When the Duke Returns (20 page)

Wiglet hesitated.

“Need I repeat myself?” Simeon's voice was utterly
calm, but Wiglet quailed as if he'd leveled a weapon at them.

He swallowed and then opened his hand. A dusky ruby rolled onto the ground and bounced once, rolling to a rest next to Bartlebee's elbow.

“Are you second in command?” Simeon asked.

“Yeth,” Wiglet said. His lip was already swollen to twice normal size.

“Right then, get on with it. You'll know in an hour or two whether your commander will ever walk again. I do hope that there'll be no further reason for me to feel concern about my safety, or the safety of my wife, my mother, or my possessions.”

Wiglet backed away quickly. “Never, Yer Grace,” he gobbled. “Not in the least. I mean, never.” He and the other man stepped through the door into the water closet, presumably throwing themselves down the hole in their fervor to get away from Simeon.

The dowager pulled herself to a standing position. “My jewels!” she said. “On the floor with those filthy, ravening beasts. I shall never feel the same about them, never!”

Simeon bent down to pick up the stones.

“Get up!” she shrieked, her voice suddenly strong. “That's a job for a servant, as I shouldn't have to tell you!”

“Your Grace!” Isidore said, “Let's—”

Simeon dropped the ruby into the cracked box on the floor and straightened. “Would you prefer that we leave the rest for Honeydew to collect, Mother?”

“I would prefer never to have been born,” his mother said on a gasping breath. “You—you have humiliated me one too many times. One too many times!”

Isidore's mouth fell open.

“Your father would have taken those ruffians out with
a blow to the jaw, like any respectable Englishman,” the dowager said. But her voice cracked on a sob. “You—my son—with his feet—”

Isidore met Simeon's eyes over his mother's head.

“We'll go outside now, Your Grace,” she said, lifting the remaining jewelry box from the dowager's arms. “Follow me, if you please.”

They left Simeon there, the marble around his feet littered with tarnished jewels, in settings popular a half century ago. Isidore turned around once, but he was staring at the ground.

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

T
he Duke of Villiers handed his cloak to Fowle, the Beaumonts' butler, pausing at the news that Jemma was out, but that the duke was in.

He and Elijah had to talk.

It had been years since they had spoken properly, although his valet Finchley babbled of how Elijah saved Villiers's life when he was in a fever. Since Villiers had no memory of that, he could hardly savor the reunion.

The truth was that Villiers was currently doing his best to seduce Elijah's wife, and yet apparently he owed him gratitude for the said life-saving.

What was all that between old friends?

“I'll announce myself,” he told Fowle. As he entered the library, he saw Elijah's profile around the side of a high-backed chair. He seemed to have closed his eyes. Villiers loathed naps. But then Elijah spent his adult life saving the world, or at least the English parts of it, while he himself concentrated on frivolities like chess.

As always when he observed differences between his life and another man's, he paused to consider whether he would prefer to order his world on Elijah's model.

No. He had no wish to take up his seat in the House of Lords. In fact, he had a positive revulsion to the idea.

Villiers walked noiselessly across the wine-colored, flowered carpet. It was as glorious as one of his own coats. He rounded the chair.

Elijah was indeed asleep.

Or not asleep.

There was something odd about the immobility of his face, about the way his body was slumped in the corner of the chair.

“Duke,” Villiers said sharply, bending over. Could Elijah have fainted? His face was rather white. “Elijah!”

His eyelashes were dark against his face. He had been beautiful even back when they were both clumsy puppies and Elijah was the only person in the world that Villiers loved. Villiers himself had had a big nose, and uncontrollable hair that wouldn't stay tied back properly, nor yet fit under a wig. Then Elijah had the white-blond curls of an angel, and the perfect profile of a young Gabriel.

Villiers reached out, touched Elijah's shoulder.

Shook Elijah.

Shook him again.

Revels House
March 3, 1784

T
he last thing that the dowager said to Isidore before she left for her sister's estate was that she wanted every jewel cleaned before they were returned to her.

