This Duchess of Mine (15 page)

“As if I would accept a gift from Villiers,” Louise said, seemingly remembering her finicky disposition for a moment. “I am a married woman, Your Grace!”

“I have accepted many such small gifts,” Jemma put in. “Villiers gave me an exquisite fan last year…dear me, I wonder what could have happened to it? It was one of my very favorites.” She knew quite well what had happened to it. Her husband had taken one glance, thrown it to a footman, and she never saw it again.

“Perhaps he'll give you another,” Elijah said. “My dear marquise, you appear a bit flushed. Shall we find you another glass of Champagne?”

Jemma opened her mouth to say that further Champagne was inadvisable, or something along those lines, but the marquise had already bounded up from the sofa and was flouncing away on Elijah's arm before she could formulate the sentence.

Leaving her alone on the sofa.

“How the mighty are fallen.” Villiers plumped himself down next to her and handed her a glass.

She turned to him and to her horror felt tears rising to her eyes. “He's angry for some reason, that's all.”

“Drink your Champagne,” Villiers said. “Of course he's angry. Elijah has no interest in my cousin, a sweet little drunken duck of a woman. Don't be a fool.”

His tone was bracing, and the Champagne helped too. “He doesn't want to flirt with me,” Jemma said a few minutes later, rather sadly.

“That makes two of us,” Villiers said. “Perhaps he wants something more than a light flirtation with you. You are his wife, after all.”

“But I intended to
woo
him this week,” she said desperately.

“Men can take only so much wooing. Not that I've experienced much of it.”

“That was the point. Elijah never had a chance to have the fun of flirting with a seductive woman. It was supposed to be
fun
!”

“Are you sure that Elijah considers it fun?”

“Well, he's certainly having a lovely time at the moment,” Jemma said, drinking some more of her Champagne. She could see them across the room, standing close together and seemingly examining something in one of Villiers's cabinets.

“I don't think he is. If you want my opinion—”

“I don't,” Jemma interrupted.

“He doesn't want to flirt with the marquise, or with you either. Elijah is a serious man, Jemma. You have to understand that if you intend to love him.”

“I—I—” Did she love him?

“You don't know him very well.”

“Neither do—”

“We were the best of friends for ten years,” Villiers said. “Elijah was never any good at just tumbling around in the mud, for example. He always had to be building something, planning a town or an invasion.”

“He didn't play?”

“He has never liked to play. It's not in his nature.”

“He plays chess,” she said, defending him.

“He likes games of strategy. You might want to take that into account before you get your feathers too ruffled tonight. Now…speaking of chess.”

Jemma didn't want to speak of chess, but it was better than watching her husband laugh with another woman.

“We might view this all as a giant chessboard,” Villiers said.

“So?” All right, she couldn't stop watching. Did Elijah really have to touch the marquise on the shoulder in that intimate manner?

“Obviously, I am the Black King,” Villiers said.

Finally she looked at him. He had that wicked little smile of his. “And I?”

“The White Queen.”

“That makes Louise the Black Queen,” Jemma pointed out.

“And Elijah, as always, the White King.” Villiers sighed, but his eyes were laughing. “I told you I was becoming a saint, didn't I?”

“Just what do you mean by that?”

“I shall sacrifice myself,” he said, rising and bringing her to her feet. “The Black King sweeps the Black Queen from the board. It pains me to do it. It's been such a day for losing at chess. I can hardly countenance my own defeats.”

Jemma watched from the side of the room as Villiers nimbly drew his cousin from Elijah's side. She didn't approach Elijah, though. He didn't like to flirt, and his temper was uncertain. At dinner, Villiers sat at the head of the table, flirting outrageously with the marquise, who looked prettier every moment.

Elijah was engaged in a lively discussion with Lord Vesey about Pitt's India Act. Jemma and Corbin discussed the plate of fruit that the Duchess of Guise had worn atop her wig during her recent visit to London.

“I preferred Lady Kersnips's stalks of barley,” Corbin said. “And you are not listening to me, Your Grace.”

