“Damn,” she said. Quietly, but she said it.
“A lady who swears?” He had that mocking tone in his voice again.
She ignored him. “How old is Tobias?”
“Thirteen. I recently found Violet, who is six, living in a brothel. I believe she is too young to know what lay in wait for her. She is untouched.”
Eleanor shuddered. “Horrible.”
“Colin is eleven years old, and had been apprenticed to a weaver.”
“That’s three…where are the others? And where are their mothers?”
“Well, you see,” he said grimly, “I offered to take the children away from their mothers at birth. I thought that they would be better off under my care than they might be under the care of a courtesan.”
“The irony is rather distressing.”
“One of those mothers refused; Genevieve lives with her mother in Surrey.”
“So Genevieve is well.”
“Yes. My solicitor had ceased to pay support for the child, but her mother managed to scrape by.”
“In her former employment?”
He shook his head. “Taking in washing.”
There was something quite hard about his voice, the kind of hardness that concealed deep shame, she guessed. Since he deserved every ounce of that shame, she didn’t bother with soothing pleasantries.
“So that’s Tobias, Genevieve, Colin, and Violet. What fanciful names. There are two more? Why haven’t you fetched them?” Which was a tactful way of asking why he was at the ball at all, under the circumstances.
“They are twin girls. And I’ve been looking.”
“You can’t find them?”
“I have Bow Street Runners searching for them. They did find the woman who originally cared for them, but she has no idea where they were taken. She was merely told they were being sent to an orphanage. It turns out there are a great many orphanages in England, and a surprising number of twins.”
“Surely…their surnames, their parentage?”
“My solicitor, Templeton, never shared information as to their parentage. Apparently that is common practice, as it does not allow the nurse to appeal directly to the father, who prefers to ignore the child’s existence.”
She sighed and walked back up the stairs. The air was too moist, and the last thing she needed was for her inadequately powdered hair to start curling in all directions.
Villiers kept pace with her, his long legs sending him effortlessly upward. “I heard just this morning that twins of approximately the right age are living in an orphanage in the village of Sevenoaks, in Kent.”
“Lady Lisette Elys, daughter of the Duke of Gilner, lives nearby and might be able to help you. She does a great deal of work with the poor.”
“How…” He paused. “How odd. I had considered paying a visit to the duke.”
She said the obvious. “Lisette is the only other eligible duke’s daughter of whom I’m aware, given that my sister Elizabeth is only fourteen. Ducal progeny is quite rare, and when one is shopping for a wife, one ought to inspect all the available merchandise.”
“Are you encouraging me to pay a visit to the Gilner estate?” he asked curiously.
She looked up at him. He wasn’t beautiful. He was the opposite of Gideon, the man whom she loved with all her heart. Gideon had golden ringlets that curled at his neck like angel kisses. In fact, Gideon wasn’t like any other man she knew, more like a true angel, with his ethical heart and his serious blue eyes.
This duke…this one was no angel. Villiers was all human, in his flaws, in the deep lines by the side of his mouth, the crinkles at his eyes that didn’t look as if they came from smiling. He talked without shame of his illegitimate children. He was a man. No angel, a man.
And not even a very good man.
“I am fond of Lisette. Perhaps she would be a better duchess than I.” She couldn’t make herself care very much what Villiers decided. Though Anne’s prickly comments were in the back of her mind, poking her, reminding her that she ought to make an effort to marry. Why not marry this duke?
“I would be a very comfortable type of husband,” he said, clearly trying to be persuasive, though he sounded merely repetitive. It was a typically foolish male comment, because no one could look twice at the Duke of Villiers and imagine that living with him would be comfortable.
“I begin to think that you protest too much,” she said, smiling. “I suspect you’re a tyrant in private life.”
“Never having had anyone to tyrannize, I can hardly defend myself. Did you know that your eyes are the exact color of wet violets? You must trail a string of broken hearts, given your provocative declaration as regards marriage.”
Eleanor discovered that she had accidentally crushed the few blossoms she had carried away with her, and dropped them. “Not provocative as much as overly proud. And I have never found that men experienced a great deal of sorrow at the idea of not marrying me.” She had been stupid to think that modest clothing would attract the right man, an honorable man. Perhaps just the right man had been in London, but had rejected her, based on her starchy reputation.
She could flaunt her bosom and chase men up and down shady alleys. Or she could just marry the duke in front of her, since he was there. At hand. Women had married for worse reasons.
“Are yours nice children?” she asked.
He blinked. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“Didn’t you say that three of them are now in your nursery?”
“Yes.”
“Surely you have visited them? I would imagine that moving from brothel to ducal town house would be rather shocking.”
“Did your father pay visits to the nursery?”
“Yes, he did. Though more often we were summoned to the drawing room.”
“I haven’t got around to summoning them yet,” Villiers said, an uneasy look in his eye. “My housekeeper found some nannies and I assume everyone is comfortable.”
Eleanor didn’t like the sound of that. She thought it unlikely that the duke’s household had simply absorbed the presence of three bastard children without significant upheaval. Servants tended to be far more conservative than their masters. The ton would surely look askance at the presence of such children under the duke’s roof once they learned of it, which meant that his servants were probably mutinying belowstairs. Not that it was her business. Still…
“I have meant to visit Lisette these past two years,” she said, surprising herself.
He bowed. “Perhaps I might meet you in Sevenoaks.”
Eleanor put her fingers on his outstretched arm. “I shall have to ask my mother, Your Grace. She may not be free to accompany me to Kent.”
He smiled down at her. He knew as well as she did that her mother would throw all her engagements to the wind in order to further a marriage between the Duke of Villiers and her daughter, but he was polite enough not to point it out. “Of course.”
“She will not be happy to learn of your family,” she observed, in a coda to the unspoken question of her mother’s approval of any prospective betrothal.
“Which makes it all the more surprising to discover that you are so calmly accepting of their existence. It seems you resemble neither your father nor your mother, Lady Eleanor.”