“He gave them to me
every time
,” she said to Isidore. “I'm sure you know what I mean.”

“No.”

“Then you shall. After all, you have married a Cosway. I never liked those necklaces, but they remind me of my husband.” She had the smaller box, the older one with silver hinges, beside her on the carriage seat. “These were my mother's. I don't mind if you keep some of the others; after all, you're married to the duke. But these I shall
keep and give to my sister's children. You may inform my son so.”

“The duke is bathing,” Isidore said. “Could you please wait until he is able to bid you goodbye?”

“No. I shall stay at a neighbor's and be at my sister's estate by tomorrow at dusk. You can tell him where I've gone. He's no son of mine, I'm convinced of that.”

Isidore frowned.

“Oh, don't be such a fool,” the dowager said, in her cracked, breathy way. “He's my blood, God knows it to be so. And Godfrey as well. But Godfrey is off to Eton, and I'm tired of all this. I did my best!”

“Of course—”

“I was a good wife, a proper wife. I never questioned the women. The jewels were given to me from guilt, you know. At least he felt
that
.” She looked at Isidore accusingly. “That was something.”

“Yes.”

“I don't want to be in this house full of memories, and letters I haven't answered, and the stupid,
stupid
things he did.” Her voice was savage. “That stink—it's the stink of stupidity.”

Isidore nodded.

“My sister, the Dowager Countess of Douglass, keeps an old-fashioned house, perhaps, but it's the sort that I'm comfortable with. This son of mine, with the way he looks and he acts…I can't do it anymore. I can't be here and pretend that I don't care when traditions are violated, and stupid,
stupid
men do just as they wish. He runs about the country naked.”

“Not precisely,” Isidore managed.

“They live to humiliate us. Over and over. My husband never trotted about in diapers. But when I think of it now,
he might as well have been naked. You may leave now.” She waved her hand.

Isidore backed out of the carriage.

“You'll find out,” the dowager said. Her gaze was not unkind. “Send my things after me once the maids are able to enter that wretched house. I'll write Godfrey with my consolations and instructions for his future welfare. You'll have to cope with the duke's unkempt ways and his foreignness. God knows I tried but he was never mine. Not really mine.”

Isidore curtsied, the deep, respectful curtsy that one gives to a deposed queen.

The queen didn't notice.

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

I
t was as if the world froze for a moment. He shook Elijah—and Elijah's head flopped forward, like a poppy on a broken stalk.

“No!” Without even thinking, Villiers shook Elijah again, hard. “Wake up!” Fear suddenly wrenched his gut.

Elijah woke up.

For a moment he stared straight ahead, as if into a country no one else could see. Then his eyes slipped to Villiers and he smiled. “Hello.”

Villiers stumbled backwards, feeling for a chair, and fell into it. “Christ and damnation.”

Elijah's smile faded.

“What was that?” Villiers said. “What just happened?”

And, when there was no answer: “
Elijah!
”

They hadn't used first names with each other since they were both fifteen, sixteen…whenever that was that they quarreled over a lass and never spoke again.

“I collapsed,” Elijah said bluntly. “I must have fainted. It's my heart. I'm thirty-four.”

“Thirty-four?” Villiers shook his head. “Thirty-four? What's that, a terminal date for hearts?”

“My father died at thirty-four,” Elijah said, putting his head back on the chair and looking up at the ceiling. “His heart failed him. I had hopes of surpassing his span, but I have, increasingly, these small episodes. I see no reason to fool myself.”

“Oh, God.”

“Not quite yet,” he said, that beautiful half-smile of his quirking the corner of his mouth. He shook his head. “There's nothing more to say about it all, Leo.”

Villiers hated being called Leopold. He hated being anything other than Villiers, and he never was, to anyone other than Elijah. The very sound of the name made him feel unbalanced, as if nearly twenty years had vanished.

“I don't accept that,” he said. The words felt harsh in his throat. “Have you seen a doctor?”

Elijah shrugged. “There's no need.”

“You blacked out.”

