When the Duke Returns (16 page)

There was a scamper of feet behind him and he turned around, ready to snap a reprimand. Honeydew had to learn his place—

But it was Isidore.

She was trotting down the path after him, holding an absurdly coquettish, pink, ruffled umbrella in the air. Her hair was still in disarray, and little ringlets bobbed on her shoulders as she ran toward him. He almost stepped off the path, behind a bush, but he stopped himself.

She skidded to a halt in front of him. He braced himself, but there was no sympathy in her eyes. Instead, she looked rather annoyed.

“I think we have to make a rule,” she said.

“What?” His lips felt numb. He felt slightly unbalanced. He often felt like that around Isidore. “What sort of rule?”

“No walking out and leaving a person in the midst of an argument.” She tucked her arm into his and cocked her umbrella. Her face was shiny with rain. A drop ran down her cheek.

Simeon put a finger on the raindrop and brushed it away.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

“So am I.”

“I expect it was wonderful in Africa, away from here,” she said.

Simeon sighed inwardly. From the sympathetic strain in Isidore's voice, she was clearly coming to understand the reasons that he fled to the East the moment he turned seventeen.

“I don't walk out in the rain,” he said, all evidence to the contrary. “I am practical, thoughtful, and controlled.”

She laughed and it was terrifying how much he liked the sound.

“I myself never walk in the rain, and particularly never sit down on wet benches,” she said, plumping herself onto a wrought-iron bench shining with water. She laughed up at him and he sat down beside her.

The rain was merely sprinkling now, rolling down his neck in an unconvincing, yet cold, manner.

“When my mother died,” Isidore said, “I was so afraid that I couldn't breathe correctly.”

He stopped thinking about how cold his bottom felt and curled his hands around her fingers instead. They were small and warm.

“I used to lie awake at night and think that my breath was filling the room, so there wouldn't be any air left for me to breathe.”

Simeon thought of saying the obvious, that her fear didn't make sense, but choked it back. Isidore was not a person who appreciated the obvious. “When did that feeling go away?” he asked instead.

“I finally told my aunt.”

“And she was able to reassure you?”

“No. She couldn't convince me that I wasn't right.” He turned to see her smiling up at him, her lips soft and ruby-colored, like a flower on the banks of the Ganges River.

“Ah,” he said hopelessly, falling into that longing state that gripped him around Isidore. She was right in her initial assessment of his sanity. He'd waited too long to sleep with a woman, and now he'd lost his wits.

“My point is that I am not very good at changing my mind,” Isidore said. “I am trying to tell you…”

“How did you get over it?” he asked abruptly. “Was
that happening when you were brought here to live, to this house?”

She nodded. “I really was a little crazed. I used to lie in bed and hold my breath, hoping to save enough so that I wouldn't die before morning.”

He dropped her hand and put an arm around her. “Isidore.”

She sighed and put her head on his shoulder. He smelled flowers and that other thing: Essence of Isidore.

“What did your aunt say?”

“She told me to sing. She said that singing actually created air, that when you filled your lungs and let it out in song, the air in the room expanded.” She looked up at him. “Aren't you going to tell me that the whole idea is deranged?”

He kissed the end of her nose. It was a small, straight nose. A very beautiful nose. He was aware of a feeling in the back of his head that said that lust for a woman's nose was probably the beginning of a long list of absurdities. “No.”

She put her head back on his shoulder and he tightened his arm. “I sang and sang. Your mother found it particularly difficult when I sang at the table. But you see, I had to sing because every time that I felt a tightening that meant there wasn't air enough in a room…” Her voice trailed off. “I know it's crazy.”

“I never grieved for my father,” Simeon said. “I don't think I really believed in his death until I came back here, and found the estate as it is.”

“You must be very angry at him.” She said it matter-of-factly.

“I am angry at myself,” he said. “Obviously he was losing his mind, and I never came home to find out. Had I been in England, I would have realized. I would have known.”

