“Neither of you has sufficient knowledge to assess my vegetable,” he told them.

“Then you describe it for us,” Louise suggested with a twinkle.

Roberta laughed and changed the subject. But it made him think just how long it had been since any woman—at least an available woman—had greeted him with Eleanor’s profound lack of interest. In truth, it had been years since he encountered indifference.

He did not have pretentions when it came to his appearance. His face was ugly, to put it bluntly. But his title was beautiful, and the shine of his gold even more attractive, and the combination had delivered to him woman after woman.

“Your Grace,” Lady Nevill said, tapping him on the arm with her fan. The lazy, sweet tone of her voice put her in the interested category, though in this case it was not for his gold or his title. Louise was married, after all, although her husband was incapacitated. “I have been told that you are looking for a wife.”

“I never cease to be amazed at the triviality of conversation amongst the ton,” Villiers said, by way of reply.

“I’m grateful for the early warning; it gives me time to rehearse my condolences once you find an appropriate lady,” his former fiancée said with a smirk.

“Well, I would admit to being surprised,” Louise put in. “After Roberta threw you over, I thought you would never succumb to the parson’s mousetrap.”

“Villiers is a man,” Roberta said to her friend. “By definition he is in need of someone to look after him.” She turned back to him. “I heard a rumor that you are considering no one below a duke’s daughter. Should I be complimented, since I was apparently eligible last year, even given my lowly birth?”

“I just had a conversation with Lady Eleanor, the Duke of Montague’s daughter,” he admitted, ignoring her question. “And I’m traveling to Kent later this week.”

“Lady Eleanor would be an admirable choice. But Lady Lisette…” Louise’s tone cooled. Apparently, she didn’t care for Gilner’s daughter.

“And I intend to retrieve two of my six children and bring them back to be reared under my own roof.” He knew he shouldn’t enjoy Louise’s dropped jaw quite as much as he did. But there it was: he had learned to enjoy the petty pleasures of astonishing the ton.

“Good for you!” Roberta said, without turning an eyelash. Since she was raising her husband’s illegitimate son, he would expect no less. “It seems you are combining business with…business while in Kent. While I am all in favor of your rearing your own children, Villiers, I’m not quite as sanguine about your method of courting. You are as deliberate as Damon when he surveys mares he thinks to buy. Did you choose me with equally rigorous logic?”

“You were an impulse. And a lovely one.”

She liked that. “I haven’t met Lady Lisette. Of course, I’ve heard—” She broke off.

Louise shook open her fan so it hid her mouth. “One has to imagine that the rumors regarding Lady Lisette’s witlessness are exaggerated. After all, so many people in London fall under that description.”

A finely nuanced statement, Villiers thought. Guaranteed to make the point that the lady’s mental state had been called into question. “Is that why she hasn’t been presented at court?” he asked with some interest. “As far as I know, she’s never been presented, nor yet appeared in London at all.”

“Not everyone wishes to meet the queen,” Roberta said. “And certainly there are many who consider occasions of this nature to be a waste of time.”

From what he was hearing, meeting Lisette would be a waste of his time. He wanted a wife who would wield sufficient social clout to introduce his illegitimate children to society. Choosing a woman who hadn’t bothered even to introduce herself to society could hardly fit the bill, especially if she were deranged.

Roberta’s husband, the Earl of Gryffyn, strolled up and gave Villiers an insouciant grin. “Ah, my favorite dueling partner.”

“Only because you managed to trounce me,” Villiers replied. “And don’t think it will ever happen again.”

Gryffyn laughed and dropped a kiss on his wife’s ear.

“Just think, darling,” Roberta said. “Villiers has six illegitimate children and he’s going to Kent to bring them all home to live with him. Are you quite certain about that decision, Villiers? We have only one, and even with two nannies, I have a strong belief that another child would give me hives. This morning Teddy trimmed the stable cat’s whiskers. I would advise stowing your children in a French monastery and picking them up ten years hence.”

“I doubt it was his illicit birth that gave the lad criminal tendencies,” Villiers murmured, cutting his eyes to the earl. “Inheritance takes so many forms.”

“Six?” Gryffyn asked, looking rather more shocked than a man raising his own bastard had a right to be. “And they’re all in Kent? Why Kent?”

“Only two children live in Kent,” Villiers said.

“Are you sure you will be able to persuade their mother to give them up?” Roberta asked. “I’ve been Teddy’s mother for only something over a year, and I would take after you with a dagger if you tried to separate us.”

Louise had apparently recovered from her shock, since she jumped into the conversation. “Mothers are such an intriguing question. Lord Gryffyn, you do realize how much passionate interest we all have in discovering the identity of your son’s mother, don’t you?”

“I fail to see why,” Gryffyn said. “Why don’t you contemplate Villiers instead? Teddy has but one mother, whereas Villiers’s children will afford six times the pleasure.”

“Ah, but there’s a difference,” Louise said. “We all know about Lady Caroline’s unfortunate situation…Villiers, you are raising her child, aren’t you?”

“I find this conversation most objectionable,” he said flatly.

Louise fluttered her fan as if he hadn’t spoken. “Not that all of us believe that Lady Caroline told the truth about the parentage of her child…” She paused. Villiers didn’t deign to answer, so Louise rattled on. “As to the parentage of the duke’s other five children…” She shrugged. “One has to believe that the mothers are not one’s next door neighbors. Yet everyone is quite convinced, Lord Gryffyn, that your child’s mother is well-born. There is nothing more fierce than an English lady with a nose for scandal and a mystery that involves her peers.”

“Teddy shows no interest in the question, and he’s the only person with the right to know.”

“Even I don’t know,” Roberta said, giving her husband a mock scowl. “Damon promised to tell me on our wedding night, and then he reneged.”

The earl tightened his arm around his wife and dropped another kiss on her head. “I remembered that it wasn’t my secret to tell.”

“But you two are supposed to be one body and soul now,” Lady Nevill put in, just the faintest edge to her voice implying the impoverished nature of her own marriage.

“I don’t want to know her identity,” Roberta said, leaning against her husband. “That way I needn’t think of her as a real person. Teddy is mine now.”