He nodded.

“Damn it!”

“Yes.”

“I've been trying to seduce your wife and you never said a word.”

Elijah smiled at that. “What difference would it make?”

“All the world,” Villiers said. His voice grated in his
own ears so he got up and walked to the side of the room and stared unseeingly out the window.

“I don't see why it should. You and I have always had disagreements over women.”

“The barmaid,” Villiers said, making a vain attempt to get hold of himself and yet keep the conversation going.

“You chided me with it when you were in the grip of fever. You told me that I had the barmaid, the dog, and Jemma. I couldn't make you understand that the dog was long dead. But I could certainly understand why you'd like to take Jemma.”

Villiers turned around. Elijah was still seated, looking at him with that patient, courteous curiosity that was a hallmark of his dealings in Parliament. “Damn it, aren't you angry?” he demanded.

“Because you allowed my old dog to die while you saved my life?” Elijah raised an eyebrow. “I was angry when I was sixteen and foolish. I'm sorry I retaliated by stealing your barmaid away.”

“Not that. Aren't you angry about your heart failing?”

Elijah fell silent.

Finally Villiers said, “I am sorry that your dog died.”

“She was all I had, and all that really mattered to me.”

Villiers moved sharply, then forced himself to be still.

“Except for you, of course.” Elijah raised his eyes. “You were my dearest friend, and I stole your mistress and pushed you away because you were ungracious enough to save my life in a river, and not manage to save that of my dog as well.”

“We were both fools,” Villiers muttered.

“There were few things that I treasured in life, and I threw away one. Then I sated myself with government
and flurries of power, and I threw away my wife. It seems a remarkable waste of years; I certainly agree in your judgment of my foolishness.”

“I won't go near Jemma again. It wasn't for revenge; truly, it wasn't. It was just that—”

“She's Jemma,” Elijah said simply.

“Yes. Does she know that you're ill?”

“No! And she mustn't.”

“That's not fair.”

“There's no fairness in life,” Elijah said, his voice heavy. “I'll be gone whether she has time to grieve and fear for it, or not. I want the time I have left with her without grief.”

“Of course.” Villiers cursed himself for ever trying to entice Jemma.

“I'm winning, you know.” Elijah's smile was a beautiful thing. It had helped him triumph during many a difficult battle in Parliament, that smile. It had won the heart of a prickly, ugly young duke by the name of Villiers, back when they were both nine years old. “She's planning to concede the remaining game in your match when she sees you next.”

“You are winning,” Villiers said. “You are.”

“I've been very slow, very tactical,” Elijah said. “I wasted so much time in my life. I've planned this like a campaign, the most important campaign of my life. And you played a part, Leo.”

“I—”

“I needed formidable opposition,” he said. “You provided it.”

Villiers sat down opposite Elijah again. “You must tell her. How often do you have these spells?”

“Oh, once a week or so. More frequently of late.”

“Do you have any idea how much time you have?”

Elijah shook his head. “I don't want to know.”

“I'll leave,” Villiers said. “You'll have an open field. God, I…”

“Don't leave. I wish you would play chess with me. Now and then.”

“I would be honored.”

There was a silence during which, had they not been English noblemen, the men might have embraced. Might even have cried. Might have said something of love, of friendship, of sadness. But being English noblemen, they didn't need to say those things: their eyes met and it was all there. Their boyhood friendship, their childish rages, the blows they dealt each other.

“I won't go anywhere near her,” Villiers said. It sounded like a vow.

“You must.”

“No—”

Elijah smiled at him, but his eyes were shadowed. “You have to be there for her, Leo. I need to think you will.”

“You want me to continue to woo her so that…”

Sometimes even an English gentleman feels sorrow catch him like a wicked pain in the back of the throat. At times like that, he might walk to the window and look out at a garden in the first stages of spring.

Until he was sure he wouldn't be unmanly.

But then, being English, he would eventually turn around and find his oldest friend sitting in the same place, waiting. And he would pull over a chess table and start laying out the pieces.