A Duke of Her Own

Page 75

“I’m not—” Villiers said.
“You are, you are! You look at me the same way that bastard son of yours looks at me!”
There was a curious silence in the room, and a feeling that Eleanor suddenly remembered from Lisette’s tantrums all those years ago. It felt as if the air in the room was in short supply.
Villiers didn’t say a word, just shifted Oyster closer into his arms. His paw flapped lifelessly and Eleanor’s tears came harder. Her sister’s arms went around her, pressing a handkerchief to her cheek.
“It’s your fault!” Lisette shrieked, turning to her father.
He was on his feet as well, looking miserable and exhausted. “Be quiet, Lisette,” he said, his voice heavy.
“It’s all your fault—all of it. Everything!” She looked around the table, her eyes as bright and hard as cannonballs. “He took away my baby. He took him away and since then nothing has been right.” She turned to her father. “You are a horrible man! You are a despicable, child-stealing—”
Lady Marguerite’s voice cut through the tirade with barely controlled rage. “You will not speak to your father that way, Lisette. You sent away your own child because you said he smelled and cried too much.”
“That’s a falsehood!” Lisette shouted. “A lie because you’re all liars!”
Marguerite’s hand shot out and she pulled Lisette down from her perch on the chair and then grabbed her chin. “Look at me! You told your mother to get rid of that child. You did that to my poor sister, who never recovered. She was never the same from the moment she gave that child to his father. She did it because she knew you would ruin that boy’s life. But don’t you ever, ever, blame another soul for that.”
“I will blame him,” Lisette said, her voice a horrible sobbing half shriek. “I will blame him because it is his fault. And his, as well.” She pointed at Villiers. “He brought that boy here, that horrible boy, who made me think about my own child, the one you took from me. The one my own mother stole from me.”
Eleanor couldn’t bear another moment. She reached out and plucked Oyster from Villiers’s arms before he could stop her. Then she began to walk away.
“And you!” she heard on a rising shriek. “You think I don’t know what—”
There was a sound, of the slap of water, and Lisette’s voice broke off.
Eleanor glanced over her shoulder. Anne had apparently snatched a pitcher of water from the sideboard and thrown it directly into Lisette’s face.
Eleanor just kept going, down the hall to the library. The footman threw open the door, such an appalled expression on his face that she realized everything must have been audible in the entry.
“My lady,” Popper said, hurrying to her as she sat down on a sofa. “I’ll bring a cold cloth.”
“There’s no need,” Eleanor said, icily calm in her grief. “It won’t help.” Oyster’s head had fallen over the crook of her arm and she couldn’t see his eyes. She closed her own for a moment, and opened them to find Tobias standing before her. All color had drained from his face.
“It was me,” he said hoarsely. “I did it.”
“You didn’t do it. Lisette threw him against a wall.”
“I did it,” he repeated, his shoulders back as if he faced a magistrate. “I rubbed a beef steak on the bottom of her slippers, and then I took Oyster out of your room and let him go.”
Eleanor swallowed. “Why?”
“Because I wanted the duke to see what she was like. I never thought she’d kill him. I never thought that!”
He looked like a boy who had never cried in his life. His skin was drawn tightly over the bones of his face.
Tears slipped down Eleanor’s cheeks again. She slipped one arm out from under Oyster and held it out to him. “I know you didn’t. And Oyster knows you didn’t.”
He stood there, frozen, and she thought, My God, he’s never been hugged. But then suddenly his wiry body was pressed against hers, and a not very clean hand fell on Oyster’s fur, and they were both crying.
Someone handed her a large handkerchief of such fine quality that it could belong only to one person. He slipped a hand under Oyster’s body.
“Don’t,” she said. “Not yet.”
His eyes met hers over the head of his weeping child. “But I think he’s breathing,” Leopold said softly. “Tobias, he’s breathing. Oyster isn’t dead.”
Popper trotted up with a wet cloth. They turned Oyster over. His legs seemed boneless, so limp that Eleanor secretly lost hope again. Tobias began gently rubbing the cloth around Oyster’s closed eyes and around his muzzle, crooning, “Come on, boy. Come on, old boy. Open your eyes, boy.”
Oyster didn’t stir. Eleanor pressed her lips together.
“Smelling salts!” Popper said, and left the room again.
“I can feel his heart,” Leopold said, his deep voice steady. “Just keep doing it, son. Oyster will wake up.”
“We’ll go running as soon as you wake up,” Tobias said, his voice hoarse from crying. “I’ll take you out to the raspberry bushes and you can look for a rat. Remember when we looked for a rat? Remember that, Oyster? Come on, old boy, wake up!”
Tears were running down his face again, so Eleanor pulled him a little closer.
“Shit,” he muttered, reasserting his masculinity.
“I agree,” she said.
“He’s not waking up.” Despair cracked his voice. He said an even worse curse word, one that Eleanor had only heard once before.
“Give him a moment,” Leopold said.
Popper reappeared, waving a vial of smelling salts. The duke twisted the cork, putting the bitter smell directly under the puppy’s nose.
“Ew!” Tobias said, turning his head away.
In so doing, he missed the moment when Oyster opened his eyes and looked blearily around. But he didn’t miss Oyster’s weak lick.
“He—He—He—”
“He’s alive,” his father said in his measured way. But Eleanor knew to look past the magnificent ruby velvet coat, past the thick eyelashes. The Duke of Villiers was watching his boy bury his face in Oyster’s fur, and she saw love in his eyes.
“Tobias,” Eleanor said softly, “Oyster is yours now.”
Tobias raised his head. “What?”
“I’m giving you Oyster.” She smiled at him. “He loves you, and you love him.”
“But he loves you best!”
“I don’t take him looking for rats.” She ran her fingers through Oyster’s short hair. The puppy suddenly trembled all over, as if a stiff wind had ruffled through his fur. “He’s pretty bored with me. And when I thought he was dead—well, I think he’s going to live to a good old age now. But just in case, I want him to do all the ratting he can.”
“You don’t have to,” Tobias said. “We could share him. Maybe he could sleep with me sometimes. I know you like him in your bedchamber at night.”
“I’m afraid that wouldn’t really work.”
Oyster tumbled off her lap. He seemed a bit wobbly, but gave himself a vigorous shake.