She reached out and pressed her lips to the mark. "I'm so glad you didn't die."
"At this moment," he said, and the fervency in his voice couldn't be mistaken, "so am She sipped and nipped and experimented until he was muttering something that sounded like a prayer or a curse, but with her name tangled in... and then with a quick twist, she rose and pushed him back on the bed.
"I need to—" he gasped.
"Not yet," she said, grinning.
"Enough practice for you," he said, grabbing her wrists.
"I—" He seemed intent on getting up, so she cut him off. "There may not be a tomorrow, Leo. You know that."
He shook his head as if to clear it. "What are you talking about?"
"My mother, Anne, and I will leave for London in two or three days at the most."
His grip tightened. "You can't."
She waited a split second and realized he wasn't going to say more. "I must," she said, pulling out of his grip. He let her go, of course.
But she wouldn't drown in the sudden bleakness that threatened to engulf her. It wasn't as if they were in love, that unshakable, unalterable thing. She could alter, and she would alter. Once she had slaked herself with him.
His brow was drawn, and he looked as if he were trying to coerce his foolish male brain into figuring out what she was thinking. So she slid down to her knees, which put her right where she needed to be.
He tasted hot, and male, and faintly like soap. Even putting her lips on him made heat shoot to her groin. It wasn't because of his taste, or the fact that he felt like heated honey against her lips.
It was the power of it, if she were honest. Leopold obviously stopped thinking, was unable to think.
Every time she tightened her lips, he let out a groan. In just a few minutes he seemed to be struggling for breath. Every time he groaned, a scalding wave of desire washed down her legs.
Suddenly his strong hands caught her and he pulled her up to face him. All the cool self-possession was gone from his face, from his eyes. He kissed her urgently, desperately, falling back on the bed and pulling her on top of him. The French letter took a moment and then she slid down, taking him as if they had always belonged together, as if the rhythm they forged was the rhythm of life.
She braced her arms on either side of his head and looked down through the screen of her hair. "I know why you wear such elaborate clothing," she told him.
He wasn't listening. Instead he thrust up, his fingers biting into her shoulders. She fell for a moment into voluptuous, toe-curling pleasure, and then recovered. "It's because you're hiding your eyes," she whispered.
"What?"
"You don't want anyone to see your eyes, so you dress like a peacock."
He grunted and thrust up again, sending a shock of white heat through her body. "I suppose you think you're very clever?"
"I am very clever," she said. "For example, it takes a clever woman to figure this out...'
What she did then made the Duke of Villiers actually cry out.
And those eyes, the eyes he hid from the world behind a screen of ice and a mask of gold thread...
they were almost black with desire and yet he never closed them.
He kept looking at her, and she kept looking down at him.
"I know what is dangerous about you," he said suddenly, a few shuddering moments later.
"What?" she gasped.
"You see me too clearly." He flipped her over in one smooth motion, pinned her down, bit her lip.
"You're damned dangerous, Eleanor, Lady Eleanor."
It made her feel shy...to be dangerous for other reasons than her own desire. "My Eleanor," he whispered.
And she didn't correct him because her heart was singing the same tune, and there was no need to speak about it.
Chapter Twenty-six
Knole House, country residence of the Duke of Gilner
June 21, 1784
By the next morning Lisette had lost interest in the treasure hunt. The piles of paper had disappeared. At luncheon she airily announced that the housekeeper would be handling all the rest of the details, from the children's whereabouts, to the refreshments, to the—
"All of it," she said, with a wave of her hand. "I shall spend the day in the nursery with Phyllinda and Lucinda."
"Those are not their names," Villiers said with a distinct chill in his voice. "Mrs. Minchem assigned those names."
"I must call them something," Lisette said, reasonably enough. "The girls do not seem to know other names."
"Villiers, you can perform a truly paternal action," Anne put in. "You can name your children."
In answer, the duke got up and left the room.
"I positively detest such bad manners," Lisette said.