This Duchess of Mine (8 page)

Anger flared in his eyes, and she welcomed it. There was nothing worse than a dismissive Elijah, the statesman who made her feel like a fool easily quelled by a patronizing word or two.

“Do you want to know what happened today, Jemma?” he demanded. “Do you really want to know?”

“I wait with bated breath,” she said.

“I suppose your sarcasm is warranted. I can imagine it is much easier, and certainly pleasant, to stay at home and win a game of chess.”

Jemma sprang to her feet and walked quickly to the fireplace. She turned around a moment later, certain that she had her breathing under control. She'd be damned if she started panting from pure rage. “Given that women are allowed no part in government, your insults are not only unkind but unfair.”

He had risen to his feet, of course. Elijah would never sit while a woman stood. “I apologize. That is an entirely valid point. In that case, let's not talk of your day, but of Villiers's.”

“Oh for goodness sake!” Jemma exclaimed.

“The duke spent a delightful afternoon telling you a sad tale of his children, and his newfound resolution to be a good father. Rousing your sympathy and your interest, he opened his heart. True, he lost the game of
chess, but he gained so much more in becoming closer to you. Closer to you than he is to any other person on this earth, I expect.”

His tone was dispassionate. Jemma took a deep breath. “Either you believe that I will be unfaithful or—”

“You're a fool if you think that infidelity is a matter of bodies alone, Jemma!”

His insult burned in her stomach. “I have
always
thought that infidelity took forms beyond the obvious! From the moment I—”

“I know. I know. From the moment you found me on the desk with my mistress. What you have never understood is how unimportant that relationship was compared to one of true intimacy.”

“If you're trying to say that you and I were truly intimate all those years ago, I must disagree.”

“No, we weren't. In fact, I expect that you and Villiers are now better friends, more intimate, and in sum, more loving to each other, than we were in our early marriage. And yet I know perfectly well that you and Leopold have never entered a bedchamber together.”

Words burned on Jemma's tongue, but Elijah didn't wait for her to formulate a response.

“Let me make this very clear. I would not wish for the duke's pleasant afternoon, idling away his time and yours, even should I die tomorrow. I realized when I was eight years old that either I could die knowing that my life had changed the world around me—or I could die like any trout on a string, leaving the world precisely as it was before I was born. I chose not to be that sort of person, and you will
never
be able to turn me into Villiers. Never.”

“I didn't ask you to become Villiers!” Jemma cried.
“I merely thought that even in the face of the world's injustices, there might be a point at which a man is allowed to retreat from the fray. It's not that you would eke out your remaining moments in bed, but that this life is actually killing you.”

“I consider that unimportant,” Elijah said, after a moment.

“Your life is
unimportant
?”

“I have always known my life would be short. Why should I betray everything I hold dear in order to gain a few extra, lazy minutes?”

She stared at him, unable to even begin a sentence.

“I see that you would prefer me to throw away the world to stay at your side,” he said, restlessly walking away from her, across the room.

“I would—”

Never had Elijah interrupted her so many times. He swung about and faced her. “We are too old to prevaricate, Jemma. I have no doubt but that after I am gone, you and Villiers will find great happiness together.”

“How dare you say such a thing!”

“I dare because it is true.”

“You suggest that I am simply waiting for you to die!” she cried furiously. “You insult me as well as Villiers!”

“Leopold is my closest friend in the world,” Elijah said quietly. “Even when he and I were estranged, I still considered him so. The fact is that I have never been and cannot become the charming companion you deserve. But my disinclination to nurse my health doesn't mean that I am afraid to acknowledge that Villiers would be a better mate for you.”

“I cannot believe your arrogance,” Jemma said. “As you see it, I will prance away from your grave and turn
directly to my partner in lazy crime, living the rest of my life in happy indolence?”

“Your characterization is not helpful. What you call arrogance, I would call logic.” He took another quick turn and stopped just before her. “I am merely trying to be honest with you, Jemma. It would be patronizing of me to not share my opinion.”

“I see,” she said, striving to get a grip on her temper.

“But just to make certain that I understand your point of view: although you consider Villiers to be a lack-wit, you have every belief that I will turn directly from your grave to his arms.”

“Poetically put,” he said dryly.

“Moreover, you refuse to take any action that might prolong your life, preferring instead to gallop recklessly toward that grave without a thought for—for those you leave behind.”

