It made him feel as if he should just cut off his own head and be done with it.

Tobias was curled in a chair in his chambers. “The nursery is useless,” the boy said, staring at him unblinkingly. “There’s an old nanny up there who used to care for Lady Lisette. She tried to feed me gruel, so I left.”

“Did you tell her where you were going?”

“No,” Tobias said with a patent lack of interest.

Really, Villiers thought, wasn’t that precisely what he himself would do? He never informed servants or anyone else about where he was going or why.

Though he’d always taken that as the prerogative of being a duke. Tobias was no duke.

“What are you reading?”

“It’s a book about this Cosmo Gordon, see? He killed someone.”

“In a duel. I know. He killed Frederick Thomas in Hyde Park last year. How did you learn to read?”

“Mrs. Jobber taught us. I can write too.”

“I meant to get you a tutor but I forgot,” Villiers said, frustration licking at him again. So far fatherhood felt like an exercise in failure. “Where’s my valet?”

“Popper is so cross about Lady Eleanor’s dog that Finchley went off to try to calm him down.”

“Ridiculous. That animal is so small that it can hardly be called a dog. It’s more like a stuffed cat.”

“I wish I’d seen it frighten Lady Lisette,” Tobias said wistfully. “Look at this.” He held up a small bronze horse with a tail that whisked in the air.

Villiers hauled on the bell cord, wishing that Finchley would drop the errands of mercy and stay where he was supposed to be. “Where’d you get it?”

“It was sitting around in the nursery,” Tobias said. “They haven’t had any children there in a long time. Everyone knows that Lisette won’t have any.”

“She is Lady Lisette to you,” Villiers pointed out. “Why won’t she?”

“She loves babies. But her father says she needn’t marry until he dies. You aren’t thinking of marrying her, are you? Is she the one?”

“Yes,” Villiers said decisively, putting Eleanor out of his mind. “She is.”

“She’s potty,” Tobias said. “Cracked. They all say so.”

“Who says so?”

“Her old nanny. The maid said the same. And Popper said that once she starts that screaming, there isn’t anyone who can stop her. Except you, I guess. He said you picked her up and she settled down just like a baby with a bottle of gin.”

“Babies don’t drink gin,” Villiers said, pretty sure that he was right about that.

Tobias shrugged. He obviously had about as much interest in baby care as Villiers did.

Lisette had been surrounded by children from the orphanage. She clearly adored children, and even more importantly, his children’s illegitimacy wouldn’t disturb her. It was unlikely that any of those orphans had parents whose domestic arrangements could be termed regular.

By now Finchley had reappeared. “Would you like the young master to return to the nursery now?” he asked as he pulled off Villiers’s boots.

Villiers glanced over at Tobias. The boy was listening, of course, though he was pretending to read. “He doesn’t look as if he’ll be shocked by the sight of my pump handle.”

Tobias’s face didn’t even twitch. Passed on my poker face, Villiers thought with some satisfaction. And without further ado he dropped his breeches and stepped into the bath.

“I don’t think you ought to marry someone who’s cracked,” Tobias offered a few minutes later.

“Lisette is not mad,” Villiers said impatiently. “She was just afraid of that ugly little pug belonging to Lady Eleanor. She was terrorized by a dog as a young child.”

“The maid told me all about it,” Tobias said. “It wasn’t so long ago.”

“That explains it, then,” Villiers said. “The fear is still fresh.”

“The maid said that Lisette insisted on jerking a puppy away from its mother, and the puppy was nursing. So the mother dog bit her. Then her maid—not the one who was telling me, but another one—tried to drag Lisette away, and she got bitten as well. And she—the maid—lost her finger. Or maybe two fingers. The nanny said that her hand is just disgusting looking now,” Tobias said with relish. “She has to work in the kitchens because it turns Lisette’s stomach just to look at her.”

“Come back in ten minutes,” Villiers told Finchley. Normally he never spared a thought for conversation in front of his servants. In fact, he’d once boasted that his servants were so well trained that he could tup a woman on the dining room table and they wouldn’t turn a hair.

But chatter about the future duchess was another matter.

The moment Finchley closed the door, he said, “Get over here, you turnip, so I can see you while we talk.”

Tobias came around. “I’m not a turnip,” he said. “My name is Juby.”

“Juby, juicy, that sounds like a garden vegetable. Your name is Tobias.”

“I’ve been Juby since I can remember. It’s too late to change over now.”

“It’s never too late for anything,” Villiers said. “More to the point, I think I’m going to marry Lisette, so you need to stop telling stories about her, particularly ones that are obviously untrue.” He raised a hand as Tobias opened his mouth. “And if it wasn’t untrue, it was definitely unkind. I’m sure that Lisette had no idea that the mother dog might attack her.”

“Even the most buffle-headed fool knows that,” Tobias said scornfully.

“Welcome to the world of well-bred ladies,” Villiers said, sinking a little farther down in the bath. “What they know and don’t know will never cease to amaze you.”

“I don’t like ladies,” Tobias said.

“Neither do I,” Villiers agreed.

“It’s too bad you have to marry one, then.”

“It’s part of being a duke.”

“Getting married?”

“Yes.”

“Good thing I’m not a duke.” Villiers was queerly glad to see that Tobias’s eyes looked clear as he said that. “I’ll never get married, not if it means you have to marry a cracked lady who doesn’t know beans about anything,” Tobias continued.

“Lisette is beautiful.”

Tobias curled his lip. Villiers was startled: over the years he’d caught sight of that precise gesture on his own face a time or two.

“You don’t like beautiful ladies?”

“You should marry the one with the dog,” Tobias said firmly.

“Why?”

“Because she’s got a dog. And she’s not too pretty.”

“Actually, she is beautiful, in her own way.”

“Lady Lisette looks like one of those missionary ladies. All clean and gold-spun. You’d never know where you are with her because nobody is really like that. Not inside.”

“I wouldn’t?” Villiers was suffering from a terrible fascination. Even though his water was cooling and he knew he should cut off the flow of unsolicited advice, he couldn’t bring himself to. “Why not?”