"I'll wait for Lady Eleanor to return from escorting her mother," he said.
Lisette gave her charming little shrug. It seemed she'd forgotten about Eleanor.
Whom he was apparently marrying. From all appearances, Eleanor had decided to kick over the traces, but he didn't have any real belief that she had actually decided to marry him. She had announced that merely to silence her mother.
He couldn't think of another woman in all of England who would dare to announce their engagement without waiting for him to propose.
Eleanor walked back into the room. If Lisette glowed with a kind of concentrated gold, Eleanor had the crimson lips and sultry look of an English harem dancer, if such a thing existed.
Without a word to him she dropped on the floor next to Anne. Her side panniers were too large for the indignity of sitting on the floor. One of them bounced into the air and he caught a glimpse of a deliciously slim ankle before she slapped it back down.
"I was about to ask if I might offer you a chair," he said, just for the pleasure of having her scowl at him.
Her eyes were as sooty as a fashionable strumpet's. But she was trained to be a duchess, and so she sat straight upright, even though seated on the floor. A ducal doxy, that's what she was. A dissipated duchess. Whatever she was, his body responded to her signals as if he really were in a brothel—not that he ever entered those establishments.
He should probably join the group on the floor, but he loathed that sort of informality. And he didn't trust Popper's housekeeping skills, either.
"What do you do besides throw the bones and try to catch the ball?" Eleanor was asking. She had the ball in hand and seemed to be catching it easily enough.
" Juby says he and other boys make up their own rules," Lisette put in. "I don't see any reason why we should have to be precise. I want to try riding the elephant."
Riding the elephant? Villiers realized he had clearly missed an important part of the conversation. It was a pity that his blood was at a slow boil, all due to Eleanor's pouty lips. It made him think of bedding her.
She was a fierce, sharp-tongued little thing who would probably turn into her mother. And if that wasn't enough to frighten a man into flaccidity, nothing would.
"Juby?" Eleanor said to Tobias. "That name makes you sound like a boiled sweet."
Villiers had to stop himself from grinning. She might be sharp-tongued, but she was echoing his opinion. He pulled over a chair and sat down behind his son.
Eleanor cast him one of her bird-quick looks. "Why do you get to sit in a chair while we're on the floor?"
"You chose to sit there," he said pleasantly. "I choose not to join you."
"What a stick-in-the-mud you are, Leopold!" Lisette laughed. She put her arm around Tobias. "We like being on the floor, don't we?"
Tobias edged away. He wasn't old enough, or young enough, to want to be hugged. But it was pleasant to see how charming she was with him. Obviously, Lisette was completely unaffected by the circumstances of Tobias's birth. She was treating him as she would any child: with that artless joy she brought to her daily life.
She was laughing now, and clapping at the way Tobias was catching knucklebones on the back of his hand.
After five or six minutes Lisette was out of the game and so was Anne, who in fact had taken herself out. She had lit a cigarillo and was leaning against one of Villiers's chair legs and blowing smoke rings at the ceiling.
"This is boring," Lisette said, looking up at him with a pretty pout.
"Villiers," Eleanor said, without even bothering to glance at him, "Lisette wishes to do something else."
She really would turn into her mother if she didn't watch out. Still, he helped Lisette to her feet, noticing that she was as lithe as she appeared. "You have a vast array of musical instruments on the far wall," he noted.
Her eyes brightened immediately. "I've learned to play all of them; I adore music!"
His own mother had loved music as well, and used to spend hours playing a harpsichord in the drawing room. He smiled down at Lisette, imagining for a moment what their children might look like. All that gold delicacy would offset his dark, brutish looks.
Not that Tobias looked terrible, but he had to admit that his daughter Violet was no—Well, she was no violet. She had an oddly lumpy look, and a huge chin. He didn't know how he'd ever marry her off, but he figured that enough money would do it.
And maybe being around Lisette would teach Violet to be charming and happy. Lisette was doubly beautiful because she was so cheerful.
He glanced back at Eleanor, who was scowling at Tobias. She could use the same lesson. Still, common sense told him that Tobias didn't care about a scowl or two. Not after the abuse he had suffered at Grinders hands.