“I think of you, Jemma.”

“Do you? Why? I am nothing but a frivolity ensconced at home, a woman who can be quickly dispatched into Villiers's arms the moment your brief candle burns out.”

“Not only poetic but Shakespearean.”

Jemma turned sharply and stared out the dark window, biting her lip savagely to control tears that caught at the back of her throat. Her heart was beating heavily, in harmony with her new—and wretched—understanding of her importance to her husband.

“I truly wish that I could be the man you'd prefer.” His voice came from somewhere behind her.

She controlled her voice with an effort. “I wonder, Elijah, that you bothered to summon me from Paris at all.”

He cleared his throat. “I do not understand your
bitterness, Jemma. If you don't wish to marry Villiers, you won't do so. I merely—” His voice broke off and suddenly his large hands were on her shoulders, turning her around to face him. “Damn it, Jemma, the truth is that I envy him. I envy him your cozy afternoon, the chess game, the sympathy in your eyes, the affection between you.”

Jemma angrily dashed a tear away. “You just scorned such intimacies!”

“I am not made to be a courtier.”

What could she say? That she'd been fool enough to think that he was falling in love with her?

She leaned her head back against the cool dark window behind her. It wasn't Elijah's fault that his honor came before his wife. She should admire him for it. God knows, the world admired his nobility.

She opened her eyes again and looked at her beautiful, honorable husband. That same stupid, foolish man who thought to pass her over to Villiers like a package that might spoil if left in the rain.

“I am sorry to have caused you distress,” he said. She could tell he meant it.

“Distress.” She had to swallow. “Yes, well, I suppose that goes along with a dying husband.” The words fell harshly from her lips, and he flinched.

“It needn't be like this between us,” he said, his hands sliding from her shoulders to her hands. “I thought we were…”

“We were what?” she inquired.

He didn't reply. His eyes were the dark blue of a midnight sky, too beautiful for a man.

“You seem to consider me an appendage of the estate,” she said, charging recklessly, miserably, on. “A cow to be passed from hand to hand.”

“Jemma, you are growing hysterical—”

She interrupted him. “Allow me the grace to finish. Since you consider nothing in life to be more important than your work, the question of an heir cannot truly perturb you. You have known for more than a year that your heart was unstable, to say the least, and yet you refused to bed me until I finished my chess match with Villiers.”

His mouth tightened. “It was for the good of the child. I wouldn't want the world to think that my heir was not of my blood.”

“Then I shall make this as clear as you have your refusal to leave the House of Lords. I will not sleep with you, Elijah. I am no brood mare, available for breeding during the spare moments you are not with Pitt or the chief magistrate.”

“Jemma!”

She raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“I have been longing to sleep with you.” The words were halting. “As much as if you were a drink of water in the desert.”

Elijah was not a man who wanted to reveal a vulnerability, ever. When she didn't answer, he kissed first one of her palms, and then the other. His touch burned. “We desire each other, Jemma.”

“No,” she said stonily. “Or rather, yes. We do desire each other. But that's not enough, Elijah.”

He dropped her hands. His eyes were shaded, dark and impenetrable. “Then woo me.”

“What?”

“I understand courtship. I see it in the House of Lords every day. It takes an elaborate courtship to convince a man that his opinion is wrong. That he has made a grave mistake in backing the slave trade, or the
tax on wheat. If you are right, and I am spending my time in a fruitless effort, then convince me.”

“In the five minutes you spare me on your way to the House of Lords?”

“Are you giving up?”

She narrowed her eyes.

“I thought you never gave up. I thought you always wanted to win. I thought you were my equal in that, Jemma.”

“I cannot work miracles.”

“I'll give you time. I have dropped some of my committees.” He was watching her closely. Her thoughts were tumbling between inconsolable misery and irritation. “I want what you give to Villiers,” he added.

That made her head snap up. “Oh for God's sake, Elijah—”

“Please. Woo me.”

“Elijah, I don't
woo
Villiers.”

“Please.” He caught up her hands again. “Please. I am not going to the House of Lords tomorrow. Allow me to accompany you?”

“Where?”

“Wherever you are going. Whatever you are doing.”

“I shan't go out and save the world, or even one prisoner tomorrow, Elijah. It's Thursday, and that means I shall go to the flower market.”

