Eloisa James - Desperate Duchesses - 6 (4 page)

"You are truly a very interesting woman," he said slowly.

"I assure you that you are quite mistaken. I am positively tedious in almost every respect."

"Not so. Do you know how unusual it is for a duke—myself—to speak to an eligible young lady without the woman in question making an overt expression of fierce interest?"

"I do apologize if I insulted you again," she said. "First I compared you to an incontinent canine, and now I have apparently not marshaled the proper enthusiasm."

His eyes
did
smile, even though his mouth didn't curl. "Does that apology mean you are mustering enthusiasm for my charms?"

"I expect we feel precisely the same way about each other," she said. "Cautiously interested. It appears that I suit your criteria, and you seem to suit mine, such as they are."

"A group of people is coming our way," he said, moving back slightly into the shadow of a pillar. "If you wish to retreat to your mother's side without being observed with me, you ought to leave."

She turned to go and his deep voice stopped her. "I set out for Sevenoaks in two or three days, Lady Eleanor. I would be—" She looked back at him. "Yes?" "I would be quite sorry not to meet you there." She curtsied. "Good evening, Your Grace." "Leopold," he said. "What?"

"My name. It's Leopold." And with a quick glance at the group wandering toward them, he melted backward between the pillars and was gone.

Lady Eleanor might not have caught the connotations of that pool full of violets, but the Duke of Villiers certainly did. Once this party was over, his friend Elijah planned to lure his wife, Jemma, down into that fragrant bathtub and seduce her.

Villiers found himself smiling into the dark. He didn't give a damn what Elijah and Jemma got up to. After spending months mooning over Jemma like a sick calf, it was a pleasure to think of her without a surge of desire and jealousy.

Lady Eleanor Lindel, daughter of the Duke of Montague, might well complete his cure. She was certainly Jemma's opposite. Jemma was tall, slender, and duchess-like. Her every move signaled patrician blood enhanced by beauty, intelligence, and exquisite taste in clothing.

But Eleanor? She wasn't proud, as he had assumed when he heard of her express desire to marry a duke. Her clothing was abominable. And she clearly didn't give a damn about her appearance, considering the way she had tossed those curls into the bushes.

If Jemma was slender, Eleanor was curvy, with lush lips that resembled those of a naughty opera dancer. He could have sworn she wasn't wearing lip color, although her mouth was a deep rose that hardly seemed possible in nature.

People's faces tended to match their attire: a woman with a severe profile generally adorns herself with equally stern clothing, even though he himself chose to emphasize the rough character of his nose and chin by wearing outrageously luxurious garments. But Eleanor's mouth didn't match her prim attire and absurd curls. She was as mismatched as he was, albeit in a different key.

She looked acerbic. Peppery. Delectable. As if she'd get bored with chess, toss the board to the side, and climb into a man's lap.

Though presumably she'd be unlikely to climb into
his
lap, since she was pining for another man. In truth, he had given up hope of that sort of adoration. And certainly he had never wanted it from a wife.

He pushed himself away from the wall. He ought to go home and plan his trip to Sevenoaks. He was itching to be on the road, but the Bow Street Runner had sent the

name of the orphanage only that morning. After the third disappointment, he'd learned to wait until the presence of twins was confirmed before haring off to check their lineage. "Villiers!"

He turned to find Louise, Lady Nevill, waving at him. She was standing with his former fiancee, Roberta, now the Countess of Gryffyn. That betrothal had been a profound mistake, but, thank God, one from which he'd escaped. And now that Roberta was happily married, they exchanged civil conversation on occasion.

"Villiers," Roberta cried, holding out her hand. "I am so happy to see you looking so well. You were still terribly thin last time we met."

Lady Nevill gave him a lazy smile, accompanied by an appreciative survey from head to foot.

"Roberta, darling," she drawled, "the man certainly isn't looking thin. Though I wouldn't call him precisely
padded
either." Her gaze lingered for just a second at his crotch.

Louise was wearing what he thought must be the only low-cut toga in existence. Her lush breasts threatened to spill free at any moment. "Roberta and I are amusing ourselves by comparing men to types of food," she announced.

