This Duchess of Mine (19 page)

J
emma was curious about one thing in particular: what would Elijah wear when he appeared at her door? On reflection, she decided he would be fully dressed. To appear in a dressing gown would lack a gentleman's discretion, given the household's focus on their chess game.

For her part, she put on an utterly delicious nightgown. It was made of delicate silk in a cream color, lined with lace and covered by a matching wrapper. It was only when she was lying down, and the neckline shifted in a certain way, that one suddenly had a glimpse of a gorgeous cherry silk lining. That was something she had learned from a circle of Frenchwomen, years ago.

“Surprise him!” an older woman had laughed.

“Wear a sweet-natured gown, and underneath, a harlot's scarlet. Play the innocent and then the rascal.” She followed that advice with a few earthy suggestions involving the male anatomy, none of which Jemma
had tried…but none of which she was opposed to trying.

Her face paint was so artfully applied that only a man of Corbin's perception would have known she wore any. Her hair didn't have a speck of powder. It fell over her shoulders, gleaming like bottled sunshine.

“His Grace will be a happy man,” Brigitte said, pausing before she left for the night.

Jemma looked up, surprised. “Thank you! Though you and I know better than he how much of my beauty comes from Signora Angelico's brilliant designs, not to mention my favorite lip rouge.”

“I don't mean that,” Brigitte said. “I mean because you—you are interested in this evening, no? You—”

Jemma sighed inwardly. Could life become yet more embarrassing? “Yes.”

Brigitte smiled brilliantly. “He is lucky.”

Elijah appeared precisely at ten, which Jemma thought showed a healthy level of enthusiasm for the game, as well as—no doubt—what would likely follow it.

He was fully dressed. Naturally.

She opened the door, well aware that the candles placed around the room cast an extremely flattering light on her skin.

Being Elijah, his eyes didn't drop from her face. Instead he strolled into her room as if they were in the drawing room. He looked at the delicate little table set up by her bed, the delicious morsels Mrs. Tulip had sent up, the carefully draped scarves she'd chosen to serve as blindfolds.

To her utter surprise, he started laughing. “I feel as if I just happened into one of the great courtesan's apartments.”

Jemma bit her lip, and then smiled swiftly. “Should I demand a payment before, or trust on your gentleman's honor to provide payment after?”

“Oh, before,” he said gravely, walking toward her. There was something in his eyes that cured the hiccup in her heart, the pulse of shame she felt at his first comment.

“May I kiss you?” His question was so simple, and so—so Elijah.

She swallowed hard and said, “Only if I might return the favor.”

He bent his head then, and gave her the kind of kiss that no man gives a courtesan. Or a mistress. Or anyone who is paid for the most intimate of pleasures. It was a kiss that started with a brush of the lips and a silent question.

A courtesan couldn't have answered, because she wouldn't have been able to read all the hundreds of ways that the question came to Jemma: through the touch of his hands on her shoulders, through the controlled stillness of his mouth, through the very tilt of his head.

“Yes,” she said, telling him silently as well, brushing his bottom lip with hers. “Yes.”

He pulled back and looked in her eyes and then just folded her into his arms. It was as if they could try their wedding night all over again.

That first time, they hardly knew each other. She was terribly infatuated with him; he seemed barely to have registered her first name.

It was all different this time.

He let her go without another word. She took his hand and asked, “Will you blindfold yourself…or would you like me to do it?” She hesitated. “And Elijah,
if this reminds you too much of your father's predilections, we could simply skip the blindfold. It was a silly idea anyway.”

“Never,” he said, and the grin on his face had nothing to do with the sorry fate of his father. He picked up a swath of pink silk that she had chosen for its exquisite match to her gown. “I'll just put this on, shall I?”

A moment later it was tight around his eyes and she was laughing helplessly, watching as he bumped into the end of the bed and stretched his arms out, trying to catch her.