“Will you woo me even though I am a fool who enrages you?” He asked it quietly, but she heard the strain in his voice.

“You make me so angry.” The words spat like fat in the fire. But she found it impossible to harden her heart entirely. She was too infatuated. Of course, it was only infatuation.

She put a hand to his cheek. It was faintly bristly,
male, so different from her own. Elijah said nothing, so she let her fingers spread over his cheek, turning her touch carnal. One touched his lips, another the arch of his cheekbone. He closed his eyes, and his dark eyelashes lay against his cheek like the shadow of sin.

“I won't sleep with you. I won't go to bed with you merely to have an heir. Your cousin can inherit for all I care.”

“Will you sleep with me for another reason altogether?”

What was she supposed to say?
When you want me more than you want to save the world?
That would never happen. The intrinsic fabric of Elijah's soul, the whole construction of his life, meant that he could not give her what she wanted. Some part of her heart grieved, and another part craved him even so. His kisses. That affection she had interpreted as love.

When he opened his eyes, his voice sounded hoarse and guttural. “You are
mine
, Jemma. Do you understand that?”

Then, suddenly, she understood. In fact, she couldn't imagine why she hadn't seen it all from the beginning: the way Elijah insisted on playing chess with her only after she and Villiers started a match. The way he refused to sleep with her—until after she finished the match with Villiers.

All along she had been in a relationship in which Villiers and her husband were the opposite poles, and she had been too stupid to realize it.

“I'm yours,” she said, hearing the heavy sadness in her own voice.

“You sound…”

“But you are not mine, Elijah.”

And she left the room before he could say more.

March 28

J
emma had barely arrived downstairs the next morning before her husband appeared. He looked better for having slept past dawn, she thought, watching him descend the stairs. A man of such physical beauty never looked truly haggard; his bones carried it. And Elijah had been given great gifts: a nobleman's chin and a statesman's eyes. A beautiful, mobile mouth.

She had decided to woo—with the understanding that her husband's emotions were bound in a rivalry with Villiers that she could never challenge. She would woo with no expectation of winning, but simply because every moment that she kept Elijah from Lords was healing for his heart. Even if she secretly thought that those same moments would break
her
heart in two.

“Where are we going?” he asked immediately.

Elijah, she thought, had spent far too much of his life expecting that every day would be life-changing.

“We are going to the Covent Garden flower markets. It's a humble errand, such as duchesses sometimes do, when they feel like being useful. Which,” she added candidly, “isn't terribly often.”

He handed her into the carriage, and being Elijah, didn't look in the least bored.

A mere half hour later they were wandering among stalls of flowers, hawkers shouting on all sides.

“Violets,” Jemma said, halting next to a great tub of the small flowers.

“Ah, those purple ones,” Elijah said, staring down at them. “I've seen them.”

“Don't you know what violets are?”

He shrugged. “Not particularly. Why should I?”

“Botanical studies? General knowledge?”

“No.” He didn't seem to mind the gap in his knowledge either.

She plucked a bunch of velvety small flowers and held them to his nose. “These are violets.”

“Quite acceptable,” he said. “Shall we take the lot?”

“The whole bucket?” She laughed. “No. They're delicate. These will last only a day or so. This kind of pleasure comes best in small bunches, a bit by the bed, for example. To take so many would be extravagance. You, Duke, have accused me of extravagance on occasion, but in truth I am quite economical.”

“I don't remember accusing you of extravagance,” he protested.

“I believe it was in Paris. You were not happy with the cost of my crystal forest, remember?”

“Hundreds of pounds a tree,” he said, remembering. “But then…the king loved it.”

“And the crystals were promptly sold back to the merchant from whom we bought them. At a discount, naturally. But violets die, and cannot be resold.”

She took a few violets from the bunch and tucked them into his coat. “There. Now you don't look as severe.”

Elijah glanced down at his black velvet. “Do I look too severe?” he inquired.

“You look like a statesman. But the violets give you a more debonair air.”

“Would you prefer that I take to wearing coats like Villiers's?”

He sounded so dubious that she burst out laughing. “Villiers would never give you the address of his embroiderers, Elijah, so you are quite safe.”

He caught her gloved hand and brought it to his lips. “You called me Elijah.”

Jemma could feel herself growing a trifle pink. “I often do.”

