by Eloisa James
“But then everyone will know—”
“I love you,” he said, his voice shaking a bit. “I love you and the world can know. I am willing to accept censure in order to have you.”
“Wonderful,” Eleanor said weakly. She closed the door, leaned against it, her forehead against the cool wood. “Wonderful.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Knole House, country residence of the Duke of Gilner
June 20, 1784
“Someone must find places to which we can send the children for the treasure hunt,” Lisette said briskly. “Eleanor, why don’t you do that? It’s outdoors and you can take that dog with you. I need you to find four appropriate places from which a child might bring something back. An egg from the henhouse: that sort of thing. I’ll write the clues tonight.”
“It looks like rain,” Villiers said, peering outside.
“Then you go with her and hold an umbrella,” Lisette said. She turned to Eleanor’s mother. “May I ask you…”
Eleanor rose and walked out of the room without a word, so Villiers followed. She had all the signs of a woman about to explode, whether from anger or grief, or something else, he didn’t know.
Grief would be a bit much, given that the Duke of Astley had swooped in and declared his love. True, he was already gone when the household rose, but that was just his moralistic way.
“Are you feeling cross because your prince has left?” he asked, catching up with Eleanor just as she sent a footman to fetch Oyster.
She gave him a cool look over one shoulder. “He’ll be back.”
“No one could believe otherwise, given his ardor yesterday.”
Eleanor had an odd look on her face, but just then the footman rushed up with Oyster, who was celebrating the happy prospect of a walk by barking.
“Hush,” Eleanor said.
Naturally he paid no heed to that, so Villiers unbelted his sword stick, gave it to a footman, and took the leash instead. The dog was so ugly that he was an abomination. Nothing could be done about his jaw, but his manners were another story.
“Quiet,” he said.
Oyster stopped in mid-yap.
They walked out of the house and around a path to the right, Eleanor leading the way as if she knew precisely where to go. Villiers took one look at her rigid back and decided that cheerful conversation was overrated. He occupied himself instead with refusing to walk every time Oyster pulled on the leash.
It didn’t take long at all before the puppy was doing a reasonable imitation of a well-mannered creature. They headed out of the gardens as Eleanor took a small winding path that led into the woods stretching down the hill.
Villiers had lost sight of her by the time Oyster and he had come to an amicable agreement about the proper pace for a walk.
He should have brought Tobias along, he realized. And perhaps even the two little girls. Then he could have marched down the walk like a damned middle-aged family man, with children and dog. Following an irate wife down the path. The shocking thing was that the picture didn’t even feel aberrant—until he realized that of course he wouldn’t be following Eleanor anywhere.
He would follow Lisette. Sweet golden Lisette.
He had to stop and apologize to Oyster because the poor beast didn’t deserve to have his leash tugged so hard.
The path turned a hard right and then dumped into a rocky stream. It looked as if a giant had tossed white boulders and rocks the way children toss marbles. They lay in scrambled heaps, some as large as carriages, others the size of chamber pots. A weak stream trickled around them. On the far side of the stream was a great bramble hedge that climbed up a small hill.
“Eleanor!” Villiers called out.
“Yes?” Her head popped up from behind a huge rock.
He felt foolish. “Oyster and I are here.”
“I see that.”
“What are you doing?”
“Wandering about. We used to come here as children. Look how good Oyster is being. I would have thought he would be a water dog. Perhaps he’s becoming sick.”
Villiers raised an eyebrow at the dog quietly sitting on the ground, only his tail betraying excitement. “I doubt it,” he said. “I believe I’ll let him off the leash.”
“Really?” Eleanor said dubiously. “I never—”
Oyster was off the leash and joyously dashing onto the rocks. He squealed like a piglet when his paw slid into the water, so Villiers judged him unlikely to drown.
“Come on, then,” Eleanor said impatiently. “Don’t you want to see?” Her head disappeared.
He sighed. It didn’t suit him to clamber about on the rocks. It didn’t suit his clothes, either. It was very tiresome, growing to be self-aware. He preferred life when he used to stride around London paying no mind to anyone except the occasional chess opponent.
He managed to get over the rocks without scuffing his boots. Notwithstanding the earlier look of the skies, the sun was out and pouring over the rocks, throwing shadows into high relief. The river wandered into tiny eddies and pools, but most of the rocks were dry and hot. They were bleached as white as the cliffs of Dover.
“What are you—Oh.”
Eleanor had found a small pool. Scandalously, deliciously, she had taken off her slippers and her stockings. Her ankles were delicate, not white, but the color of sweet cream. Her toes wiggled like small fish in the clear water.
She looked up at him and smiled. Her bad mood seemed to have evaporated. “My brother and I used to spend hours here when we were children visiting the estate.”
He sat down and pulled off his boots. He didn’t like cold water. He didn’t like undressing in the outdoors. But he had ceased to pay much attention to his own likes and dislikes, not while his body was driven by this hunger. “Did Lisette like putting her toes in the water?”
Eleanor’s face stilled and he cursed himself silently for bringing up his fiancée’s name. “Oh, no,” she said after a second. “Lisette…no. But those are her favorite roses.” She jerked her head over her shoulder.
