Desperate Duchesses

She shook her head. “Not exactly.”



Roberta forced herself to sit for a second and collect her thoughts. Her future husband clearly loved the subtleties of rhetoric and law. “Will you do me the same honor?” She raised her head and looked straight into his eyes. “My understanding is that you have spurious issue with several women. Are you intending to create more of these children after our marriage is celebrated?”



“If you’re asking me to start giving a damn what the world thinks, I won’t and I can’t. I never have.”



Roberta took a deep breath. “I am asking you to be faithful to me,” she said clearly.



Villiers was silent. She watched the dark shadow of his eyelashes, his swarthy, almost harsh features. “Faithfulness has always struck me as an unreasonable concept,” he said, finally. “I would greatly prefer if you were faithful until we raised a brat or two for the estate. It seems unreasonable to give another man’s son my grandfather’s land. But a clever woman can always prevent conception.”



“And after that?”



“I would give you precisely the same freedom I would take for myself. I would do you the great honor of swearing—on my honor—that I will never fall in love with a woman. That any attachments would be a matter of impulse and pleasure, never of true intimacy.”



She could hardly understand what he was saying.



“You, of course, would need no excuse other than les caprices de jolie femme, a beautiful woman’s right to commit a folly,” he continued.



She looked directly at him. “Won’t you be enough to captivate my follies?”



“I much doubt it.”



This was a level of emotionless control that was indeed the opposite of her father’s blatant adorations. She drank in the devil’s slant of his eyes, the weary wrinkles at the edge of them, his palpable lack of interest. Her heart beat quickly. “All right,” she whispered.



His voice lashed her. “I’ve seen you look at the Earl of Gryffyn with a giddy sort of pleasure that belies your words.”



“That’s—” she caught herself. “That’s nothing. Child’s play.”



“No doubt,” he said, sounding bored. “I would certainly have to reach some sort of second infancy to contemplate a liaison with Gryffyn myself.”



“I do not contemplate a liaison! I would never—”



He raised a beringed hand, and the words died in her throat. “For God’s sake, play me no scenes. I don’t give a damn about the purity of your body or your soul. I would advise you, though, to act with a queen’s munificence toward those for whom you feel desire. Any other circumstance is likely to breed resentment. And resentful wives are so very tiresome, to themselves and others.”



She barely suppressed her shock.



His eyes laughed at her. “Shaken, country mouse? It must be the poet’s soul you inherited from your father.”



That stung her. “My father does not belong in this conversation.” It made her feel almost queer, to realize how much her father would dislike the whole topic. How much he would loathe Villiers, if he heard his concept of marriage.



“And yet your father has such a fascinating liberal attitude toward pleasure, given his attachment to the estimable Mrs. Grope.”



It gave him obvious pleasure to utter Mrs. Grope’s name; Roberta felt a flash of bitter resentment. It was so easy to make mockery of Mrs. Grope, so difficult to see what a true and loving relationship her papa and his courtesan shared.



“I would that Papa would marry Mrs. Grope,” she said, keeping her voice steady with an effort.



“He won’t.” He wasn’t looking at her anymore. In one clean movement, he pulled a long shining rapier from the interior of his polished cane.



“Oh!” she cried.



“Sword stick. Beautiful, isn’t it? I had it made for me by Parisians; they understand duels in a way that no Englishman can hope to do. You see how I favor you as my future wife. You are the only person in England who knows the secret of this cane.”



“You will forgive me,” Roberta said, “if I reveal that knowing the secret of your cane is hardly an intimacy to which I aspire.”



“I do like you,” he said, grinning at her. “I never expected that in a wife.”



“Why do you think that Papa won’t marry Mrs. Grope?” Roberta said, ignoring what felt like a very thin compliment.



“We don’t marry the women we screw,” he said, running his sword across the red velvet of the sofa cushion, to polish it, she had to suppose. “You surely have noticed that I have not made any movements toward your bed, haven’t you?”



She felt giddy. Was she supposed to be honored? “Because…Because I am not a woman to screw?”



“Not by your husband. And please do not think you must share with me the history of pleasure harvested by others.” He flipped the sword and ran it swiftly against the cushion again.



He must have tilted the edge a trifle too much because a gash followed the cut of his blade, widened, gave birth in an instant to a cloud of floating feathers. He swore.



“I wish to understand precisely what you are saying,” Roberta said in a small, wooden voice. “Do I understand you to mean that my chastity—or lack thereof—is of no interest to you?”



He tossed the gaping pillow to the side. A bridge of feathers briefly shaped themselves in the air before falling to the floor, to the couch, and a single feather, to his hair. “You seem to think that chastity adds to your attractions. I assure you that your beauty needs no such ornament. Of course, until we decide to create an heir, I shall expect you to behave in an entirely circumspect manner, using precautions, as I noted before. But I would never have offered for you, Roberta, were I not well aware that you are a woman of honor. Women of honor do not offer their husbands a cuckoo.”



It seemed that honor—to Villiers—had everything to do with children, and nothing to do with virtue.



“You must be sensible, of course,” he continued. “Cuckold is such an ugly word, even in this easy day and age.”



“Yet you are telling me to cuckold you,” she said flatly.



“Cuckolds are men who are too stupid to realize that their wives will stray,” he said. “I am not so foolish. Cuckolds are men whose wives make a jest of them by displaying their affections around the town. If I understand your character correctly, Roberta, you will never flaunt your affections.”



She sat silent, knowing he was absolutely right, knowing that he had picked her as nimbly as she had picked him—and, it seemed, for some of the same reasons.



“I have fought several duels, though never over a woman’s honor. It would be a grave disappointment to both of us if I had to defend your honor, Roberta, since I am generous enough to put it into your own keeping. I trust that you are no sprig from your father’s tree. Do not cuckold me, and I will not confine you.”



“I should dislike confinement,” she said. Suddenly she couldn’t bear another minute of his emotionless drawl. She rose, as did he. He towered above her, exquisite and controlled as the day she met him, but in truth so much more complex, scornful and erotic than she had understood. She felt young and inestimably stupid. She, who thought that life with Papa and Mrs. Grope had taught her everything there was to know about men and women. She knew nothing.