“No, you don’t.”
“I do!”
“You want to marry me because you realize you made a mistake. But that’s not the same as loving me now, Gideon. We lost each other, somehow. And frankly, you loved Ada, for all you are disparaging your time together. You loved her.”
Astley swallowed. “I—”
“You loved her and the sooner you realize that, the sooner you can mourn her properly.”
“But if you won’t marry either of us—”
“Don’t tell me that you’re afraid I’ll end up a spinster! I’ll tell you exactly who I am going to marry: a common man, not a duke. Both of you are so steeped in privilege that you never really thought I was good enough for you. I am going to find an ordinary man who will court me. And he won’t be a duke. Now if you don’t mind, I’ll leave you.”
She left.
Leopold pulled on his shirt. “I’ll leave for London immediately,” he said, tired to the bone. He felt as if a clamp were tightening around his heart, as if he’d—He couldn’t let himself think about what he had done.
“No, you won’t.”
“For God’s sake, Astley. She doesn’t want either one of us.”
“You fool,” Astley said. “You utter blithering fool.”
Leopold laughed, shortly. “Are you trying to get me to slap you this time? Because believe it or not, I don’t believe in duels anymore.”
The slap made his head fall back and his teeth rattle.
“What in God’s name was that for? That’s the third time you’ve struck me in five minutes.”
“Because I love her,” Astley said. “I behaved like a young ass when I left her. And maybe she’s right when she says it’s too late for us. But you—you used her. You made her fall in love with you, and you rejected her. I’m going to kill you.”
For the first time, Leopold felt a stir of alarm. Faint, but real. “You can’t kill me.”
“Yes, I can,” Astley stated clearly. “I dishonored Eleanor. This will atone for what I did to her. I’ll revenge her. I’ll take you down because it’s the right thing to do. You broke her heart. I’ve never seen her look like that, not when I left her, and not thereafter. By God, I never understood the point of dueling before but I understand it now.”
Leopold knew when a man had irrevocably made up his mind. He pulled on his boots. “Tomorrow at dawn.”
“Where?”
“There’s a stretch of green down by the river. It will do.” He felt inexpressibly weary. A man wanted to kill him because he had broken the heart of—
It was impossible.
She was so logical, so cool, when she agreed with him that he should marry Lisette. Women had moaned and murmured and shouted their love for him before, not that he ever believed them. Hell, Lisette had patted his cheek and told him that she loved him earlier that morning.
Eleanor never said a word.
“She doesn’t love me,” he said, just as Astley was leaving the room.
“You fool,” Astley said savagely. “You utter ass.”
“You’re hardly an uninterested bystander,” Leopold said.
“I do love her. But what I see in her eyes when she looks at you…I never saw that before. She used to desire me. She loves you. But that doesn’t matter, does it?” He turned around, his eyes bright with scorn. “You’ve made your choice.”
“I can’t marry whom I wish—”
“Just what I told her all those years ago,” Astley said, stepping into the corridor. “Precisely those words.”
And he was gone.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Eleanor thought she had lived through nightmares before, but the torment of dinner that night surpassed any anguish she had felt when Gideon left her. Lisette’s father, the Duke of Gilner, had returned, and contrary to Lisette’s prediction was enchanted to give his daughter’s hand to the Duke of Villiers.
He didn’t turn a hair over the question of the duke’s illegitimate children, just said cheerfully—and in front of the entire table, “I’m sure my little girl has told you that she can’t bear young of her own, so this is perfect.”
Eleanor had been looking everywhere except at Villiers, who was sitting across from her, but at this she peeked from under her lashes, just enough to see that Lisette had not bothered to inform her future husband of this fact. But of course he nodded as if the news were of no account.
Perhaps it wasn’t. After all, he wanted a mother for the children he already had. Surely an heir was less important. That thought led to bitterness, so she took a deep breath and pushed the question of Villiers’s children aside.
“It seems we both have reason to celebrate,” her mother said archly, from her position at Gilner’s right hand. “Our dear children are matched—and so suitably too!”
For all his liberal notions, the duke didn’t seem quite as pleased with her mother’s announcement, once he realized that Gideon’s wife was barely in the grave. He was a nice man, Eleanor thought. Too nice, perhaps. If he’d placed more of a curb on Lisette…She sighed. There was no use thinking about it.
Anne squeezed her hand under the table. “Almost through,” her sister whispered. “One more course.”
Eleanor gave her a lopsided smile. “I’m so glad you’re with me.”
Anne leaned over and said in her ear. “You’ll see. We’ll get revenge—on both of them. I have plans.”
Eleanor didn’t care.
At that moment she heard the scribble-scrabble of sharp claws on the parquet. Her heart stopped. It couldn’t be. It—
Oyster tore around the corner into the dining room, going so quickly that she heard his claws scrape the wood.
“Oh, no!” she yelped, as loud as Oyster himself.
Lisette was sitting to the left of her father. She leaped up, jumped on her chair and screamed. Of course.
Eleanor was running around the table, trying to catch her puppy, and only learned afterwards what happened. Apparently Oyster bounded onto Lisette’s chair as if he’d grown wings.
“He’s trying to bite me!” Lisette screamed.
Anne said later that it looked as if he was planning to lick her slipper.
Whatever Oyster’s intention, he had only a second before Lisette, without breaking her scream, scooped him up and threw him with all her might across the table and through the air. He didn’t even have time to bark as he sailed over Gideon’s head and slammed into the wall.
Time became slow, like honey pouring from a spoon. The puppy slid down the paneling and collapsed in a boneless heap of too-large paws.
“Daughter!” Gilner roared.
Still Lisette screamed.
Eleanor found herself on her knees by Oyster, tears streaming down her face. She was afraid to move him. Not that it mattered. He didn’t appear to be breathing. Then Villiers was there, sliding one huge hand under the puppy’s neck and the other under his body. “We’ll take him into the library,” he said, straightening.
He must have caught Lisette’s eye.
“Don’t look at me like that!” she screamed. “You have no right to look at me like that!”