didn't ever want yet another man to know that she loved him more than he loved her. Never again.

"You're so calm about my marriage to Lisette," he said, scowling. "I want to kill Astley, every time I see him. Hell, every time he even looks at you I feel like wringing his scraggy neck."

"That's because you're a man," she said, ignoring the little voice in her head that reminded her just how murderous she felt every time Lisette trilled out her excitement over becoming half of Leopold and Lisette, as she kept referring to them. "Do you suppose that you could make love to me now, Leopold?" She reached up and ran her fingers along his cheeks. And then she said it, because it had to be said. "We'll be leaving first thing in the morning."

He looked down at her, and then he pulled away.

"Leopold?" She looked down at herself. Her blue gown was rucked around her waist, and her bare legs were trembling.

But he got up and walked away from the bed, raking his fingers through his hair.

The words going through her head were not words that a lady was supposed to know, let alone think. She pulled her gown down over her knees and sat on the edge of the bed.

"I can't make love to you knowing it's the last time," he said finally, his voice tight.

She didn't know what to say. She couldn't fight for him. If she were to voice what she thought about Lisette... she might convince him. But it would always be her opinion against his. He had to either see it himself, or—or marry Lisette. That was all there was to it.

He turned around. "I've never felt this way about another woman. But I don't have the freedom to choose whom I wish."

"I understand," she said. "I have—" She stopped.

"You've heard this before," he said, his voice flat. "There's no will constraining me, Eleanor. But I honestly think that Lisette is unique in her attitude toward the children's illegitimacy. She doesn't even see it as a problem. She can teach them to live without shame. She already adores the girls, and they adore her. I can't—"

He turned away again.

There was a long moment of silence. Sunshine came in through the balcony door and slashed across his broad shoulders. She didn't let herself feel... anything.

Finally he said, "I can't choose whom I would, because I made this bed, as the saying goes. And I must lie in it." He turned back to her.

"I understand," she said, quite peaceably. After all, as he said, she'd been through this exact scene before. She had a precedent; she understood the undertow of anguish that would follow, the sense of regret and loss, the bewilderment of loving someone more than he loved her.

The next time around, she thought, it's going to be different.

But it was different. She knew that. There wouldn't be any next time around for her when it came to love... but that was all right, too.

If she couldn't have the complicated duke in front of her, she didn't want to love anyone. He was still staring at the empty fireplace, so she just drank in the sight of him, his muscled legs and lean powerful rear, the way his shoulders flared, the exact color of his hair—

And that was when the door burst open.

It happened so fast that afterward Leopold was never quite able to describe it. One moment he was trying to figure out why his heartfelt as if it were splitting in two, and the next moment he was faced by an utterly enraged, out-of-control Duke of Astley who was screaming—literally screaming—about the fact that he had dishonored Eleanor. Which he had.

No one could argue otherwise, given the fact that he was stark naked in her bedchamber. He pulled on his breeches, but could think of only one thing to say. "Do you want everyone in this house to know?" His voice cut across Astley's hysteria like a knife.

The man choked.

"You will give me satisfaction," Astley said, his eyes bright as a lunatic's. "Immediately."

"You must be out of your mind," Leopold said, unwisely. "You don't believe in duels."

Astley went for his throat, forcing Leopold to throw him across the room, which was ridiculous and made him feel even more foolish.

"I know why you want to keep quiet!" Astley hissed, lurching back on his feet. "I will marry Eleanor no matter whether you've debauched her or not. She is not in control of her own impulses. She needs a man, and I left her. This is all my fault."

"I will not marry either of you," Eleanor cried, intervening. "So Gideon, if you wish to save my reputation, I would beg you to stop speaking so loudly."

Astley stared at her. "Of course you're marrying me. I have forgiven you, Eleanor."

She shook her head. "I will not marry either of you."

"I
forgive you,"
he persisted.

"She doesn't need your forgiveness," Leopold found himself saying through clenched teeth. "You should be groveling at her feet, begging for her forgiveness."

"I already have," he said, with an odd sort of punctured dignity. "And now I shall defend her honor, just as I should have defended her years ago." The sound of his slap was shockingly loud in the quiet room. "Name your seconds."

"Oh, for Christ's sake," Leopold said. He turned away and walked toward the balcony window. He had won four duels and lost one, badly. And he had sworn never to fight with a sword again. He was too good—and it was only after almost losing his own to a dueling wound that he realized how much he prized life.

His successful duels had ended with him wounding his opponents, none mortally. It was only by the grace of God that he hadn't killed someone. He had no desire to alter that record.

"I don't want to kill you," he said, turning around. "You won't. Virtue—truth—
God
are on my side."

"Astley, you're one of the House of Lords's most vocal opponents of dueling, and you have been for the last few years at least. Tell me that you even know how to handle a rapier."

"Of course I do. I was trained as is any gentleman's son. Do I need to slap you again, Your Grace?"

Astley was maddened by rage. His face was completely white.

"No," Leopold said slowly. "But I won't fight you with seconds. If you want to fight, you'll have to do it privately."

"Why?"

"Because if you involve another, the world will know. And if Eleanor then refuses to marry you, as she has a perfect right to do, she will be ruined." "You wouldn't marry him instead of me!" Astley swung around. "He hasn't asked me," Eleanor said, head high.

