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.