“You couldn't have done anything, though,” Isidore said. “I saw your father at the opera four years ago. He was perfectly sane.”

“To all appearances, perhaps,” Simeon said, rather bitterly.

“And in his own mind. What could you have said to him?
Father, I think you're mad; why don't I pay the bills?
”

Simeon thought about that. Then he thought about how cold his bottom was and pulled Isidore to her feet. She twisted about to look at her backside.

“You're wet,” he said, and then shocked himself. He put a hand directly on her wet skirts. “And cold.”

She was wearing petticoats under her skirts, of course. And some sort of apparatus that kept her skirts billowing out at the sides. Her skirts were all wet, though, and they collapsed against her skin. He could feel a round, warm curve of flesh under his palm.

With a groan, he put both hands there and pulled him against her, taking her mouth.

“What—” she said, startled, but he took the word away from her, kissed her until she was pressed against him, arms around his neck.

But he didn't move his hands. He didn't think he could. She kissed him and talked at the same time. He could hear little bits of words, here and there, his name, a phrase, a little moan. He tried nipping her lip and she pushed against him…she liked it.

Suddenly she put her lips around his tongue and sucked and his blood flared in his body. From some distance he heard the groan in his throat, and ignored it. He was intoxicated by the plump sweetness under his hands. His head was swimming and his blood was on fire. He could take her home now. He could take her to
the bedchamber and throw her on the bed. She was his wife, his wife, his—

The word beat sanity into him He forcibly uncurled his fingers and let her dress fall free. She murmured something and pulled him even closer. He waited for one heartbeat and then raised his head.

She looked up at him, her eyes hazy with desire.

“I think you're right,” he said. “I waited too long.”

She blinked at him. “To bed a woman,” he clarified.

Her arms fell to her sides. A raindrop ran down her cheek. “Why do you say that?”

He answered her honestly. “I don't feel sane when I'm kissing you.” She liked that. The bleak look went away and her dimple appeared, like a gift. He wanted to kiss it, but stopped himself.

“Perhaps that just makes you one of the family?” she suggested.

He was caught watching her lips and didn't understand.

“When I was singing all over this house and half the night, I was cracked,” she said, a smile teasing her lips. “When your father was refusing to pay bills, he was cracked.”

“My mother?” he said, raising an eyebrow.

“Grief,” Isidore said. “Grief. She's not cracked, but she honored his memory as best she could.”

“Ah.” There was something important there, but he couldn't think about it now, so he took her arm and turned back to the house. Raindrops were caught on her long eyelashes. He could see them shining like shattered diamonds. “What did you sing?” he asked, rather desperately. Of course he couldn't stop here in the path and lick her eyelashes. He was losing his mind.

“Whatever came to me,” Isidore said cheerfully. “I
wasn't very musical, you understand. I wouldn't want you to think that I added to the general charm of the house.”

“Did it already smell?” he asked, aghast.

“Oh, no!” Isidore said. “Not at all. Didn't Honeydew say that the water closets were put in five years ago? This was eleven years ago. I remember that your mother was particularly vexed when I would sing a ballad about a forlorn lady who jumped from a cliff because she found herself with child. I learned it from my nanny at some point, but your mother considered it quite indelicate.”

“I can imagine,” Simeon said, feeling slightly cheered.

“Your mother did not feel that I was very ladylike. And I'm not, Simeon. I still sing in the wrong places and at the wrong times. Even if you don't swear, I do. I take after my mother, and she was a passionate Italian woman.”

“I know.” Simeon knew he should probably take this moment to point out that she wouldn't want to be with a dried-up old stick like himself, that she would be happier with someone more passionate. But instead he said, “I'm so sorry about your parents, Isidore.” And he put his arm around her again.

She didn't say anything, and they walked home through the rain. By the time they arrived at the cottage it had turned into a proper English downpour, the kind that slants sideways.