In fact, she was eavesdropping on Elijah's conversation. Lord Vesey was inquiring about the aftermath of the riots. “I was in the office of the chief magistrate day before yesterday,” Elijah replied. “Did you know that Lord Stibblestich is the liaison between the House of Lords and the office of the magistrate?”

“I can't bear the man,” Vesey grunted.

“Stibblestich's response to the riot is to suggest that they should all be shot.”

Corbin was listening as well, and he cut in with a comment. “The papers adamantly concurred with that sentence. I had not heard there was dispute about the matter at all.”

Elijah's gaze brushed over Jemma and turned to Corbin. “Stibblestich doesn't stop with the rioters. You see, the prisoners were bound to die anyway. The hulks breed disease and despair, and they would likely die within a few months, saving the price of the rounds of lead needed to shoot them. The hulks are not prisons; they are effective ways by which the government of England can dispatch large numbers of unwanted men.”

“That is reprehensible,” Jemma said, pulling his attention back to her.

“Stibblestich maintains that since the rioters had nothing to lose by rioting,” Elijah said, “we must be more aggressive in order to deter future riots.”

“He can't mean to torture them before shooting them!” Vesey said.

“No. He suggests we take all male members of each man's family into custody as possible accessories to
crime. And place all those men on the hulks,” Elijah continued relentlessly. “Every one of them. Elderly fathers, brothers, brothers-in-law, and male children over the age of eleven.”

His eyes slid away from Jemma as he turned to Vesey. “Yes, eleven. He has specified that age.”

“I always thought he was a blackguard,” Vesey grunted. “His father was the same. Hope you managed to head him off, Your Grace?”

“Luckily, while Stibblestich doesn't give a damn about the opinion of elected officials, he's still cowed by my rank.”

“Oh God,” Jemma whispered. That was what Elijah had been doing at dawn, when he left her without a note.

He turned away as if he were too tired, or too disgusted, to even look at her any longer.

Corbin launched into a meandering monologue that touched on everything from the newest hats to the price of shoe buckles, as Elijah and Lord Vesey continued their conversation.

“Surely this meal is almost over,” Jemma said, interrupting Corbin a moment later. “It seems endless.”

“Not even the rather extraordinary sight of our host flirting so outrageously with the marquise helps your ennui?” Corbin asked. “Her husband will learn of this by next week, even if he is in France. Just look how Lady Vesey keeps peering at them.”

Well, that was what the marquise wanted. And in a way, the Duke of Villiers was an even better person for such a rumor, as Henri would never believe that Villiers wouldn't seduce his wife, whereas Elijah's Puritanical reputation might blunt the marquis's jealousy.

“I have such a headache,” Jemma said, truthfully.

“I'm afraid that the dear marquise probably feels worse,” Corbin said thoughtfully. “She's looking quite white. And swaying. Oh, dear.”

In the fracas that followed the Marquise de Perthuis's collapse from her chair, Elijah appeared at Jemma's shoulder. “You look exhausted.”

Wonderful, Jemma thought. She looked like an old hag compared to the luscious, drunken marquise. “In truth, I should like to go home,” she said, rising.

Elijah was nothing if not efficient. Two minutes later they were sitting in the carriage, heading home in total silence.

She spent most of the trip reminding herself that there were many reasons that people didn't like being married, and this just proved their point: spouses suffered black moods, and one simply had to endure them.

“Will you retire directly?” Elijah asked, helping her off with her pelisse after they entered the house.

The only thing she wanted was to get away from all these emotions that she didn't understand. “I was intending to repair to the library,” she said. “I have a new chess set that I'm eager to try out.”

He prowled after her, without saying whether he would play or no. Fowle had set the chessboard by the fire. The pieces were made of gorgeously carved ivory and jasper, each one a small work of art.

Jemma sat down quickly. “Isn't it lovely?” She picked up the king. He was standing with one leg forward, arms crossed, a ferocious scowl on his face. His body was dwarfed by his crown, which loomed over him: a remarkable sphere, carved with open work.

