“I can’t make love to you knowing it’s the last time,” he said finally, his voice tight.
She didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t fight for him. If she were to voice what she thought about Lisette…she might convince him. But it would always be her opinion against his. He had to either see it himself, or—or marry Lisette. That was all there was to it.
He turned around. “I’ve never felt this way about another woman. But I don’t have the freedom to choose whom I wish.”
“I understand,” she said. “I have—” She stopped.
“You’ve heard this before,” he said, his voice flat. “There’s no will constraining me, Eleanor. But I honestly think that Lisette is unique in her attitude toward the children’s illegitimacy. She doesn’t even see it as a problem. She can teach them to live without shame. She already adores the girls, and they adore her. I can’t—”
He turned away again.
There was a long moment of silence. Sunshine came in through the balcony door and slashed across his broad shoulders. She didn’t let herself feel…anything.
Finally he said, “I can’t choose whom I would, because I made this bed, as the saying goes. And I must lie in it.” He turned back to her.
“I understand,” she said, quite peaceably. After all, as he said, she’d been through this exact scene before. She had a precedent; she understood the undertow of anguish that would follow, the sense of regret and loss, the bewilderment of loving someone more than he loved her.
The next time around, she thought, it’s going to be different.
But it was different. She knew that. There wouldn’t be any next time around for her when it came to love…but that was all right, too.
If she couldn’t have the complicated duke in front of her, she didn’t want to love anyone. He was still staring at the empty fireplace, so she just drank in the sight of him, his muscled legs and lean powerful rear, the way his shoulders flared, the exact color of his hair—
And that was when the door burst open.
Chapter Twenty-eight
It happened so fast that afterward Leopold was never quite able to describe it. One moment he was trying to figure out why his heart felt as if it were splitting in two, and the next moment he was faced by an utterly enraged, out-of-control Duke of Astley who was screaming—literally screaming—about the fact that he had dishonored Eleanor.
Which he had.
No one could argue otherwise, given the fact that he was stark naked in her bedchamber. He pulled on his breeches, but could think of only one thing to say. “Do you want everyone in this house to know?” His voice cut across Astley’s hysteria like a knife.
The man choked.
“You will give me satisfaction,” Astley said, his eyes bright as a lunatic’s. “Immediately.”
“You must be out of your mind,” Leopold said, unwisely. “You don’t believe in duels.”
Astley went for his throat, forcing Leopold to throw him across the room, which was ridiculous and made him feel even more foolish.
“I know why you want to keep quiet!” Astley hissed, lurching back on his feet. “I will marry Eleanor no matter whether you’ve debauched her or not. She is not in control of her own impulses. She needs a man, and I left her. This is all my fault.”
“I will not marry either of you,” Eleanor cried, intervening. “So Gideon, if you wish to save my reputation, I would beg you to stop speaking so loudly.”
Astley stared at her. “Of course you’re marrying me. I have forgiven you, Eleanor.”
She shook her head. “I will not marry either of you.”
“I forgive you,” he persisted.
“She doesn’t need your forgiveness,” Leopold found himself saying through clenched teeth. “You should be groveling at her feet, begging for her forgiveness.”
“I already have,” he said, with an odd sort of punctured dignity. “And now I shall defend her honor, just as I should have defended her years ago.” The sound of his slap was shockingly loud in the quiet room. “Name your seconds.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Leopold said. He turned away and walked toward the balcony window. He had won four duels and lost one, badly. And he had sworn never to fight with a sword again. He was too good—and it was only after almost losing his own to a dueling wound that he realized how much he prized life.
His successful duels had ended with him wounding his opponents, none mortally. It was only by the grace of God that he hadn’t killed someone. He had no desire to alter that record.
“I don’t want to kill you,” he said, turning around.
“You won’t. Virtue—truth—God are on my side.”
“Astley, you’re one of the House of Lords’s most vocal opponents of dueling, and you have been for the last few years at least. Tell me that you even know how to handle a rapier.”
“Of course I do. I was trained as is any gentleman’s son. Do I need to slap you again, Your Grace?” Astley was maddened by rage. His face was completely white.
“No,” Leopold said slowly. “But I won’t fight you with seconds. If you want to fight, you’ll have to do it privately.”
“Why?”
“Because if you involve another, the world will know. And if Eleanor then refuses to marry you, as she has a perfect right to do, she will be ruined.”
“You wouldn’t marry him instead of me!” Astley swung around.
“He hasn’t asked me,” Eleanor said, head high.
Leopold actually sympathized with Astley this time. He could have ducked; he certainly knew what was coming. But he took a hard right to his chin.
Eleanor grabbed Astley’s arm. “He’s marrying Lisette! For pity’s sake, Gideon. He can hardly marry me when he’s promised to her.”
“Then why are you in her bedchamber?” Astley said, panting.
Although it hurt like the devil, Leopold refused to give his opponent the satisfaction of seeing him feel his chin. “Because I’m a bastard,” he said heavily.
“You are that,” Astley said. “Look me in the eye and tell me that you’d rather marry Lisette than Eleanor.”
It hurt to open his mouth, and not only because of the blow. He didn’t manage to open it before Eleanor intervened once more.
“He does!” she said, her voice tight. “What are you trying to prove, Gideon? Leopold has decided that Lisette will be a better mother to his children. He bedded me, but that gave him precisely as much desire to marry me as it gave you. In short: not much.”
Astley started to speak, but she held up her hand. Her eyes were flaming. “Neither of you seem to care, but I’ll tell you this: I deserve better than either of you. I deserve a man who will love me, who will believe to the bottom of his heart that I’m exactly the woman he wants to raise his children. Who won’t think of me as just a woman to bed.”
Leopold felt her words as if a blow had shuddered down his spine. He had never meant to hurt her. And yet there were tears standing in her eyes.
“I deserve more,” she repeated savagely.
“I think you’ll be a wonderful mother,” Astley said, like an eager puppy dog.