"Louise says that Albertus Vesey resembles a stick of asparagus," Roberta said with a gurgle of laughter.

Villiers raised an eyebrow. "Given his girth, I would suggest a melon."

"Believe me," Louise said, "you should be thinking about asparagus. That rather exotic white kind."

Her eyes twinkled wickedly. "Pale, slim...overcooked. Limp."

"Hush, Louise," Roberta said. "You'll make Villiers blush. Now what kind of food would the duke be?" They both looked him over.

"Neither of you has sufficient knowledge to assess my vegetable," he told them.

"Then you describe it for us," Louise suggested with a twinkle.

Roberta laughed and changed the subject. But it made him think just how long it had been since any woman—at least an available woman—had greeted him with Eleanor's profound lack of interest. In truth, it had been years since he encountered indifference.

He did not have pretentions when it came to his appearance. His face was ugly, to put it bluntly. But his title was beautiful, and the shine of his gold even more attractive, and the combination had delivered to him woman after woman.

"Your Grace," Lady Nevill said, tapping him on the arm with her fan. The lazy, sweet tone of her voice put her in the interested category, though in this case it was not for his gold or his title. Louise was married, after all, although her husband was incapacitated. "I have been told that you are looking for a wife."

"I never cease to be amazed at the triviality of conversation amongst the
ton,"
Villiers said, byway of reply.

"I'm grateful for the early warning; it gives me time to rehearse my condolences once you find an appropriate lady," his former fiancee said with a smirk.

"Well, I would admit to being surprised," Louise put in. "After Roberta threw you over, I thought you would never succumb to the parson's mousetrap."

"Villiers is a
man,"
Roberta said to her friend. "By definition he is in need of someone to look after him." She turned back to him. "I heard a rumor that you are considering no one below a duke's daughter. Should I be complimented, since I was apparently eligible last year, even given my lowly birth?"

"I just had a conversation with Lady Eleanor, the Duke of Montague's daughter," he admitted, ignoring her question. "And I'm traveling to Kent later this week."

"Lady Eleanor would be an admirable choice. But Lady Lisette..." Louise's tone cooled. Apparently, she didn't care for Gilner's daughter.

"And I intend to retrieve two of my six children and bring them back to be reared under my own roof." He knew he shouldn't enjoy Louise's dropped jaw quite as much as he did. But there it was: he had learned to enjoy the petty pleasures of astonishing the
ton.

"Good for you!" Roberta said, without turning an eyelash. Since she was raising her husband's illegitimate son, he would expect no less. "It seems you are combining business with... business while in Kent. While I am all in favor of your rearing your own children, Villiers, I'm not quite as sanguine about your method of courting. You are as deliberate as Damon when he surveys mares he thinks to buy. Did you choose me with equally rigorous logic?"

"You were an impulse. And a lovely one."

She liked that. "I haven't met Lady Lisette. Of course, I've heard—" She broke off.

Louise shook open her fan so it hid her mouth. "One has to imagine that the rumors regarding Lady Lisette's witlessness are exaggerated. After all, so many people in London fall under that description."

A finely nuanced statement, Villiers thought. Guaranteed to make the point that the lady's mental state had been called into question. "Is that why she hasn't been presented at court?" he asked with some interest. "As far as I know, she's never been presented, nor yet appeared in London at all."

"Not everyone wishes to meet the queen," Roberta said. "And certainly there are many who consider occasions of this nature to be a waste of time."

From what he was hearing, meeting Lisette would be a waste of
his
time. He wanted a wife who would wield sufficient social clout to introduce his illegitimate children to society. Choosing a woman who hadn't bothered even to introduce herself to society could hardly fit the bill, especially if she were deranged.

Roberta's husband, the Earl of Gryffyn, strolled up and gave Villiers an insouciant grin. "Ah, my favorite dueling partner."

"Only because you managed to trounce me," Villiers replied. "And don't think it will ever happen again."

Gryffyn laughed and dropped a kiss on his wife's ear.