Leopold actually sympathized with Astley this time. He could have ducked; he certainly knew what was coming. But he took a hard right to his chin.

Eleanor grabbed Astley's arm. "He's marrying Lisette! For pity's sake, Gideon. He can hardly marry me when he's promised to her."

"Then why are you in her bedchamber?" Astley said, panting.

Although it hurt like the devil, Leopold refused to give his opponent the satisfaction of seeing him feel his chin. "Because I'm a bastard," he said heavily.

"You are that," Astley said. "Look me in the eye and tell me that you'd rather marry Lisette than Eleanor."

It hurt to open his mouth, and not only because of the blow. He didn't manage to open it before Eleanor intervened once more.

"He does!" she said, her voice tight. "What are you trying to prove, Gideon? Leopold has decided that Lisette will be a better mother to his children. He bedded me, but that gave him precisely as much desire to marry me as it gave you. In short: not much."

Astley started to speak, but she held up her hand. Her eyes were flaming. "Neither of you seem to care, but I'll tell you this: I deserve better than either of you. I deserve a man who will love me, who will believe to the bottom of his heart that I'm exactly the woman he wants to raise his children.

Who won't think of me as just a woman to bed."

Leopold felt her words as if a blow had shuddered down his spine. He had never meant to hurt her.

And yet there were tears standing in her eyes.

"I deserve more," she repeated savagely.

"I think you'll be a wonderful mother," Astley said, like an eager puppy dog.

"No, you don't." "I do!"

"You want to marry me because you realize you made a mistake. But that's not the same as loving me now, Gideon. We lost each other, somehow. And frankly, you loved Ada, for all you are disparaging your time together. You
loved
her."

Astley swallowed. "I—"

"You loved her and the sooner you realize that, the sooner you can mourn her properly."

"But if you won't marry either of us—"

"Don't tell me that you're afraid I'll end up a spinster! I'll tell you exactly who I am going to marry: a common man, not a duke. Both of you are so steeped in privilege that you never really thought I was good enough for you. I am going to find an ordinary man who will court me. And he won't be a duke. Now if you don't mind, I'll leave you."

She left.

Leopold pulled on his shirt. "I'll leave for London immediately," he said, tired to the bone. He felt as if a clamp were tightening around his heart, as if he'd—He couldn't let himself think about what he had done.

"No, you won't."

"For God's sake, Astley. She doesn't want either one of us."
"You fool,"
Astley said. "You utter blithering
fool."

Leopold laughed, shortly. "Are you trying to get me to slap you this time? Because believe it or not, I don't believe in duels anymore."

The slap made his head fall back and his teeth rattle.

"What in God's name was that for? That's the third time you've struck me in five minutes."

"Because I love her," Astley said. "I behaved like a young ass when I left her. And maybe she's right when she says it's too late for us. But you—you
used
her. You made her fall in love with you, and you rejected her. I'm going to kill you."

For the first time, Leopold felt a stir of alarm. Faint, but real. "You can't kill me."

"Yes, I can," Astley stated clearly. "I dishonored Eleanor. This will atone for what I did to her. I'll revenge her. I'll take you down because it's the right thing to do. You broke her heart. I've never seen her look like that, not when I left her, and not thereafter. By God, I never understood the point of dueling before but I understand it now."

Leopold knew when a man had irrevocably made up his mind. He pulled on his boots. "Tomorrow at dawn."

"Where?"

"There's a stretch of green down by the river. It will do." He felt inexpressibly weary. A man wanted to kill him because he had broken the heart of— It was impossible.

She was so logical, so cool, when she agreed with him that he should marry Lisette. Women had moaned and murmured and shouted their love for him before, not that he ever believed them. Hell, Lisette had patted his cheek and told him that she loved him

earlier that morning.

Eleanor never said a word.

"She doesn't love me," he said, just as Astley was leaving the room.

"You fool," Astley said savagely. "You utter ass."

"You're hardly an uninterested bystander," Leopold said.

"I do love her. But what I see in her eyes when she looks at you... I never saw that before. She used to desire me. She
loves
you. But that doesn't matter, does it?" He turned around, his eyes bright with scorn. "You've made your choice."

"I can't marry whom I wish—"

"Just what I told her all those years ago," Astley said, stepping into the corridor. "Precisely those words." And he was gone.

Eleanor thought she had lived through nightmares before, but the torment of dinner that night surpassed any anguish she had felt when Gideon left her. Lisette's father, the Duke of Gilner, had returned, and contrary to Lisette's prediction was enchanted to give his daughter's hand to the Duke of Villiers.

He didn't turn a hair over the question of the duke's illegitimate children, just said cheerfully—and in front of the entire table, "I'm sure my little girl has told you that she can't bear young of her own, so this is perfect."

Eleanor had been looking everywhere except at Villiers, who was sitting across from her, but at this she peeked from under her lashes, just enough to see that Lisette had not bothered to inform her future husband of this fact. But of course he nodded as if the news were of no account.

Perhaps it wasn't. After all, he wanted a mother for the children he already had. Surely an heir was less important. That thought led to bitterness, so she took a deep breath and pushed the question of Villiers's children aside.

"It seems we both have reason to celebrate," her mother said archly, from her position at Gilner's right hand. "Our dear children are matched—and so suitably too!"