A Duke of Her Own
“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 halfway 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.
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.
“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.