“Well, along the same lines, but Popper just told me that Gyfford’s brew house burned down. It’s a village over,” Marguerite explained to Villiers and Eleanor. “Half the village is insisting that it was Gyfford’s dead wife, come back for revenge. The other half of the village is much less poetic, and feels that Gyfford was smoking his pipe in bed.”
“What does Gyfford say about it?” Lisette inquired.
“Unfortunately, he’s cinders,” Marguerite said.
Lisette blinked. “He was our neighbor.” Her lower lip started to tremble.
“Stow it,” Marguerite said, rapping Lisette sharply on the hand with her spoon. “You didn’t know him, and by all accounts he was a hoary old bastard.”
“Now, now, Marguerite,” Bentley said. “Lady Eleanor is not used to your lively ways. You’ll shock the poor lass.”
“I’ve never seen that particular lass shocked,” Villiers drawled. “Do go ahead and see if you can do so, Lady Marguerite.”
“I am rarely shocked or frightened,” Lisette announced. “Except by dogs, of course. Fierce dogs.” She threw a meaningful look at Eleanor.
“Oh, don’t go on about that puppy again,” Marguerite said, earning Eleanor’s gratitude. “Let’s see, what else can I tell you. The dowager Lady Faber has had a horrible accident.” She paused dramatically.
“Do tell,” Lisette said, clapping her hands together.
“She saw an advertisement in the London Gazette for a depilatory.”
“Any story beginning on that note will end badly,” Villiers said.
“What’s a depilatory?” Lisette asked.
“A medicine to remove hair,” Marguerite told her. “Lady Faber rubbed it all around her mouth, and unfortunately everywhere it touched turned bright garter blue.”
Lisette went off in a peal of laughter.
“And while it is not funny, did you hear about the Duchess of Astley?” Marguerite added. “Yes, thank you, Popper, I will have just a trifle more. Please tell Cook that the baked carrots are extremely good.”
Villiers’s head swung up and he met Eleanor’s eyes. “What on earth has happened to the duchess?” he inquired.
“I do hope you weren’t close to the poor dear,” Marguerite said. “Yes, Popper, I think we could move on to the next course now.”
“The duchess?” Villiers repeated.
“You appear quite dismayed,” Lisette observed. “Was she a friend of yours, Leopold?”
“You are addressing the duke by his first name,” Marguerite said, narrowing her eyes and looking from Villiers to Lisette. “That is inappropriate. You are a betrothed woman.”
Villiers blinked, and Eleanor felt a perverse satisfaction. Not that a betrothal would stop Villiers, if he decided he wanted to marry Lisette.
Lisette gave her a lazy smile. “Leopold is a devoted friend. And since my fiancé hasn’t set foot in England for six years, I hardly feel he deserves the title.”
“Please, Lady Marguerite, how is Ada?” Eleanor asked.
“I am so sorry if she was a friend of yours, darling. Why, I’m afraid she’s dead. She couldn’t breathe…what day was that now? Oh, it must have been last Friday. I suppose they just put her in the ground, the poor dear. Not that I knew her, but by all accounts she was a kindly person. And so young. What a loss.”
“She was kindly,” Eleanor said. She felt sick. She had never wished ill of Ada. Never.
“The duke was at the Beaumonts’ benefit for the Roman baths when it happened,” Marguerite said with a kind of grinding cheerfulness that made Eleanor’s nausea increase. “Apparently his wife didn’t suffer. She just coughed once or twice and then collapsed. The doctor said he wouldn’t be surprised if something in her brain had simply burst.”
“Lady Eleanor is not feeling well,” Villiers said, sounding to Eleanor as if his words came from far away and underwater. She gripped the edge of the table hard because the roaring in her ears made her dizzy. It was stupid to feel responsible, even the slightest bit responsible. She had never wished ill of Ada. She had…she was sure of it.
“I’m a beast! I’m a bear!” Marguerite was lamenting. “Of course I should have known that the young duchess would have friends. I never met her about London, so I’m afraid I didn’t think…Popper, Popper! Get a footman—”
“I’ll escort her upstairs,” Villiers said, cutting her off.
Eleanor let go of the table and rose from her chair. “I’m perfectly all right. It must have just been the shock. I do believe I shall retire, however.”
“Please forgive me!” Marguerite called imploringly after her.
Eleanor’s heart was beating a guilty rhythm.
“Don’t be a fool,” Villiers said harshly, behind her on the stairs.
She waited until they reached the landing. “I never wished her ill. But I—I wished to be her.”
“Well, be grateful that you didn’t get your wish,” Villiers said, as unemotional as ever. “You’d be measuring a plot of ground right now.” But she was learning to read those gray eyes, and they said something. Not that she was sure what.
The image of Gideon standing over Ada’s body was so heartbreaking that Eleanor actually swayed and caught hold of the railing.
Villiers swore and plucked her up as if she weighed no more than one of his daughters.
“You needn’t,” she said feebly.
“Be quiet,” he ordered.
So she was quiet and stopped thinking about how she felt about Ada when she was alive, and just remembered her quiet smile, the sweetness in it, and the happiness with which Ada would show her newest embroidery project. Tears began to roll down her face.
Willa pulled open the door to her bedchamber and left immediately when Villiers jerked his head. He sat down in the chair and tucked her head against his shoulder, and Eleanor sobbed as if she were no older than one of his little girls. He handed her a white handkerchief but he didn’t say a word.
After a while she stopped crying, sat up, and blew her nose. “I’m sorry she’s dead.”
“I know you are.”
“I must look awful,” Eleanor said, remembering all her makeup.
“It’s interesting,” Villiers said. “The shoe black around your eyes has run in little streaks down your cheeks. You look like the sister to a zebra.”
“It’s not shoe black,” she protested, wiping it off with his handkerchief.
“I should return to the supper table,” he said, not moving, staring at her with his curiously beautiful gray eyes.
“Tobias has exactly the same eyes you do, have you noticed?” she asked.
“The same temperament as well. And the same brute nose.”
“He doesn’t have a brute nose.”
Villiers leaned closer, so slowly that it seemed an eternity before their noses touched. “Yours is quite patrician,” he said. “Slender, straight, narrow. Like the pathway to heaven, now that I think of it.”
“Then yours is as short and wide as the path to another place,” she whispered.
“Nothing about me is short.”