When the Duke Returns (18 page)

“Simeon?” she asked.

He didn't kiss her, even though her knees weakened at the look in his eyes. “I just want you to know that I like you, Isidore.”

She couldn't think what to answer.

Number Four, Gray's Inn
The Duke of Beaumont's offices
March 3, 1784
That afternoon

J
emma arrived at Elijah's offices in the Inns of Court feeling reasonably certain that she looked exquisite. That is to say, she was as certain as a woman could be who had just spent three hours putting on a gown of amber silk embroidered with sprigs of white flowers. Her shoes were trimmed with dark gold braid and finished with a jeweled buckle. She wore her hair up and lightly powdered, with jewels that matched her shoes.

Elijah likely wouldn't note the details, but a woman feels more confidence when she is perfectly attired from head to toe.

When Jemma had visited Elijah's offices for the first time, just after their marriage began, it was the middle of the day and the offices had been empty. She had strolled through a series of rooms noting the dark wood paneling and serious portraits of plump men, until she wandered into Elijah's inner sanctum. This afternoon, the scene was utterly different. She pushed open the door to Elijah's outer chamber to find it crowded with men shouting at each other.

There was a brief silence as they twisted their necks to look at her, and then the noise erupted again. But she noticed a nervous clerk scuttle into the inner offices after a glance at her, so she stayed where she was.

Before her were two worthy London merchants, or so she would guess from their clothing, arguing with a third man, surely a government official, about what they termed a “nest of pestilence.” Jemma hadn't figured out where the nest might be located before Elijah's private secretary appeared, looking harassed.

Mr. Cunningham wove his way through the knots of gentlemen and burst into an apologetic speech the moment he arrived at her side.

“It's quite all right,” Jemma told him. “I am finding it interesting.”

“It's Wednesday, Your Grace,” he told her, leading her toward the door from which he had emerged. “I'm afraid that Wednesdays are rather chaotic. Well, as are Tuesdays. And—”

“All other days,” Jemma filled in. “Who are all these gentlemen?”

“Petitioners,” he said. “As you may know, the East India Company has a great many men in its employ whose only business is to inform members of Parliament just what the company would like to have done. There are always more than a few of those in His Grace's
offices, hoping for a word. Lately there have been a great many people offering various solutions to the current wave of depredatory robberies.”

“I've read about them,” Jemma said, “but what on earth does Beaumont have to offer to the poor robbed people?”

“Oh, it's not the victims we bother about,” Mr. Cunningham told her. “It's how to cope with the criminals once they're caught that's on the government's mind at the moment. We used to banish them all to the colonies, but the American war stopped that.”

“Of course,” Jemma said. “It's as if the rat-catcher suddenly left town. There's no one to cope with the rats.”

“We've tried settling them in West Africa, and it doesn't work,” Mr. Cunningham said, weaving his way through a second room just as teeming with gentlemen, if not more so. “We have a great number imprisoned in the hulks, decommissioned warships moored in the Thames, if you can believe it.”

“I expect they attempt to escape daily.” They entered a third room filled with chattering petitioners. “Mr. Cunningham, is there a better time to visit my husband?”

“Oh no, it's like this from dawn to dusk,” Mr. Cunningham said over his shoulder.

“Goodness. I haven't visited in years, but I had no idea…”

“Due to the fact that he is favored by Mr. Pitt, but also respected by Mr. Fox, His Grace finds himself in the unenviable position of brokering compromises.”

Finally they reached a room in which resided only a number of weedy-looking men scratching busily at sheets of foolscap. “If you will step this way, Your Grace,” Mr. Cunningham said, “the duke will be happy to greet you in his private chamber.”

Jemma stepped through the door; Mr. Cunningham melted away behind her.

Elijah's office was beautifully appointed, with a rococo fireplace of just the sort that she most admired, and a lovely group of chairs clustered before it. He was already on his feet, out from behind his desk, and moving toward her. But her heart sank when she saw the look of cool reserve in his eyes.

“We need to speak,” she said. “I am sorry to bother you when you have so many people clamoring for your time.” She could hear a faint roar of voices through the closed door.