It wasn't until he accused her of unfairness that she picked up the unadorned white scarf she'd chosen for him. He had caught her by then and was laughingly trying to pull her toward the bed.

The world disappeared once she tied the scarf around her head. “Goodness,” she said.

“It's odd, isn't it?” Elijah's lazy, happy voice came from somewhere to her right.

“Are you on the bed?” she asked uncertainly.

“Yes. Lying here imagining you stumbling about the way I did.”

“Wretch!” she scolded, turning and walking toward his voice, hands outstretched. She bumped into the bed and fell forward.

Strong arms scooped her up and placed her next to him. “I should have taken off my boots,” he said thoughtfully. “Would it be cheating to start over? I'm not sure I can manage that with the blindfold.”

“Yes,” she said, wiggling about until she was fairly sure she wouldn't fall off the bed.

“You forgot something too.” There was a thump that sounded like a boot hitting the ground.

“Not the Champagne,” she said. She knew exactly where she was—on the left side of her bed at the head—and that meant the little table with the glasses of Champagne was just at her hand. Which it was. She just managed to touch a stem with her fingertips and then wrap her hand around it.

She realized that she could even sip Champagne.

“You forgot the chessboard,” he said, amusement dark in his voice. “Dear me, we'll just have to think of something else to do.”

“We don't need a chessboard! Are you—” She put out an arm. “Are you returning to the bed?”

The mattress sagged a bit, answering her question. “Yes.”

“I shall give you a glass of Champagne.”

“We can always move to my bed after this one is drenched,” Elijah said cheerfully.

She managed to put her own glass back on the table and pick up his. Their hands bumped, but the glass was saved.

“I shall drink the whole glass right now,” he said in her ear. “Otherwise I can't answer for its safety.”

“I should like to see you as tipsy as the marquise,” she said, trying to find her glass again.

“What are you doing?”

“I'm just—” There was a tinkle, then the sound of shattering crystal. “I was just trying to find my glass,” she said sadly.

“The bottle is still there. Don't move.” He reached over her and apparently managed to grab the bottle. “I suppose I'll just have to serve you.”

“Oh? And just how do you plan to do that?”

“Like this.” Suddenly she felt a warm, large hand on her hair, running like the softest caress she could
imagine over her forehead. One finger paused on her nose, and was replaced by a kiss.

Another finger traced her lips, and a kiss followed.

“Imagine that,” he whispered. “Anywhere my hand can go, I can find with my lips. The possibilities are…limitless.”

She couldn't help giggling, but the truth was that being blindfolded made her feel uncertain. She had never, ever, made love without constantly checking the effect of her body on her partner—whether it was Elijah, all those years ago, or her two French lovers.

In fact, her pleasure came more than a little from that, from the sense of control and power she got as a man eyed her breasts. As she adjusted her legs, just a little, and he let out a muffled groan. As she watched a man's eyes darken with lust so he looked as if he were in pain.

But now…

Blindfolded, she felt vulnerable, as if all her skills, her power, her attraction, were gone, along with her sight.

“I feel strange like this,” she whispered. “Maybe we should stop, Elijah.”

His fingers were on her lips, followed by the cold smooth edge of the Champagne bottle.

“I don't drink from bottles!” she squeaked.

“Tonight you do.” His voice was a purring command that made her feel even more vulnerable.

She drank. It gave her the oddest sensation, as if her senses narrowed to the icy, sparkling feel of the wine in her throat. Elijah wasn't touching her, but she could sense him there, his breath stirring her hair, his body
just next to hers. He smelled delicious, like spice and soap and clean male.

“Enough!” she said, trying to regain her sense of control.

She heard a clink as he put the bottle down. “Now let me see if I understand the parameters of the game. We're going to lie here, next to each other—after all, the rules demand that we stay in bed—and imagine the chessboard in our heads.”

“Yes.”

“I've never played chess without a board,” he said thoughtfully.

“You might lose,” she said.

He nuzzled her ear and she jumped. “Or…
you
might lose.”