"Just think, darling," Roberta said. "Villiers has
six
illegitimate children and he's going to Kent to bring them all home to live with him. Are you quite certain about that decision, Villiers? We have only one, and even with two nannies, I have a strong belief that another child would give me hives.

This morning Teddy trimmed the stable cat's whiskers. I would advise stowing your children in a French monastery and picking them up ten years hence."

"I doubt it was his illicit birth that gave the lad criminal tendencies," Villiers murmured, cutting his eyes to the earl. "Inheritance takes so many forms."

"Six?" Gryffyn asked, looking rather more shocked than a man raising his own bastard had a right to be. "And they're all in Kent? Why Kent?"

"Only two children live in Kent," Villiers said.

"Are you sure you will be able to persuade their mother to give them up?" Roberta asked. "I've been Teddy's mother for only something over a year, and I would take after you with a dagger if you tried to separate us."

Louise had apparently recovered from her shock, since she jumped into the conversation.
"Mothers
are such an intriguing question. Lord Gryffyn, you do realize how much passionate interest we all have in discovering the identity of your son's mother, don't you?"

"I fail to see why," Gryffyn said. "Why don't you contemplate Villiers instead? Teddy has but one mother, whereas Villiers's children will afford six times the pleasure."

"Ah, but there's a difference," Louise said. "We all know about Lady Caroline's unfortunate situation... Villiers, you are raising her child, aren't you?"

"I find this conversation most objectionable," he said flatly.

Louise fluttered her fan as if he hadn't spoken. "Not that all of us believe that Lady Caroline told the truth about the parentage of her child..." She paused. Villiers didn't deign to answer, so Louise rattled on. "As to the parentage of the duke's other five children..." She shrugged. "One has to believe that the mothers are not one's next door neighbors. Yet everyone is quite convinced, Lord Gryffyn, that your child's mother is well-born. There is nothing more fierce than an English lady with a nose for scandal and a mystery that involves her peers."

"Teddy shows no interest in the question, and he's the only person with the right to know."

"Even I don't know," Roberta said, giving her husband a mock scowl. "Damon promised to tell me on our wedding night, and then he reneged."

The earl tightened his arm around his wife and dropped another kiss on her head. "I remembered that it wasn't my secret to tell."

"But you two are supposed to be one body and soul now," Lady Nevill put in, just the faintest edge to her voice implying the impoverished nature of her own marriage.

"I don't want to know her identity," Roberta said, leaning against her husband. "That way I needn't think of her as a real person. Teddy is mine now."

Damon was smiling down at Roberta with such a foolishly loving look that Villiers felt nauseated.

Louise caught his eye and laughed. "I gather you plan to indulge in marriage, but not for love, Your Grace."

"Marriage is for the courageous, but love is for the foolish," Villiers said. "I have doubts regarding my own bravery, but I have long been convinced that I have at least a modicum of intelligence."

"In that case you will fall in love quite soon," Roberta announced. "Such monumental arrogance must necessarily be answered by the gods."

Villiers walked away thinking of marriage. He could imagine nothing more repellent than the idea that his wife might fall in love with him. Or worse, far worse: that he might lower himself to worship a woman the way Gryffyn apparently did his wife.

A civil, practical union was far preferable to a messy pairing involving adoration. That was an obvious point in favor of Lady Eleanor. She was in love with someone else. There was a courteous indifference about her that was remarkably peaceful.

It could be that he'd found his perfect match... as long as she decided to pay a visit to Kent, of course.

If not, he'd be stuck with the lady rather indelicately referred to as witless.

Eleanor found her mother in the refreshment tent, surrounded by her friends. The moment the duchess caught sight of her eldest daughter, she rose with the air of a mother cat shaking off a litter of nursing kittens and bustled Eleanor to the corner. "Well?" she demanded.

"It seems quite possible that Villiers will offer for me," Eleanor admitted. "He implied as much."

"I am astonished," her mother cried, releasing her grip on Eleanor's arm. "Astonished!" She dropped into a chair in a dramatic flourish of her hands. "This will surprise you. I thought you were a fool."

The response that sprang to her mind seemed rather abrasive, so Eleanor said nothing.