He glanced up and saw that an apricot rosebush had scrambled partway up the bramble hedge on the far side of the stream. The blossoms hung in heavy clusters, their petals the color of orange liqueur in the sunlight.
“If you want to make her happy, you’ll fetch her some,” Eleanor said, pulling her skirts up a little higher so she could reach the bottom of the stream with her toes.
“You must be joking,” he said, dragging his eyes away from her legs. They were elegant and slim. “They’re over my head, not to mention the fact that I’d fall into the water. It looks much deeper on that side.”
“It is.”
“You can’t be thinking of sending children here on the treasure hunt,” he said.
“Why not?”
“It’s not safe,” he said. “They could easily fall and break a limb.”
“You’re not going to be one of those wildly protective papas, are you? We spent all our time here when we were children.”
“Climbing for roses?” He squinted at the rocks. The water on this side ran in tiny rivulets and pooled in small hollows. But on the opposite side, there was a three-or four-foot climb straight up the rocks before one could cut a rose.
“The footmen used to fetch those roses for Lisette all the time,” Eleanor said. She pulled her skirts a little higher. “This water feels so good.” She swirled her hand beneath the surface and then let drops fly from her fingers. “Where’s Oyster?”
“He found a patch of sunshine and went to sleep.”
“Do you think all dogs are as lazy as Oyster?”
“I don’t like dogs,” he observed.
“Well, he likes you,” she said, grinning at him. “Aren’t you going to put your feet in the water?”
“I suppose,” he said dubiously.
“Didn’t you play in a river when you were a child?”
“Of course, my brother—” He said it without thinking and shut the sentence off ha
lfway through.
She was dipping her fingers in the water and then drawing patterns on the rock. They were ridiculously slender fingers. Beautiful. They gave him a strange aching sensation.
“I didn’t know you had a brother,” she said. “Look, Villiers, I’m drawing a horse. Could you tell?”
He looked at the blobby wet spot on the rock. “No.”
She shrugged and started over. “Tell me about your brother.” Then her fingers stilled on the rock and she turned her head. “Now that I think of it, I’ve never heard about your brother.”
“He died.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Was he very young?”
“Eleven.” He cleared his throat. “He was just eleven.”
“What happened?”
“He caught diphtheria,” Villiers said. He heard the lack of expression in his own voice but was powerless to stop it.
“That’s awful,” Eleanor said. “Did many people get it?”
“No. My mother acted quickly. She isolated him.”
“What do you mean, she isolated him?”
“She put him in a wing of our house and wouldn’t allow anyone in or out.”
Eleanor had forgotten about the new horse she was painting. Her fingers curled on the rock. He watched them because he couldn’t bear to meet her eyes.
“Not—by himself?”
He cleared his throat. “No, his manservant was with him, of course. Though the man got diphtheria as well.”
“Then who took care of them?”
“One of the footmen, a man named Ashmole. He was a cantankerous bastard even back then, when he was only a second footman. He slammed his way into that part of the house and brought them food and cared for them, and my mother didn’t say a word.”
Eleanor reached over and put her hand on his cheek. He could feel the chill of her wet fingers to the back of his teeth. “That’s horrible.”
He jerked and her fingers fell away. “I wasn’t there. I was off at school.”
“Or you would have gone to your brother, and probably died of the illness as well,” she said, nodding.
“Not necessarily. Ashmole, the cantankerous footman, didn’t get ill. He’s now my butler.”
She liked that. Her expression eased the clamp that always settled on his heart if he thought about his brother. Or his mother. Or the country estate where he grew up.
“That’s why you never go to the castle that my mother talked of.”
He grimaced. “We closed off that wing, but even my mother stopped going home after a time. We lived with it.”
“Surely you will go home someday?”
“It’s falling apart.”
“The castle?”
“I’ll let every stone in Castle Cary fall to the ground before I enter that place again.”
“I can understand that,” she said after a time. She had gone back to dabbling in the stream, flicking water onto the rocks opposite.
He didn’t want to think about his brother anymore, or the castle. Everything he wanted sat opposite him, flicking water and humming under her breath. Her lashes curled in the sunlight and the bodice of her gown strained a little over her breasts. He guessed it had been originally made for her sister.
He’d never wanted anyone like this in his life, not with this ravening hunger, the kind that made him tell her secrets he had told no one, that threatened to bring him to his knees…though now that he thought of it, his knees would be a very good place to be, given the part of her body that position would make available to him.
“Villiers,” Eleanor said, “what do you think I drew this time?”
“Leopold,” he corrected her. He peered at the patch of wet she’d traced on the rock next to her. “Why did you paint a pizzle on that rock?” he inquired, pulling off his stockings at last.
“It’s not a pizzle!” she said, giggling. Her laughter ran along his skin and raised the hair on the back of his neck.
He put his feet down into the little puddle she’d chosen. They were huge next to hers, and they both stared for a moment. Then he moved in one smooth motion to her rock.
“What are you doing?” she gasped, just like the heroine in a bad play.
“I could ask the same of you,” he said.
“Why?”