“Of course, that's true as well.” Suddenly she felt just the brush of his tongue. “Elijah!”

“I feel as if we'll be lying next to each other, like those medieval tombs.”

“What?” He was distracting her, playing with her ear. His thumb was tracing circles on her throat.

“You know, the tombs where Lady Whatsit and her husband lie next to each other in marble effigy, staring straight up. I think they usually have their hands arranged in prayer. Is that what we're to do…at least until the game is over?” His voice dropped at the end of the sentence.

“Um,” Jemma said, trying to pull herself together. But she felt entirely unbalanced. She was stretched out on the bed, so it wasn't as if she could fall off. Elijah was playing with her, as if she were one of the treats arranged next to the bed, but she felt immobilized by her sightlessness.

“Doesn't this bother you?” she said, turning her head toward him even though she couldn't see.

“No.” She could tell from his voice that he felt perfectly normal. “How do you feel?”

“Alone,” she said uncertainly.

“You're not alone.” There was a thread of laughter in his voice that made her cross.

“I'm not enjoying this,” she said, reaching up to take off the scarf.

But he knew, somehow. He suddenly rolled on top of her, and a large hand trapped her hands over her head. “You're changing the rules,” he whispered, running his lips over hers.

His body was hard. The silk of her nightdress might not even have been there: she could feel every button on his pantaloons, the weight of his thigh muscles, the bulge of his private parts.

The horrible, unbalanced uncertainty of being unable to see transformed into something else, something unbearably erotic. His hands were over their heads, holding hers. She should have felt even more powerless…but it was the opposite.

Slowly she stretched up against him, rubbing like a purring cat. She didn't hear his low groan so much as
feel
it, with every fiber of her being. “This is better,” she said. “So: you're White, and White moves first.” She raised her hips slightly.

“We need some rules.” His voice had darkened, deepened.

“I thought the same thing.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Every time a player loses a piece, he or she gets a boon, a request. She can ask for whatever she wants.”

“Is what you're doing now a boon?” His voice was a
low rumble; she was finding that rubbing against him made her feel happy.

“Indeed,” she said demurely, subsiding flat on the bed again.

“
Every
piece? That could be—”

“Twelve. Or as few as five. It depends on how well you play.”

“It depends on how well I can keep the board in my head, you vixen,” he said, nipping her lower lip.

She gurgled with laughter.

“And now that I think of it,” he growled, “your play is marked by rushing all over the board and knocking my pieces off.”

“But I also frequently win through wild sacrifice.”

He had kept still, so far, just allowing her to rub against him like a friendly cat. Now he pressed against
her
, just enough so she felt the strength of him. Her body instinctively sought his urgency, her legs cradling him.

Her mouth opened with the shock of it, and his lips covered hers.

Their kiss was devouring, fierce, indulgent, slow. He released his hold on her hands, and she wound her arms around his neck.

Slowly, Jemma realized that the best kisses are always blind. She tasted Elijah, let him explore her mouth, make his mark. She could feel what he was doing…she could feel what was happening.

Her gentlemanly husband had disappeared. The man on top of her was no gentleman. He wasn't her Elijah, her safe, ethical husband. He seemed to her like a highwayman, an outlaw, come to savage an innocent maiden, the kind of man who thrusts his tongue into a lady's mouth and then comes back for more.

The kind of man who suddenly pulls away, without a word. She felt him rise to his knees, and then a breeze as his coat flew to the side. She lay still, wildly excited, imagining Elijah as she'd seen him in the Roman baths.

His shirt followed. “Touch me,” came a growl at her ear.

Jemma grinned. She deliberately clasped her hands behind her head. “Did you win a boon?” she asked. “Because to the best of my belief, White goes first and you have yet to make a move.”

He groaned and bit off something that sounded like an oath, except that Elijah never swore. “Pawn to King's Four.”

“The same,” she said. “Pawn to King's Four.”