When the Duke Returns (25 page)

He leaned down again, a wicked smile in his eyes. “As the Lord of your Bedchamber, Isidore, I command that you kiss me now.”

She drew his head down to hers. “As you wish,” she said, as demurely as any husband could wish.

The Cricket and Song Inn
West of London
March 4, 1784

J
emma, the Duchess of Beaumont, allowed herself to be handed out of the carriage only to discover that there was an acre of mud covering the inn yard. She halted on the bottom step of her carriage and surveyed her groomsmen, trying to estimate their general strength. Unfortunately, the two standing at her carriage door looked suspiciously weedy. The last thing she wanted was to be dropped into the muck.

“Your Grace,” came a drawling voice.

She jerked up her head to find that the only other carriage drawn up in the yard had just flung open its door, revealing the Duke of Villiers.

“Villiers!” she cried, “Do tell me that you have a husky footman who can get me into that inn. I'm feeling extreme trepidation, as I'm sure my poor groomsmen are as well.”

He stepped down into the mud as if it didn't exist. He was dressed exquisitely, of course. His cloak was a ruby red so dark that it seemed nearly black. Its capes lay over his shoulders with the sleek elegance that comes from the very finest wool.

Jemma couldn't help smiling at him. Villiers was so dramatic, and yet now that she had come to know him, his elegance and drama seemed to fade in relation to the rest of him. He walked over to her.

“I hope you don't expect me to put down my cloak,” he said in his usual drawl. “I've worn this only once, and I am inestimably fond of it.”

She laughed. “I expect you to lend me a strapping footman, Villiers! I must needs get to that inn. I've been on the road for hours and I'm famished. I set out yesterday from London, if you can believe it. We lost a wheel, and I had to spend the night a mere hour from the city.”

He held out his arms. “Come, then.”

Jemma froze. “You're convalescing.”

He scooped her off the step as if she were no more than a girl of five. “I'm feeling better. Of course, it could be that I've miscalculated my abilities.” His steps slowed. “Oh—”

She shrieked as his hands suddenly gave a little and she dipped toward the ground. “No!”

“Oh, all right then,” he said. There was a dark strain of laughter in his tone.

“You're evil,” she accused him.

“And you're not the first to tell me so,” he said comfortably, putting her down within the door of the inn.

“Well,” Jemma said, shaking out her skirts. “I do
thank you, Villiers. Naturally I would have preferred to walk on that cloak of yours, but I'll take what I can get.”

“A sensible notion. Life is, alas, full of compromises.”

Jemma felt a bit strange about the whole thing.

“Your Graces,” the innkeeper was gobbling, “I'm afraid that I have no private rooms at the moment. The south chimney has collapsed.”

Villiers turned his cold eyes on the innkeeper and a moment later it transpired that the public room had no other customers, and the innkeeper would take it upon himself to keep out any who might appear.

“Until the duchess has had some tea,” Villiers said gently.

Jemma felt so oddly unbalanced that she found herself chattering as they walked into the room, telling him that she was on her way to pay a visit to his one-time fiancée. “Roberta's father, the Marquess of Wharton and Malmesbury, is marrying a mermaid he met at a public fair.”

“My joy at the dissolution of that engagement deepens by the moment,” Villiers said languidly. “Does the mermaid come with piscine
accoutrements
?”

“Naturally,” Jemma said. “I believe she straps on a tail and speaks in verse for a few shillings.”

“Just what one wants in a mother-in-law. Yes, I truly made a lucky escape.”

“I should like some tea, please,” Jemma told the innkeeper. “And something to eat as well, if you would be so kind.” She had a strange uncertainty in her stomach, and it was always best to eat in those circumstances. “How odd that we should meet at the same inn.”

“I'm off to pay the Duke of Cosway a visit, as I told you I would,” Villiers said.

The innkeeper put down a tea tray and she busied
herself with pouring. It was rather awkward to find herself in an inn with Villiers. Why, it was almost like an assignation, though of course it
wasn't
. Would Elijah believe that, though?

It was entirely surprising how strongly she wanted to believe that Elijah would not think it an assignation. An
affaire
.

