A Duke of Her Own (Desperate Duchesses #5)

“I’ll wear Anne’s chemise dress,” she told Willa after her bath. The gown was made of pale lilac taffeta, so delicate that the fabric flowed to the ground without pleats or folds. It fit very close on the bodice and buttoned from the bosom to the hem with small canary-yellow buttons.

“Are you sure, my lady? You said that you would never wear it, because we couldn’t fit a corset under that bodice,” Willa said.

“I have changed my mind.” She would wear the gown for Villiers’s sake. Willa knew the reason, but they preserved the fiction, the way polite women do. Willa buttoned her up and then went off to borrow Anne’s face paints.

“Lady Anne will not be at supper,” she reported, coming back with a small box in hand.

“Is she ill?”

“Marie says that she was up and about for a short time this morning, but she felt so poorly that she went back to bed and has been able to take nothing but chicken broth.”

Eleanor grinned. “She overindulged last night.” She picked up Anne’s face paints and began experimenting. First she tried brushing dark lines around her eyes, the way Anne had the night before, but somehow she looked more badger-like than mysterious.

“You’ve overdone it,” Willa said dubiously.

“I look like a badger, don’t I?”

“More like someone with the Black Death. Not that I’ve ever seen the illness, but you look mortal with all that around your eyes.”

Eleanor shuddered and rubbed some off. Then removed a little more. Drew some more back on. Put color on her lips and on her cheeks. Rubbed some of that off. Put a little flip of black at the outside edges of her eyes.

Rubbed some off.

Stood up for one final glance…and smiled.

Her gown was the opposite of the stiff satin gowns that had been in style so long. The French chemise had been introduced only last year, and she hadn’t even thought of buying one. But her sister had.

Thank goodness for Anne and her predilection for fashion. Willa had piled her hair in waves of curls, with small sprays of violets tucked here and there. And after all that work, her eyes were perfect. Smudged, but not so much that she looked like a dying person. Or a badger.

Her lips were crimson. She made a kissing gesture to the mirror, and Willa burst into laughter.

“Do you think I’m too extravagant?” Eleanor asked, just before turning to leave.

“No. Not at all. It’s as if—well, it’s as if it’s more you, if you see what I mean, my lady.”

Apparently more of her meant dressing like a hussy, which was a disconcerting thought.

“It’s just too bad that we’re not in London,” Willa went on happily. “Because those gentlemen would go absolutely mad. They would fall at your feet.”

“I don’t know that I want men at my feet. Would you?”

“That’s not for me,” Willa said.

“Why not?”

“Because that’s for ladies and gentlemen. You should have four or five beaux at least, my lady. I want just one.”

“I think,” said Eleanor, “that I want just one as well.”

“It would be a great waste,” Willa said, shaking her head. “Look at your gown, and how beautiful you are, and all. And then there’s your dowry. It’s always better if a gentleman has to fight off other men.”

“For his sake or for mine?”

“Oh, for both,” Willa said, getting into the spirit of the conversation. “He feels better because he’s had to fight off rivals.”

“Well, I don’t think that Villiers cares,” Eleanor said, feeling a touch of wistfulness. “He just wants a mother to his children.”

“That’s not what he wants from you,” Willa said with a chuckle.

Villiers inspected himself one last time in the glass while Finchley waited, another cravat close at hand in case he decided to redo the knot. He was wearing one of his favorite coats, made of a pale green silk, the color of the very first leaves in spring. It was embroidered with mulberry-colored flowers, a fantasy of climbing trumpet vines. His hair was tied back with a ribbon of the same green.

He looked like what he indeed was: an idiosyncratic and powerful duke. He did not look like a man who was prey to unaccustomed and unwelcome emotions. Shame, for one. And fear. When Tobias couldn’t be found…when the daughters he had never met couldn’t be found…he had felt sick.

That was unacceptable.

And what he felt for Eleanor was, frankly, unacceptable as well.

He had to make a dreadfully important decision that would determine his children’s future happiness. He didn’t need a wife or a lover. The important thing was that they needed a mother. And Lord knows, they deserved whatever he could give them.

His jaw tightened as he pictured the fusty, filthy sty again. And Tobias, wading through the bitterly cold mud of the Thames.

“Your Grace?” Finchley prompted. “Would you like your gloves?”

“No,” he said, turning to go. “I think I’ll stop by the nursery before going downstairs for dinner.”

“Very well, Your Grace. I will wait in the downstairs entry with your gloves.”

Villiers pushed open the door to the nursery with some trepidation. He and Tobias seemed to be able to rub along together. But he had another son and a daughter at home with whom he had hardly exchanged a word. And now two more daughters. It was overwhelming.

The first thing he saw when he entered was Lisette. She was sitting in a rocker by the fire, singing. She had a beautiful voice, as clear as a bell and yet surprisingly low. “Hush-a-bye baby, on the treetop,” she sang. Lucinda or Phyllinda was curled in her lap, wearing a white nightie. Villiers looked around for the other girl, and found her in one of the beds, sucking her thumb in her sleep.

“When the wind blows, the cradle will rock.

When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,

Down will come baby, cradle and all.”

The moment Lisette stopped singing, the little head on her shoulder popped up. “Don’t stop, lady, don’t stop…”

That had to be Lucinda, given her exhausted but stubborn tone. Lisette stroked the little girl on the shoulder, then bent her bright head over the girl again and sang.

“Mama will catch you, give you a squeeze.

Send you back up to play in the trees…”

Villiers smiled. He didn’t remember ever being sung to. His nanny was greatly taken with the young duke’s consequence and treated him as a small prince from the moment he could remember.

No one sang to princes.

“When twilight falls, and birds seek their nest.

Come home to the one who loves you the best.”

Lisette’s voice was so beautifully soothing that it wasn’t in the least surprising to find Lucinda had succumbed. A maid tiptoed over to take the little girl, but Villiers waved her away and picked up the child himself.

She was utterly beautiful, from her curls to the long eyelashes hiding those lavender eyes she inherited from his grandmother. In sleep, her mouth was a rosebud rather than the defensive, obstinate grimace that she had worn downstairs.

“Put her down carefully,” Lisette said softly, at his shoulder. “You don’t want to wake her.”

He started toward one of the other little beds lining the wall of the nursery, but her light touch on his arm stopped him. “With her sister.”