Eleanor thought of the jerky violence with which Lisette had swung the lute. “I believe she was irritated by something Roland said.”
“I can certainly understand that. I would suggest that Sir Roland’s manner could be considered a far more reliable guide to matrimony than might his kisses.”
“What do you mean?” Suddenly the stars seemed much closer, now that there were only the two of them outside together. The night air was velvety and warm on her skin.
“If I were married to him, it would be about a week before I pushed one of his pompous, artistic poems down his throat,” Villiers said with a perfect lack of expression, which made his comment hilarious.
Eleanor burst into laughter. “You hurt his feelings with that twaddle about Shakespeare. It could be that he’ll be a great writer someday, you know.”
Villiers leaned a little closer. “Dropping the tiresome poet from the conversation, I don’t think I want my marriage decided by a kiss that includes the Duke of Astley as an unknowing partner.”
“I thought of Gideon for only a moment.” Her treacherous heart sped up a bit.
“Why don’t you kiss me this time? Perhaps that will help to focus your attention on the man before you.”
Of course she could kiss him. She was good at kissing, and those dalliances with Gideon weren’t all that many years ago. So she leaned forward and kissed him with all the persuasive power that she’d polished with Gideon. Her lips slipped along his, begged him for entrance.
His lips didn’t move.
She swallowed a little humiliation, leaned farther forward so he could see her bosom if he wished.
Gideon always closed his eyes when she kissed him, but Villiers kept his open. And to her dismay, he seemed to be looking at her with amusement rather than raw desire.
“What?” she demanded.
“I don’t think I like being kissed. That was as boring as my kiss, the one that drove you to start dreaming about Astley.”
Gideon hadn’t liked her kisses all that much either. “Very well,” she said, moving back and feeling around for her wrap. “I really should go to—”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like kissing you,” he interrupted.
“Yes, you—”
“I don’t like being kissed.” And with that rather cryptic statement he reached across and pulled her against his chest.
Eleanor’s arms went instinctively around his neck. But she didn’t have time to think before his hands laced into her hair and his mouth took hers. He didn’t beg or seduce. He invaded. He took her mouth hard, with a kind of concentrated lust and fever, and she knew exactly why all those women had never said no to him.
It didn’t have anything to do with his ducal crest, as he seemed to think. It was the moment when the immaculately dressed, starched and beruffled duke suddenly turned wild, his mouth hot on hers, his hands gripping her hard.
This kiss was unlike any she’d shared with Gideon. There was nothing sweet about Villiers’s kiss. And Villiers didn’t feel like the right way to think about him.
She broke free and his lips slid, hot, across her cheek. “What’s your name?” she whispered, knowing it perfectly well. Leopold was too accustomed to women’s avid attempts to claim intimacy with him. He was spoiled by too much adoration.
He said it against her lips. “You do remember my title?”
“I don’t care about your title any more than—” But she didn’t want to talk, so she turned toward his mouth again, starving as a new-born chick. He made a growling sound in his throat, and their tongues tangled. She was shaking, she thought dimly, pushing her fingers into his hair and pulling it free of its ribbon so that it slid like rough silk across her skin.
“Leopold,” he said.
She wasn’t listening because she was burning, breathless.
“Leopold,” he growled.
She turned her mouth, wanting more of him, not words.
“You are a surprise,” he said a moment later, pulling back again.
Men never wanted to kiss as long as she did, she thought, and then pulled herself together. “A surprise?”
Instinctively she knew instantly that she had to—must—cover up the extent to which she was unable to think because of this craving. For him. For this man who was looking at her with absolute self-possession, pulling his hair back and swiftly retying its ribbon. Apparently the duke didn’t tolerate being unkempt for long.
She managed a shrug. “Because I enjoy your kisses? Since you imply that every woman falls prey to the ducal title, how do you know that I’m not belatedly captivated simply by your crest?”
“Are you? After all…I am the second duke with whom you’ve cavorted, if we count Astley. And I think we must count Astley, mustn’t we?”
There was just the subtlest insinuation to his voice. “I was in love with Gideon,” she said, not bothering to try to fix her own hair. It was probably a mess, but she refused to care. Instead she picked up the anisette, but it tasted sickly sweet now, and she put it down after it had barely touched her tongue. “I suspect that I loved him more than you loved Bess.”
“I can’t imagine how we would determine such a thing,” Villiers—no, Leopold—said.
“I wanted to marry him,” she confessed. “I thought we would marry.”
“So I surmised. Since I can’t imagine that Astley chose his languid wife over you, I gather that fate intervened.”
The pleasure of that compliment warmed her. “Fate in the form of his father’s will.”
“I expect you did love him more than I loved Bess, then,” Leopold said. “For I never thought to marry her. I was infatuated with her laugh. She had a wonderful chuckle. I wanted all her laughter for myself.”
Eleanor raised an eyebrow. “I would have thought that most young men felt possessive about other attributes of bonny Bess.”
“Oh, I wanted those too,” he said wryly.
“You mean you didn’t—” She stopped.
“Elijah intervened before my adoration of Bess could lead me to convince myself that I should offer her money,” Leopold said. “I’m afraid that I merely stood about the inn adoring her, and never thought about money until it was too late.”
“Oh.”
“Elijah, of course, didn’t need to offer money because he was so very pretty.”
He would hate sympathy, but she felt a flash of it anyway, followed by a wave of rage at stupid Bess for following the luscious Duke of Beaumont wherever he willed her. Presumably to Beaumont’s bed.
“I must take another look at Beaumont in the future. I’m afraid that I always dismissed him—he has that tiresome puritanical look—but now that I know he stole your barmaid’s attentions…”
He laughed, and Eleanor liked the sound. “Your problem is not choosing between myself and Beaumont, but choosing between myself and young Roland.”
“And yours,” she countered, “has nothing to do with a barmaid. Instead you are faced by two nubile daughters of dukes.”
“You think I should consider Lisette?”
She knew perfectly well that he was considering Lisette. She’d seen the way he watched her, with a kind of fascination, as if she were a fairy plaything.