“The fact that you and I have both been summoned to the side of errant people of our rank may be tedious,” Villiers pointed out, “but entirely unsurprising. To whom could they turn?”

“Anyone,” Jemma said, wishing that she had paid no attention to that letter from Roberta.

There was a great commotion in the innyard. “The innkeeper said that he would keep this room—” Jemma began, but before she could finish the sentence the door swept open. She looked up to find the Marquise de Perthuis, dressed in a black travelling gown badly splashed with mud at the hem.

“What a remarkable pleasure,” the marquise said, strolling forward. “My carriage has been stuck in the mud for an hour, and I was feeling miserably tedious. What a
delight,
an absolute delight, it is to find you here, my darling duchess!”

Jemma ground her teeth and swept into a curtsy that was just a shade on the disrespectful side.

“Along with the Duke of Villiers,” the marquise trilled. “What extraordinary luck to find that we are all stranded at the same time.”

The worst thing Jemma could do would be to emphasize the truth of that account. No one would believe that she and Villiers had found themselves at the same inn by mere happenstance. So with a nicely calculated twist of indifference, she said, “Not so strange, after all. After all, we are surely all going to the same event?”

The marquise's face stilled. “No,” she said, but now her smile had a drop of ice to it.

Jemma paused just long enough to indicate a touch of embarrassment that the marquise was without an invitation. “It's nothing, of course,” she said, just hastily enough. “I'm quite certain now I think of it that the ceremony was to be a
very
small one. Didn't the Duke of Cosway say as much to you, Villiers?”

“So small as to be infinitesimal,” Villiers drawled, which was really quite wrong of him.

“What ceremony is in question?” the marquise said, accepting a cup of tea. She had lost the delighted glow she had when she walked in and found them together, and Jemma's stomach relaxed. It was better for the marquise to feel unpopular, than for her to be overjoyed by the discovery of Jemma's supposed
affaire
with Villiers.

“Oh, a wedding,” Villiers sighed. “Cosway's wedding.”

The marquise knit her brow. “Dear me. I am so ignorant about the English…who is this Cosway?”

“I believe it was Henry VIII who elevated the Earl of Cosway to the rank of duke, did he not?” Villiers said.

Jemma never paid any attention to that sort of thing. “The current Cosway was wed by proxy. He has now returned from years travelling abroad and plans to re-consecrate the marriage.”

“Dear me, how peculiar,” the marquise observed. “In my experience men are so very willing to break the marital bonds, rather than renew them.”

There was something bleak in her eyes. “Whom are you visiting, Madame la Marquise?” Jemma asked.

The marquise fiddled with her sugar spoon, and Jemma wished she hadn't asked. Then she shrugged, a little, helpless shrug. “I am the fool everyone thinks I
am,” she said, sighing. “I heard that perhaps my Henri is to be found in Lincolnshire and I travel there to find him.”

“The Marquis de Perthuis?” Villiers said. “In Lincolnshire…the wilds of the British countryside? Surely not.”

“Perhaps no,” the marquise said, putting another spoonful of sugar in her cup, although it was already, by Jemma's reckoning, sickeningly sweet. “I cannot sit about London and be pitied.” Her voice was calm but her eyes weren't.

Villiers met Jemma's eyes over the tea tray and she read in his the pity she felt. In Villiers's eyes! Was that possible? The duke was known for his cruel indifference.

The marquise stirred and stirred her thickened brew of tea, as the three of them sat in silence and stared at her spoon. Then she raised her head and looked to Jemma. “Would you do it again?” she asked. “Your marriage, if I remember correctly, was arranged for you. If you were given the choice, would you marry your duke?”

“Yes,” Jemma said without hesitation.

“Then you're a fool in love,” the marquise said bitterly. “As was I. They say—” her voice was savage—“that it's better to have loved once and lost, than never loved at all. They are wrong. You should warn this Cosway, if he's a friend of yours.”

“I don't believe he's in love,” Villiers said tranquilly, “which should protect him from any storms of emotion. The marriage was arranged in his youth.”

“When I have children, I shall establish all their marriages at an early age,” the marquise said, still stirring. “I shall choose their spouses on the basis of ethical worth.”