“We're in public.”

“We're—We're married,” she said, hearing the slightly breathless quality of her voice and cursing herself.

“I don't believe my mother even knew my father's given name,” he said, putting her hand down.

Jemma handed the rest of the violets to a footman. “These and another bunch, please, James.” Then she tucked her hand through Elijah's arm. “I'm quite sure she did. Likely she simply chose not to use it in your hearing. Do you suppose that your mother might pay us a visit? Or—” She hesitated. “—ought I to have paid her one? I suppose I have been a sadly neglectful daughter-in-law.”

“If my mother wished to see you, she would have
sent you a command, informing you of her decision,” Elijah said. “What are all these white ones?”

“Apple blossoms!” Jemma crowed. “Oh, I love these. It means spring is truly here. And those are white cherries. I think we should have a huge amount in the drawing room, don't you? These are boxwood.”

Elijah sniffed the boxwood and actually took a step back. “I think something died.”

“Boxwood doesn't smell as beautiful as it looks,” Jemma agreed. She nodded to James. “We'll have a largish amount of the white cherry, thank you.” She drew Elijah on, out of earshot of the footman. “Do tell me, Elijah, should I pay your mother a visit?”

“We could do so together,” he replied, with a notable lack of enthusiasm. “It's like visiting the king, you know. We'd have to petition a visit. She hasn't summoned me in some two years.” He thought about it.

“Perhaps longer.”

Jemma stopped. “She might be ill!”

“Oh, no. She writes me once a week. Strategy is her métier. She has given me remarkably good advice on a number of topics over the years. Though she tends to be far too inclined to insult,” he added. “She is always counseling me to ferocity.”

The fact that his mother's primary decorating idea had been to strew the house with lurid depictions of Judith holding Holofernes's bloody head meant the dowager duchess's forceful tendencies were no surprise to Jemma. She bent to look at a pail of bluebells.

The old man selling the bluebells looked like a tattered and rather furry owl, all eyes and beak. “Grew 'em on the dung heap,” he said to her. “I's always has the first and best bluebells in London. It's the dung that does it. Ha'penny a bunch, if you please.”

Elijah looked down at the bluebells with the first real interest he'd shown in the market. “Why do you suppose that is?” he asked the man. “Could it be that the dung generates heat?”

“Me granddad said it was because there's nothing richer than the dung of a horse fed on grain.”

“Dung heaps do generate heat, though. Sometimes they combust. Perhaps this flower enjoys heat from above and below.” The man didn't roll his eyes, because one didn't do that to a nabob wearing a velvet jacket.

“What are these flowers?” Jemma asked. He had a bucket of tall, showy flowers that resembled bluebells, but with heads the color of violets.

“Don't touch those,” the man barked.

“You are speaking to a duchess.” Elijah's voice was all the more commanding for being utterly even.

“They're some sort of pisin.”

“Pissing?” Elijah asked. “A pissing flower?”

“Pisin!” the man said, annoyed. “Dead Men's Bells, they're called. And they're pisin!”

“Poison,” Jemma supplied. “And yet they're so beautiful. Do you grow them for an apothecary?”

“A doctor. He takes whatever I grows. Some sort o' medicine he's cooking up.” The old man gave a sudden cackle. “Don't mind taking his brass but I'll be slumgubbered if I'll take any o' his medicine!”

“Surely it doesn't kill by the touch,” Elijah said, his voice still sounding annoyed.

“For all I know, you'll reach down an' eat one,” the man said stubbornly. “There's chillen have died o' that. You can die even from drinking the water one of these has been sittin' in.”

“I'll put bluebells down the dining room table,”
Jemma decided. “We'll take at least half of those, if you please, James,” she told the footman.

Elijah plucked a few of the nodding bluebells. “They're the perfect color for your hair,” he said, looking down at her. He tucked them on top of her ear. “Your hair is the color of…something yellow. I'm not very good at compliments.”

“Egg yolks?” she said cheerfully.

“Drowsy sunshine,” he said, tucking another flower into her curls.

“How lovely,” she said, startled. “Like poetry.”

He smiled at her and pulled her arm back into his.

“Perhaps I shall write an ode to you. That is what courting couples do, do they not?”

“Well, I've never heard of a woman writing an ode to a man,” she said with a gurgle of laughter. “But I could try. I'm afraid I'm sadly unimaginative. It's the chess player in me.”