“You see,” she said, holding it up, “if you look inside you'll see another sphere, and another, smaller and smaller.”

Elijah took it from her while she looked at a knight. He too was the embodiment of rage: riding his horse with a small hand raised above his head in a posture of utter fury.

“Where did you acquire this?” he inquired.

“Oh, it was a gift,” Jemma said. “Look, Elijah, the rook has a tiny person inside the window.”

“Would you say that I am a restrained person?”

Jemma looked up. Her husband sounded as if he were speaking through clenched teeth. “Yes, of course I would, Elijah.”

“In short, my face never takes on a seething expression like that on the face of this king.”

She was starting to wish that she had just gone to bed.

“This is a gift from a man, isn't it?” Elijah said, still with that curiously flat intonation.

“If you are planning to boil with rage over that fact,” she said, “I believe we should cancel our game until tomorrow.”

“This chess set is worth a small fortune.”

Jemma put down the piece she was holding and rose to her feet.

“I know exactly who sent it to you. And I won't have it.”

“I find this display of matrimonial jealousy somewhat surprising after the lavish attentions you paid to another woman this evening,” she said. “Not to mention her bosom.”

“Don't be a fool.”

“Don't call me names!”

“You know, and I know, that the kind of relationship the marquise and I have—if one could even call it that—was limited to a mild flirtation.”

“It certainly didn't look like that to me!” Jemma interrupted.

“Whereas you and Villiers only exchanged commonplaces?”

So that was the problem. “It
was
different,” Jemma said. “We talked of chess.”

“I saw the two of you together,” Elijah said. “Do you know, Jemma, that I am besotted?” He was speaking between clenched teeth.

Her heart thumped. “Is that a compliment?”

“It means that I can't stop watching you. It means that I watched you near the fireplace, touching Villiers, smoothing his hair, talking to him. That was no ripe, easily dismissed flirtation between a drunken woman and a man she decided to compliment!”

Jemma opened her mouth but he swept on.

“May I ask exactly why you set that woman to flirting with me? I felt as if I were a steak on a string, being dangled before a dog. Just what did I do to deserve that, Jemma?”

“How did you know?” Jemma cried. “It wasn't supposed to be a
punishment!
I was trying to give you some fun! I thought if another woman wooed you, it would be fun for you!”

“Do you want to know the truly ironic thing about this?” Elijah asked.

Jemma was fairly sure she didn't want to know, but he didn't wait for her to answer. “I told Villiers to go ahead with his seduction. I told him to try his best, because I was winning you.”

“Oh for Christ's sake!” Jemma said, losing her
temper entirely. “You discussed me? You discussed
which one of you could have me
? Were my feelings in the matter ever taken into consideration at all?”

Elijah held up his hand. The chess king stood on his palm, arms folded, glaring. “I told him to go ahead and court you, and look what happened.”

Jemma frowned.

With one swift movement, Elijah hurled the white king straight into the fireplace. It shattered against the bricks. Jemma gasped, but by then the white queen was also in shards. Words choked her throat, but rather than utter them, she just folded her arms and waited. It was too late for the set. Once the king was gone, the set was gone.

She would have thought that Elijah might get tired of it, but no. Every single ivory piece smashed against the back of the fireplace, followed by the black pieces. They smashed more easily; she had to suppose that chalcedony was brittle.

Then her husband turned back to her. “Now is my face calm and reasonable?” he demanded.

“No.”

“I have my limits, Jemma. I will not watch you and Villiers express your—your love for each other in front of my very eyes. You played with his hair.”

“But—”

“You held hands with him. In front of a dinner party of some six persons. In front of your husband, you took his hand! I am a
man
, Jemma. You are mine, not his.”

“I belong to no one,” Jemma protested. She felt extraordinarily tired, and rather sad. This all confirmed her notion that Elijah's relation with Villiers was far more important to him than that with his wife. “May
I inquire why my chess set had to go the way of the fireplace?”