“Please,” Elijah said, guiding her to a small sofa.

She raised an eyebrow. “Cherry twill? Very nice.” It looked precisely like the chairs that graced her salon in Paris.

“I admired them in your house,” he said simply. And then: “They made me think of you.”

Jemma didn't know how to take that. Did she really want her husband to remember her due to a pair of chairs? He sat down opposite her, rather than beside her.

“I received an amusing letter from Roberta, saying that her father is marrying his mermaid,” she said. “I can't resist the idea of paying her a visit and meeting the mermaid myself. I thought to leave this afternoon or at the latest, tomorrow morning, so I wanted to let you know.”

“It was very kind of you to tell me yourself,” he said. “A mermaid. I should like to meet a mermaid.”

“I had hoped to see you this morning.” That was too blunt, but the sentence just jumped from her mouth.

He was silent for a moment. “I'm been—”

“I know you're busy,” she said, cutting him off. “We have been married too long to lie to each other, Elijah.”

“I would have thought that the longer a marriage survived, the more the untruths accumulate.”

Jemma hated the fact that her heart lurched at the very sight of his smile. “I would prefer the opposite. I thought your note might have resulted from a misunderstanding about my last words to you.”

Obviously, he was a master of the art of silence.

“I told you that I did not wish to play the last game in my match with the Duke of Villiers.” She held her breath.

His expression didn't change, and she dropped her eyes to her gloved hands. Fool that she was, she'd probably created the situation out of thin air. Look at all the petitioners he dealt with. He could not come home because he was busy. She was a
fool
. Her heart beat in tune with her self-recriminations.

He cleared his throat. “May I sit next to you, duchess?”

Jemma could feel a smile curling her lips. It was the gentleness of his tone. “Yes,” she said, rather breathlessly, adding: “Duke.”

“I thought you indicated a wish to discard
our
last game,” he said, seating himself next to her.

She pulled off her gloves and then reached up to touch his cheekbone. “You look tired again, Elijah.”

“Not
our
last game?” he said, showing the polite persistence that likely got him to the top of the government.

“Villiers's,” she said. “I intend to relinquish the match to Villiers without playing the third game.”

“He won't take that well.”

Jemma laughed. “Pity for your rival?”

“Leopold has always been unlucky in love.”

“I shall play him other games,” she said, “but not blindfolded. And not in bed.”

His lips barely touched hers, just brushed her mouth, but the very touch made Jemma shiver. It wasn't the
sensuality of it, but the affection that was heart-breaking. There had been so much anger between them.

“I have to leave London as well. Pitt has called a meeting in his country house, since Parliament is in Easter Recess for a few weeks.”

The regret in his eyes was deep and unfeigned. “How long?” she asked, wondering if it were possible for married couples to feel as excited as new lovers.

“I'll tell him that I must return for the king's fête on the twenty-sixth,” he said, kissing her again. But it wasn't the kiss she wanted, so she wound an arm around his arm and brought him down to her. He smelled like Elijah. He tasted…oh he tasted like complexity and power and something that seemed awfully suggestive of—

But that thought was gone in the way his lips moved over hers, powerfully, commandingly. There was such a potent sense of homecoming that Jemma felt tears prick her eyes.

He didn't touch her in any way. Her hands didn't stray over his shoulders or disrupt his wig. They only touched in that most intimate, most silent of fashions.

They were still kissing when a hard rap sounded at the door and Mr. Cunningham poked his head in. Jemma saw utter surprise cross his face. Of course, Mr. Cunningham was probably more acquainted with the crumbling state of her marriage than she was.

But Elijah didn't even turn around. “What is it, Ransom?” he said. He kept looking down at her, smiling an odd little lopsided smile.

“There's been another breakout from the convict ship moored in the Thames near the Blackfriars Bridge,” Cunningham said, whisking himself back out the door.

“I told them it was a damn fool idea to house people in the hulks,” Elijah said.

“Housing criminals on warships? Or the part about the Thames?”