“For Jemma, whose hair is like drowsy sunshine,” he said, “and whose eyes are like…are like…”

“Marbles?” she suggested, laughing.

He glanced down at her. “I can see that you have no gift for romance. I shall have to take control of this wooing business.”

“Absolutely not,” Jemma said. “You have control of far too many things. I am in charge of our wooing. Tonight you are going to Vauxhall.”

“
I?
Don't you mean
we
?”

“I shall be there, masked of course. You will have to find me.”

He groaned. “Jemma, I'm an old and respectable duke, too old to—”

“Elijah, what are you saying? You're thirty-four! When's the last time you went to Vauxhall?”

“Not long,” he said, extremely unconvincingly.

“I've never been there with you,” she said. “And I can't imagine you going alone. Did you visit before we married?”

“I took up my seat at age twenty-one,” he said. “I had no time—”

“No time! No time for one of the most…I must say, Elijah, it's a good thing that our parents arranged our marriage when we were young. At this rate, you'd have become a curmudgeonly old bachelor without even entertaining the thought of marriage.”

“Not after I had seen you,” he said.

She felt that, like a drop of joy, all the way to her toes.

“You didn't look so pleased to marry me at the time,” she said, keeping her voice light. “I was quite infatuated with you, as I'm sure was painfully obvious. But even infatuation couldn't disguise the fact that you were less than pleased to be married.”

“I was fascinated by power,” he said. “It took me the way strong drink takes other men. My father had disgraced himself, you know.”

Jemma cleared her throat. “Do you refer to the unfortunate circumstances of his death?”

“That, of course. But also in the House. He took up his seat, God knows why. He clearly must have had no interest. And he led a group of men who took delight in delaying measures, in frolicking.”

Jemma frowned, uncertain what he meant.

“If a bill was being debated, they would stand up and make long, frivolous arguments in favor or against, switching their argument halfway through sometimes. They would introduce new bills, arguing for things like providing every man in the country
with free French letters, or providing all whores with lessons in Eastern dance.”

“Oh.”

“There were enough of them so that they effectively killed several bills, and caused no end of embarrassment to men who were trying hard to do the work of government.”

“It must have been difficult to take up your seat after that,” Jemma ventured.

“They—my father's friends—were still around, you see. They hailed me as Bawdy Beaumont. They thought I would continue in his vein, play the young Bacchus to their frolics.”

“Well, you didn't.”

He smiled ruefully. “I didn't. But it took time, and much thought and scheming, to play down my father's reputation and the House's expectations for me. I'm afraid that marriage wasn't terribly important under those circumstances. In fact, as I recall, the months before our marriage were particularly fraught, as I was finally establishing myself as a voice in my own right. I could hardly concentrate on anything else.”

Jemma cleared her throat. “I really should apologize.”

He bent over and tucked the bluebells into her hair again. His hand lingered for a moment. “They were slipping.”

“I know that my scandals, in France and here, caused you embarrassment. But I had no idea that you were contending with something like 'Bawdy Beaumont',” she said. “None. I promise you that I would have been discreet, Elijah.”

“I didn't share my travails with you, did I? I never told you about my daily problems.”

“No,” she said. “I remember asking about your day, and you would tell me the events being discussed. I wanted to contribute somehow, but of course I knew nothing.”

“It took me a few years to think clearly about the early days of our marriage, but then I remembered. You would lie next to me in the morning and ply me with questions. And I was such a fool that I was eager to be in the House already. I had no time for you. That was one of my greatest stupidities, Jemma.”

“You had other concerns.”

“I deserved to lose you. And I did.”

“I'm here now,” she said, smiling up at him. “And I'll be at Vauxhall tonight, masked, of course. You
do
have a domino, don't you, Elijah?”

“I believe so,” he said. “Will you wear a domino as well?”

She nodded.

“What color?”

“That is for you to find out,” she said, laughing. “The first lesson in courting is to be able to identify the woman you wish to woo!”

“But you are wooing me,” he said rather smugly. “I shall just wait until a beautiful woman in a mask approaches me and begins a flirtation.”

“You do that,” Jemma said, laughing.

He eyed her suspiciously, so she gave a little shrug.

“Of course you'll be able to identify me immediately, Elijah. Who else would try to flirt with you?”