A Duke of Her Own (Avon Historical Romance) by Eloisa James

Author:Eloisa James [James, Eloisa]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-08-04T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Eleanor bathed in silence, her mind whirling. She was playing a dangerous game with Villiers. But there was no reason not to play.

Flirting with him felt fresh…clean. It felt as if all the empty places inside her that had yearned for Gideon these many years were being filled, even if Villiers wasn’t another Gideon, and even if she wasn’t falling in love with him.

She was falling in lust with him, a thought that would make most of the maidens in the ton swoon from shock. Men were the only ones allowed to lust; women were allowed only an impassioned yet mysteriously platonic “love.” Not to be consummated, naturally, until all the necessary papers and ceremonies were tidied up.

Gideon had been slender, young, and beautiful. Villiers was hard, masculine, and—not bitter, but sardonic. There was a dark core to him that she would never know. Not that she needed or wanted to know it, she reminded herself.

She wanted his body. She couldn’t bring herself to feel shame over that, though the world would think she ought to. But she’d never been able to feel particularly shameful when she loved Gideon either.

Villiers’s very touch made her melt and shudder. It brought out the same side of her that had enticed Gideon into a haymow, the side of her that dared Villiers to wonder whether she was wearing a corset.

“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.

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