“Are you so sure that Cosway is not in love, Villiers?”
Jemma put in. “I had a letter from his wife-to-be that suggested otherwise, if one read between the lines.”

“Who is this wife?” the marquise asked. “Has she ever travelled to France?”

“She lived in Paris for some years. Lady Del'Fino.”

“Ah, yes.” The tea stirred faster. “Henri took some pleasure in her company.”

“As does every man,” Jemma said. “Yet Isidore has waited patiently for her duke to return from his excursions about various continents.”

“I have never heard otherwise,” the marquise allowed.

“Cosway is not in love,” Villiers said. “In fact, I believe there may be a question about whether he will go through with the wedding.” The marquise put down her spoon, and sadness fled her eyes immediately. “The marriage is, of course, unconsummated.”

“Ah,” the marquise breathed.

“Though I tell you this in the strictest confidence.”

“Of course!”

Villiers leaned toward the marquise. “I really mean that, Louise.”

Jemma blinked in surprise, but Louise—the marquise—merely rapped him on the hand with her spoon. “I beg you to tell me the details, Villiers. I am quite languishing for something interesting to think about.”

“I noticed,” Villiers said, sitting back. “You must practice putting your husband out of your mind, my dear marquise.”

My dear marquise? Louise? Jemma couldn't remember ever hearing a shred of gossip to do with the Marquise de Perthuis and the Duke of Villiers.

The marquise started giggling. “Do you know what I thought when I entered the room?”

“If only the duchess would grant me an indiscretion,” Villiers said with a comic emphasis. But there was something serious in his voice, and the marquise's eyes narrowed. “The dear Marquise de Perthuis is my second cousin twice removed,” Villiers said, turning to Jemma. “We were thrown together on more than one occasion as children.”

“Hardly children,” the marquise said, shrugging. “Infants more like. My mother never let me near him after I reached a certain age.” She smiled, and Jemma realized that she was likely quite beautiful when happy.

“Base rumors,” Villiers said tranquilly. “May I trouble you to pour me another cup of tea, duchess?'

“Rumors!” the marquise said, chortling. “Since we are so very intimate, my dears…you were rumored to have a by-blow at the tender age of eighteen, Villiers. It cannot be so many years ago that you have
quite
forgotten?”

“Rank gossip,” Villier replied.

“How old were you when you had this child?” Jemma asked curiously. It fascinated her, the way men sprinkled illegitimate children around the countryside.

“Something over two-and-twenty. A distasteful subject, and redolent of my many youthful stupidities,” Villiers said. “Please, may we speak of other subjects?”

“Yes,” the marquise said. “You can tell me why the Duke of Cosway wishes to dissolve his marriage. After all, Lady Del'Fino is quite lovely. I cannot conceive of the man who would not wish to marry her.”

“I'm not sure that Isidore wishes to marry Cosway either,” Jemma said, feeling that she should defend her side of the conundrum. “He picked up some disagreeable habits while living abroad.”

The marquise wrinkled her nose. “Did he lose the inclination to bathe?”

“No, but he trots around the countryside in a pair of short trousers,” Jemma said, “and no stockings.”

“Does he display himself for a reason?” the marquise enquired.

“I believe he considers himself to be taking something of a constitutional,” Jemma explained.

“I look forward to seeing it,” Villiers put in.

“At any rate, Cosway is being a fool. Of course he must consummate his marriage,” Jemma said. Her tea was cold and she put her cup down untouched.

“I don't agree,” Villiers replied. “If he feels no touch of partiality for the lady—and he has suggested to me that he does not—then it would be better for both of them if they seized the opportunity to dissolve their union, such as it is.”

The marquise opened her mouth to say something and thought better of it.

“He has no right to talk of love and such foolishnesses,” Jemma said, rather more vehemently than she intended. “He agreed to marry her years ago. She waited for him and very kindly did not create a scandal. He has no right to back out of the agreement now. None!”

“It would not be the most honorable thing to do,” Villiers said. “But honor is not always the best criterion by which to judge a lifetime's worth of happiness.”

“If he does not honor his wife,” the marquise interjected, “the marriage will not be a happy one.”