"I am not a conventional man," Villiers stated.
With a start, Eleanor realized that if she did decide to marry the duke, she'd have to discuss the question of virginity or, specifically, her lack thereof. "Given your promiscuous progeny, I agree that you have no claim to conventionality."
One corner of his mouth quirked up. It had a remarkably beautiful shape, actually. "Oh, you'd be surprised. Men do the most interesting things in their private time and yet disparage women who commit even a tenth of the follies they enjoy."
"That's true." Gideon was the only man she knew who was punctilious as a Puritan when it came to virtue, as passionate about his honor as he had been about her.
"My point is that I am not a prude when it comes to human desire. I know how inconvenient it can be."
Inconvenient was an odd word for the way love for Gideon had shaped her life, but she saw his point.
Villiers tipped up her chin. "If you help me with my children, rear them, be kind to them, and fight society's belief that they are unworthy of the huge settlements I intend to give them, I will be lenient with regard to your personal life."
"You mean—"
"I would ask you to tolerate me only long enough to produce an heir."
"In fact, I want children," she said. She did want children. And for all Villiers's tolerance, she had no intention of straying from her marital vows, once she made them. After all, Gideon showed no interest. He had barely met her eyes these last three years. She knew he was at the ball tonight only because Anne told her. He hadn't searched her out, and of course she hadn't looked for him.
And more to the point, if she took vows, she would keep to them. Just as she had tried to keep to the vows she and Gideon had said to each other, private though they were.
Villiers smiled and the shape of his mouth caught her eye again. "I appreciate your saying so."
"You appreciate it?"
He nodded. "Like any other duke, I need an heir. But other than that, I must say that I have no deep desire for children."
"And yet you have so many," she observed. "Carelessness," he said.
"Stupidity," she said, before she could bite her tongue.
"That too," he agreed. "I need an heir, but I would be perfectly happy to live an amicable existence with a wife who had no interest in my charms, such as they are. Although I would ask that you be discreet."
Without question this was the most shocking conversation she had ever had. Her mother would have fainted a good five minutes ago. "Will you do the same?"
"Will I add even more miscellaneous children to the household?" And, when she nodded,
"Absolutely not. I am keenly aware of the idiocy of my imprudent attitude toward conception." He paused. "You might not be aware of this, but there are ways to prevent conception; as a young man, I simply didn't care to employ those methods."
She nodded again. She knew them.
His eyes narrowed. "What an interesting young lady you are, Lady Eleanor." "Why have you decided to house your own children?" "I nearly died last year of a wound sustained in a duel." His voice was flat, uncommunicative. "I fought that duel for the honor of my fiancee, and lost."
"Apparently, you lost the fiancée as well," she put in dryly, trying to avoid any sort of melodramatic revelation.
Sure enough, his mouth eased. "True. The Duchess of Beaumont's brother, the Earl of Gryffyn, won the girl and the duel, leaving me with a wound that nearly carried me off."
"Whereupon you made a deathbed vow to marry?"
His eyelashes flickered. They were very long eyelashes.
"No," she guessed. "You made a deathbed vow to rear your own children."
"That was it," he confirmed. "The damnable thing about it was that I turned out to be not entirely sure where those children were."
"Beyond carelessness," she said. "That's disgraceful."
"I had been paying for them." He abruptly stooped down and snatched up a handful of flowers, sending a small wave across the pool. "When I demanded their addresses, my solicitor handed me a partial list and disappeared, along with many hundreds of pounds, I might add."
"How very odd."
"It seems that he had gradually removed the children from their lodgings and placed them elsewhere, pocketing the money I provided for their upkeep." Villiers threw the blossoms back toward the pool. They rained down into the blanket of violets.
"Not the workhouse!"
"Less scrupulous places," he said evenly. "A workhouse might have explored parentage, after all. To this point I have located my son Tobias, who was working as a mudlark, gathering valuables from the bottom of the River Thames."