There was an odd little silence in the meadow, broken only by the song of a lark over the river.

“You can kill me if you want,” Leopold added.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Astley sat down on a large rock at the side of the stream, then observed, “My arms ache.”

“You should get a fencing master,” Leopold said. “You’re not bad.”

“Why? In case I find some honor of my own somewhere?”

Their eyes held the same rueful acknowledgment. They were the two luckiest, and two most brainless, men in the kingdom.

“She loves you. You can get her back,” Astley offered.

Leopold shook his head. “She’ll never believe that I love her now. She thinks that she’s nothing more than a second-best mother, that I never wanted to marry her until I saw how much Tobias cared for her.”

“Even worse, she likely thinks that you want her now only because Lisette proved herself stark raving mad.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

Astley stood up with a little groan. “My back!”

“Find an instructor,” Leopold said, looking up. “Not for defending your honor, but because it’s fine exercise.”

“I see that,” Astley said, moving slowly toward the house.

He stopped and looked back. “If I were you, Duke, I would fight for her.”

Leopold’s eyes fell on his rapier.

“Not that way,” Astley said with disgust.

And he was gone.

Chapter Thirty-one

London residence of the Duke of Montague

August 6, 1784

It took almost six weeks for the Duchess of Montague to plummet from the heights of maternal bliss to utter despair. At first she didn’t believe Eleanor’s declaration that she had refused Gideon’s proposal, even if he followed the strict protocol of a year of mourning. After finally grasping and accepting that, she leapt on the idea of her daughter marrying Villiers, bastard children or no. Resigning herself to the finality of Eleanor’s edict regarding the second duke led to wailing and gnashing of teeth. Literally.

Melancholy hung over the house like a shroud. The duchess took to drifting from room to room, her face a combination of dejection and rage.

“Don’t imagine that you can live with your brother for life!” she said shrilly one morning at breakfast. “I won’t have his life destroyed by having to live with a spinster sister. It would have ruined my marriage had your aunt lived with us.”

“I mean to marry,” Eleanor said steadily, repeating what she had said a few hundred times in the past weeks. “Just not a duke.”

“Two dukes! Two dukes asking for your hand in marriage and you refused them both!” The lament sounded like a lullaby to Eleanor now, so familiar that she didn’t even distinguish the words in the general flow. “The only good thing to emerge from this disaster is that you’ve got rid of that horrid dog, though I vow the Aubusson in the morning room still has an odor.”

Then the letter arrived.

Dear Lady Eleanor Lindel,

I hope you will excuse the audacity of this missive. We danced together once in the past, although I am quite certain that you hardly noticed my presence. For my part, I was unable to express my admiration as I was engaged abroad on His Majesty’s behalf. I am now returned to England, and thus I am bold enough to inquire, as I would have three years ago, if you would be so kind as to accompany me on a drive to Kensington Gardens.

Hon. Josiah Ormston

“You might as well go,” Anne said, reading over her shoulder. “He’s obviously been nursing a tendre for you all this time. It will cheer you up. Do you have any idea who he is?”

“No, I don’t. And it won’t cheer me up,” Eleanor said evenly.

Dear Mr. Ormston,

No lady can consider it an affront to learn that a gentleman has remembered her name over the span of three years. However, I must beg you to excuse me. Since I do not have the same memory of you, it would feel odd indeed to join you for a drive. Perhaps we shall renew our acquaintance when the season begins again.

Lady Eleanor

“Never mind the fact that you’ll be a burden on the family for life!” the duchess wailed, upon learning of the letter. “The least you could do would be to marry someone above the merchant class. Though if your father ever returns from Russia, I shall direct him to inquire amongst that sort. Beggars can’t be choosers.”

Anne, who was kindly sharing most of her meals with them, doing her best to blunt the flow of recriminations, said, “Mother, you can’t mean to say that you intend to sell Eleanor to the highest bidder.”

“Why not?” the duchess demanded. “No one can tell me that she isn’t a serpent’s tooth, gnawing on my bosom! Her dowry should be sufficient to buy us a merchant. Perhaps one of the Wedgwoods. I vow their crockery has grown so expensive that they must be worth a fortune.”

“Mo-ther,” Anne said, grinning.

Eleanor said nothing. Her father would never agree to such a scheme. And her mother didn’t really mean it. By refusing two dukes, she had struck at the roots of her mother’s strongest belief: that a title is God’s own way of marking his blessed few. Marrying her daughter to a cit would likely kill her.

“The least you could do is devote an afternoon to this—this Ermster fellow,” the duchess continued. “He’s a gentleman. He might marry you.”

“I don’t know who he is,” Eleanor objected.

“He’s not in Debrett’s,” Anne added.

“Debrett’s, Debrett’s,” the duchess said fretfully. “It can be terribly inaccurate, you know. They completely neglected to note that your great-aunt was related, on her mother’s side, to a Russian prince.”

Eleanor sighed. “If you wish me to accompany Mr. Ormston to the park, I shall, if he asks me again.”

“It’s the least you could do,” her mother said. “The very least. You’ll have to make a true effort now, Eleanor. Everyone will think that Villiers rejected you. They’ll be scrutinizing you to see what he found lacking.”

Despite herself, the back of Eleanor’s throat tightened.

“Mother,” Anne interceded, leaning forward and waving a copy of the Morning Post, “did you read about this extraordinary robbery?”

“There are so many,” the duchess said. “Who can keep account?”

“Yes, but this one happened in our own street!”

“Here?”

“It says that an old gentleman, residing in Arlington Street, was sitting in his front parlor when he was extremely alarmed by the sudden appearance of a man with black crepe over his face.”

“A cape on his face? How extraordinary.”

“No, black crepe. He must have worn it…”

Eleanor stopped listening. She had beaten back the tears, again. Perhaps she should go for a drive with Mr. Ormston. She had made up her mind to marry a mere gentleman, and any man who didn’t even appear in Debrett’s Peerage certainly qualified.

There was no real point in waiting for the new season. She suspected—nay, she knew—that her heart would never be whole. Yet she would marry, and she would have children, and she would feel joy again.