Honeydew met them at the door to the Dower House and said, “The silver has been removed, as have all small movables, the smaller pictures in the West Gallery, and the Sèvres china.”

“Where have you put them?” Simeon asked, watching Isidore walk away from him. Her skirts were wet and clung to her legs in the back. Now that he knew
what she felt like under his hands he would never be the same again.

“The west barn,” Honeydew was saying. “The footmen will sleep there, of course. The maids have all been sent home for a few days. The cook will be in the village, as the bakery kitchen has been kindly opened for our use.”

Simeon dragged his eyes away as Isidore closed the bedchamber door. “My mother?”

“The dowager duchess refuses to leave Revels House. She also refuses to allow her jewelry to be removed; nothing in her room has been touched.”

“I'll stay with her, of course,” Simeon said with a sigh.

“I took the opportunity of sending all the furniture in the master bedchamber to London for refurbishing,” Honeydew said smoothly. “You and the duchess must stop here in the Dower House. It will be rather intimate quarters, I'm afraid.”

Simeon looked sharply at Honeydew, but his face was impervious.

“Set up a bed in the sitting room,” he said. “I trust you can find me something of that nature, Honeydew?”

He could tell the butler didn't like it, but Simeon merely left. It would be a sad day when he cowered before his own butler.

Gore House, Kensington
London Seat of the Duke of Beaumont
March 3, 1784

J
emma stared sightlessly into the glass above her dressing table. Then she pulled open the crumpled piece of foolscap and read it again.

It read precisely as it had a moment ago.

His Grace the Duke of Beaumont asked to be remembered to the duchess, and apologized for the fact that the note was written by his secretary, but he was unavailable today. And unfortunately tomorrow looked just as busy. With regrets, etc. Signed Mr. Cunningham, Elijah's secretary.

Elijah had never done that before, never actually written her through his secretary, when they were living in
the same house. The note had been delivered, along with a letter from her sister-in-law and an invitation to dine from Lady Castlemaine, as if her husband were no more than another acquaintance.

He had withdrawn. Elijah had retreated back to his chambers in the Inns of Court.

Obviously he had misunderstood her.

Not seeing him was a torment. She'd just come from breakfast, and Elijah wasn't there. And she had driven her maid to distraction, trying on two breakfast gowns before she chose just the right one, before she tripped into the room looking as fresh and elegant as she possibly could.

Only to be told by the butler that His Grace had eschewed breakfast. Jemma had pretended total indifference, naturally.

Can there be anything more humiliating than living out one's life in front of servants who are both observant and intelligent? Sometimes Jemma felt as if she were acting in a play, and she seemed to have lost her ability to dissemble. Brigitte, her maid, surely suspected. Her butler, Fowle, quite likely.

It was humiliating to hanker after one's husband. To be dazzled by his eyes and his attention, until he suddenly withdrew it.

Perhaps Elijah has an appointment with his mistress, she told herself, just to test the pain of it. But she was no better at believing in mistresses now than she had been when they were first married. She would never, ever have thought Elijah had a mistress. She couldn't have imagined that he rose from her bed only to welcome the woman to his chambers at noon.

Even now…

Even now she couldn't believe it.

She stared unseeingly into her glass. Was it that she
thought she was too beautiful to be scorned? The only person who had ever scorned her, so to speak, was her own husband. Perhaps the right way to put that was that the only person who had ever shown indifference was her husband.

For a moment, an image of Villiers flashed across her eyes. Her revenge was ready at hand. She needn't watch as her husband turned from her company to the House of Lords, with as much interest as if he had selected a game of billiards over one of macao. She could turn to Villiers. All of London would know within hours of their first public appearance together.

Elijah would be humiliated and it would serve him right.

But she knew even as she envisioned it that she couldn't—or wouldn't—do it. Villiers was no pawn; he was a man. A dangerous man: beautiful, witty and easy to love. That was where the danger lay, in the fact she could fall in love with him.

Then her marriage would truly be over.

