Eleanor turned away and Villiers noticed that she had a remarkably jaundiced look on her face, which wasn’t quite fair. Lisette had no way of knowing the particular conversation she was interrupting.
He pulled himself together. “I am your father,” he stated, looking first at Lucinda and then at Phyllinda.
Lucinda’s eyes narrowed, and Phyllinda’s eyes grew round, and Villiers thought he learned quite a lot about each of his daughters in that moment.
He learned even more just seconds later when Tobias appeared around the edge of the carriage, limping slightly. Lucinda dashed over and threw her arms around him, and Phyllinda began struggling and gave Villiers a solid kick before he realized that she wanted to get down.
From a safe position behind Tobias, Lucinda shook her head. “You’re not our pa,” she said. “We’ve got the same one as Tobias. He promised us, and so—”
“Sorry,” Phyllinda said to Villiers, peeking around from behind Lucinda.
“He is your father,” Tobias said cheerfully.
“Is he?” Lisette said, turning her large eyes on Villiers. “My goodness, but you’re very virile, Leopold.” There was a little snigger from one of the footmen, which died instantly.
Villiers tried to arrange his face into what he imagined to be a nicely paternal expression. “I am your father. I accidentally lost you when you were quite small, and only found you today.”
“You lost both of us,” Lucinda said pointedly.
Phyllinda was hiding behind Lucinda, who was behind Tobias. “Yes,” Villiers said, trying to meet Phyllinda’s eyes. “I lost both of you at the same time, of course.”
“Remarkably careless,” Lisette put in, not helpfully.
“I’m sorry,” he said. What else could he say? He held himself as stiffly as he always had, except it was only lately that he felt stiff. Before, he just felt ducal.
Tobias hauled Lucinda out from behind him. “He’s not so bad,” he said, so that every servant could hear him. Villiers was used to living out his life in front of the household, but this was ridiculous. The sting of humiliation was practically Dantesque.
He turned to Lisette. “Can you summon your housekeeper to take care of these children? They need baths.”
“Nonsense, I’ll bring them to the nursery myself,” she said. With one look at her smiling blue eyes, both girls trotted away with Lisette, who was promising baths, hot soup, and Lord knew what else.
Villiers walked silently into the house, drawing back to allow Eleanor to climb the stairs before him. He occupied himself by noticing how small her waist was, and mocking himself for responding in an altogether physical way to the effect achieved by her corset.
At the very top she paused. “Do you know what I keep thinking?” A wildly mischievous smile spread across her face.
“Please don’t feel that you have to share it with me.”
“Oh, Lucifer, angel of the morning, how art thou fallen,” she said. And then whisked herself off, grinning.
Two could play at that game. He went straight to his room, out onto the balcony, and, after pausing at her window to make sure her maid wasn’t in the room, walked into Eleanor’s chamber.
She was washing her hands, and turned around with an undignified squeak.
Villiers wasted no time. Her maid might arrive at any moment. He pulled her into his arms and took that sweet hot mouth of hers, kissing her so hard that he expected a protest, or a shove, or even a curse.
Not from Eleanor.
Her arms went around his neck and one hand curled into his hair; his ribbon fell to the floor and her body came against his with joy. She squirmed against him, she sighed into his mouth, she gave a little moan when his hand stroked her back.
It wasn’t that women hadn’t done the same before. He knew how to turn a woman’s body into molten liquid, to shape and mold her so she couldn’t stop panting, so she couldn’t remember her own name, let alone his.
But Eleanor’s breathing was unsteady before he tried his practiced caresses. It didn’t have to do with his title, because he’d already learned that she didn’t care about it. It didn’t have to do with his beauty, because he didn’t have much. And it didn’t have to do with his money, because the way she was rubbing herself against him, without shame, without guilt…that had nothing to do with money.
A thought occurred to him and he broke free even as her lips clung. “Are you thinking of him?” he demanded.
“Yes,” she breathed. “What?”
His heart thudded and he pulled free of her hands.
She pulled him back. “Kiss me again.” He looked at her half-open eyes and groaned. There was something about Eleanor—something about the contrast between her composed, snappy personality and the wildness she unleashed in him that made him unable to control himself.
Even if it meant kissing her while she fantasized about someone else.
He kissed her as if to convince both of them that he owned her, that he controlled her. Eleanor was too free to be controlled. And yet when she pressed against him and craved him, obviously craved him…he believed.
He couldn’t not believe. He was only a man, after all. He couldn’t stop his hand from stroking down her back, circling that small waist.
“Are you wearing a corset?” he murmured in her ear.
She chuckled and he grew even harder, if that were possible. “What do you think?”
His hands, practiced and sure, roamed her back. “I think you’re wearing a gown of tobin silk, sometimes called Florentine,” he said, nibbling her ear.
She shrugged. “I have no idea. My sister ordered it.”
“This piece at your bodice is gauze, a very thin silk made at Paisley.”
“But am I wearing a corset?” she demanded.
“That is the real question.”
There was a scrabble at the door and Villiers sprang to her open window. He looked back for one more drink of her, to see the color in her cheeks, her tumbled hair, her desirous eyes.
“I’ll discover the answer to that question tonight,” he said, and it came out sounding like a vow.
Chapter Sixteen
Eleanor bathed in silence, her mind whirling. She was playing a dangerous game with Villiers. But there was no reason not to play.
Flirting with him felt fresh…clean. It felt as if all the empty places inside her that had yearned for Gideon these many years were being filled, even if Villiers wasn’t another Gideon, and even if she wasn’t falling in love with him.
She was falling in lust with him, a thought that would make most of the maidens in the ton swoon from shock. Men were the only ones allowed to lust; women were allowed only an impassioned yet mysteriously platonic “love.” Not to be consummated, naturally, until all the necessary papers and ceremonies were tidied up.
Gideon had been slender, young, and beautiful. Villiers was hard, masculine, and—not bitter, but sardonic. There was a dark core to him that she would never know. Not that she needed or wanted to know it, she reminded herself.
She wanted his body. She couldn’t bring herself to feel shame over that, though the world would think she ought to. But she’d never been able to feel particularly shameful when she loved Gideon either.
Villiers’s very touch made her melt and shudder. It brought out the same side of her that had enticed Gideon into a haymow, the side of her that dared Villiers to wonder whether she was wearing a corset.