“Did you know about that? You're a constant surprise to me, Jemma.” And he bent his head again.

“I'll be gone by the time you come home,” she said, some time later. She was breathless and happy and frightened, all at once.

“I shouldn't let you leave,” he said.

To Jemma's mind, it seemed as if the muffled uproar in the outside chambers was growing louder by the moment.

“They'll want me to address Lords about what to do,” he murmured, cupping her face in his hands.

“What will you say?” she managed.

“I've always—” he brushed his lips over hers—“said that the use of warships”—another kiss—“was an outrageous mistake.”

The noise outside rose to something of a crescendo, and Jemma, pulling herself free, stood up. But she couldn't bear to leave just yet.

“Why?” she asked.

Being Elijah, he took her question seriously. “Most of the convicts are unemployed veterans of our various wars. Unable to find work, they turn to robbery and worse. The warships make terrible prisons: the men spend most of their time trying to escape. And one in four dies during his first three years there.”

“The nests of pestilence,” Jemma said with a little gasp, “I heard men talking about them in the outer chamber.”

Elijah nodded.

“You are a good man,” Jemma said, straightening his cravat.

He caught her hands, turned her right one over and kissed her palm. “Not always.”

“When it's most important,” she said.

“I begin to think the opposite. It could be that
you
are most important, Jemma. To me.” He held her hands for a moment, and then let them go. “I shall come directly to the king's yacht on the twenty-sixth, Jemma. And I shall look for you.”

Jemma never really understood the description of a singing heart until that moment, but as she threaded her way out of the crowded chambers, every man arguing over issues of clemency to convicts, deportation to foreign lands, banishment, execution, hanging…She couldn't stop the foolish smile on her lips.

Or the song in the general vicinity of her breast.

The Dower House
March 3, 1784

I
sidore did not want to have an intimate meal with Simeon. It was too heart-wrenching. After having thought of him as her husband for so many years, some parts of her couldn't stop thinking of him that way. Mostly, if she were strictly honest about it, her body.

She only had to see him to want to kiss him. If they ate together, just the two of them, she might embarrass herself somehow.

They had spent the afternoon working through the final stack of papers. They had an argument over one of the letters. It talked of love, rather than money. That made it worse, to Isidore's mind, and she thought that the
woman deserved more than the standard four-hundred-pound gift they had agreed upon.

“She may be in no need of funds,” Simeon pointed out. “She doesn't mention his promises, unlike the rest of them.”

“But she knows he is married. He is a duke, and she addressed the letter to him. Why would she write if she didn't need funds?”

“She loved him.”

Isidore took the letter back. “She does address him by his first name.”

“She asks him to visit her. She says she misses him.”

“Your poor mother,” Isidore said.

Simeon blinked. “I was just thinking that it was nice to find that my father didn't wheedle his way into this woman's bed with financial promises and then disappear. She doesn't sound angry.”

“No, just lonely. Your father may have acted honorably toward her. Perhaps this mistress is in comfortable circumstances.”

“Perhaps she's a rich widow,” Simeon said. There was something longing in his voice.

“I'm sorry,” she said quietly.

“As am I.” And that was the end of that.

All afternoon, as the light coming into the room turned from pale yellow to gold, it played in his hair. She was developing a foolish love of unpowdered hair. The light made Simeon's hair look as if there were streaks of near blue among the curls. When he pushed it back with his hands, one ringlet always fell back over his brow.

She kept shifting uneasily, aware that her body was sending her all sorts of treacherous signals, signals that didn't agree with her newfound resolution to find a man who would court her.

Because for all Simeon was polite enough to say he liked her, that wasn't good enough.

She wanted to be loved.

After all the years in which she'd schooled herself into cheerfully accepting whatever type of man her duke turned out to be, she'd discovered that if she had the choice, she would like to be loved with a deep passion. The kind she had seen in her father's eyes when he bent to kiss her mother.

Why had she never before realized how important love was?

The last thing she wanted was to be betrayed by an unruly lust for unpowdered hair into some sort of indiscretion with Simeon, something that would turn their marriage into a
fait accompli
.