Somehow, it had never been over in her mind, not even when she fled to France and Elijah didn't follow, nor the first time she found herself in bed with another man. Even when she tormented herself with remembering Elijah's declaration of love for his mistress.

He never said he loved
her
, Jemma, his wife. Surely that in itself was enough to end a marriage?

The invisible bonds had grown thin over the years that she lived in France without him. Attenuated by memory and her dalliances with other men.

But they never broke.

And all those memories were fresh to her now: of their wedding, when she hardly knew him, and yet her heart thrilled at the sight of him waiting for her in St. Paul's Cathedral. Of their wedding night, when she was
so awkward and he thoughtful, if (she thought in retrospect) rather reserved. But of course he was in love with another woman. Still…

There was a habit of mind, a way of thinking and talking, that came from being married to someone. A sort of bone-deep intimacy that survives even blows such as their marriage had taken.

Love, it could be called.

Odd, fugitive, undeserved. She had done nothing to deserve his love, and she rather thought he hadn't given it. Sometimes she thought, recently, that she saw something tender in his eyes, almost longing, but…

But somehow she had poured out her love when they first married, and there was no taking it back, no matter how she tried.

And no matter how he rebuffed her.

Perhaps…perhaps she was making a mountain from a mouse. Elijah worked too hard. He always worked too hard; that was why he had fainted in the House of Lords last year. Overwork and lack of sleep.

Perhaps he needed to be reminded that life was not work. She could…

But the idea of going to his chambers in the Inns of Court made her physically ill. She could remember what his mistress's hair looked like, flowing over the edge of his desk. Surely he still had that desk. It was a large solid oak one, good for the weight of a sturdy woman.

It hadn't been making a creaking sound as she entered, though he was surely thrusting with some strength…

It was all so far in the past, and yet close enough to touch.

She couldn't go to his chambers. What if she did and there was some evidence of his current mistress, if he had one?

Or had he told her that he had no mistress these days?

She couldn't even remember: such a crucial detail and it was gone.

Jemma rose to her feet; her letters fell to the carpet. She was not a woman, she told herself, to sit around bleating and wringing her hands. She was a person who—

Who went and
got
a man if she wished.

She wasn't a mere lass anymore. If she wanted to see her husband, she would do so. And of course she would have his clerks properly announce her, so that in the remote chance he was entertaining a woman, he could bundle her out the back door.

She needed an excuse for paying a visit. In vain she tried to think of something important. Why would she stop by his office? Why would any wife? Only to announce an immediate change of plans. If one, for instance, had suddenly decided to leave London for a few days, and go to the country. She could go to their country house and check on the renovation of the North Wing.

Suddenly a letter on the floor caught her eye, and it came to her: she knew where she was going. Her sister-in-law, darling Roberta, had written her a letter full of laughing, rueful details about Roberta's father, who was marrying a woman he met at Bartholomew Fair. That might be bad enough, but the woman apparently earned her money by donning a fish tail and speaking in verse—and Roberta's father was a marquess.

Naturally she had to stop by Elijah's chambers and tell him that the Marquess of Wharton and Malmesbury had lost his heart to a mermaid, and that she meant to pay Roberta a visit and see the mermaid in person. Perhaps she would force Elijah to take her to luncheon, or a ride in the park. She glanced out the window and saw it was drizzling.

A ride in the rain.

She, Jemma, was not leaving London without another kiss.

Sad, but true.

Her husband had kissed her twice in the last nine years, both recently. And she had kissed him once. Stupid beggar of a woman that she was, she treasured those kisses.

There. It was settled. She would instruct Brigitte to pack for a short journey, and meanwhile she would go to Elijah's chambers. If he wasn't there, she would wait. And when he finally arrived, she would kiss him goodbye.

The smile on her lips had a spice of joy about it that made her nervous, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror.

When had all this happened?

When did…

She turned away. There was no accounting for the human heart, or so her mama had always said.