“Good point. Why ask? You’re seducing me, and I don’t care why.” He looked down at her wide eyes. She’d forgotten to put on the black makeup this morning. He wouldn’t want to tell her, but she looked even better without it. Eyes like hers didn’t need cosmetics.
“I am not!” she said, but he could tell her heart wasn’t in the protest.
“I’m not married,” he said, pulling her to her feet and pushing her gently back onto the large, gratifyingly flat rock that stood at her back. “Neither are you. You can hardly have made serious vows to Master Gideon, since he informed everyone in the drawing room last night that he fully intends to mourn his wife for the next year. Apparently he feels you will simply wait for him.”
“He didn’t!” Eleanor said. But she didn’t try to move away, just leaned against the rock, trapped by his arms braced on either side of her.
“Oh, yes he did,” Villiers said. “Unless you managed to change his mind later?”
“Actually, I did,” she said. “He’s coming back to escort us to London.”
Even given the urgent hunger coursing through his body, he felt that like a blow. He froze for a moment, looking down at her almond-shaped eyes, the way her bottom lip curved out, plump and full, and then shook his head. “Don’t try and get out of it now, princess. It’s too late.”
“What—” she began.
He bent his head and nipped her lip. He was going to say something else, but she sighed into his mouth and all of a sudden he could smell her, the faint perfume of jasmine and something indescribably better, more sensual. Something that took him from normal to rock hard every time he came close to her.
“Essence of Eleanor,” he whispered. “If I could bottle it, I would become famous.”
Her lips curved into a smile and he kissed her again. He emerged from that kiss dazed, his body on fire, heart pounding.
“I am not trying to seduce you,” Eleanor stated.
All the higher parts of his brain were considering the logistics of making love in the midst of a river, and he barely understood her.
“You aren’t?”
“No.”
“It doesn’t matter because I’m seducing you. Would that be all right with you?”
“You’re seducing me?”
“Yes,” he said calmly. As calmly as he could, given that he felt like a ravening animal. “Don’t pick this moment to become chaste, Eleanor.”
“What if I did?” she said, and there was something in her eyes, some sort of confused hurt.
He kissed her hard, the kind of kiss that stole his breath and made his fingers curl with the wish to touch her. But he didn’t. “I’d seduce you anyway,” he told her, honestly enough. “God, Eleanor, I’ve never felt this way. Ever.”
And then he stood up and wrenched off his neck cloth. Threw his heavy silk jacket over one rock and his fine linen shirt over another.
The woman he meant to seduce laughed at him while sunbeams danced in her hair, turning individual hairs into spun gold and glossy bronze and darker hues, like brewed tea. He didn’t care how she laughed as long as she didn’t leave.
And she didn’t, falling silent when he eased his breeches down over that aching, hot part of himself. He didn’t see fear in her eyes, thank God. Or reluctance, either.
Naked, he walked back through the pool, not even feeling the chilly water on his ankles. She kept her hands at her sides.
“You can’t mean…” she whispered.
Her eyes were very wide and very dark. But not reluctant.
“Yes.” Her body was curves and shadows, pink here, cream there. He wanted to tear her gown off, taste all of her. She had buttons all the way down her dress. It was the work
of mere moments to unbutton some two hundred buttons, not counting those that flew off, sinking into the pool with tiny splashes.
“We can’t do this,” she whispered.
He glanced over his shoulder. They were far from the house, and even if someone did come down the path, they were around the curve of the stream, well out of sight.
“No one will come.” He had dispensed with her corset and was inching up her chemise. “We are alone, Eleanor. Do you realize that we are almost never alone? Finchley is always hanging around my bedchamber, and there’s your maid—”
“We can’t make love in the open air. I’ve never heard of anything so scandalous. We are, both of us, promised to others.”
“I am marrying for the sake of my children.” He said it flatly. “I have every expectation that Lisette and I will be quite comfortable together. And I will be faithful to her. But I am not yet married. In fact, I haven’t even proposed.”
“She announced your engagement,” Eleanor pointed out, keeping a tight grip on her chemise so he couldn’t pull it up her legs.
“That surprised me, but not as much as when you announced the same,” he said, giving her a little kiss at the edge of her mouth. He had a hand under the edge of her chemise now, running circles on her smooth skin.
“I should have made you go on one knee,” she said. “Gideon didn’t either; at this rate, I’ll never have a proper proposal.”
Villiers didn’t want to think about Gideon. He didn’t even want to hear the man’s name. He slid his hand higher and then ran his lips over her eyebrow. “You’re beautiful, Eleanor,” he whispered. “At first I thought your eyes were black, but they’re actually blue, the color of the sky just before the sun sets.”
“We can’t do this! Oyster is watching,” she said, pulling the hem of her chemise back down.
Villiers had been alive a few years more than thirty. He knew perfectly well when a woman was truly protesting and when she was offering excuses for the mere sake of it.
The pug was sprawled out on a sunny rock, paws in the air, snoring. In his estimation, Oyster was a pathetic excuse for a dog, so he didn’t even bother answering that protest, just wrestled the fabric out of her hand and swept the whole garment up and over her hair.
