Desperate Duchesses (12 page)

She was no fool. Vil iers wasn’t going to be attracted by simpering innocence and powdered curls. If she meant to marry him, she would have to play a very tricky game indeed.

J
emma had to acknowledge that if her husband was beautiful, the Duke of Viliers wasn’t. His face was long, with narrow cheeks and black eyebrows. He had a rakish look, like a buccaneer of Queen Elizabeth’s time. He wore a patch high on his cheek, and his lips were the same deep red as the poppies on his coat. It made her consider lip color—was that possible? Yet his hair was just pul ed back carelessly from his forehead, unpowdered, no wig.

Beaumont and Vil iers were as dissimilar as night and day. Jemma surveyed Vil iers from across the bal room floor for an hour or so without approaching him. He didn’t dance; he prowled. Elijah danced. She saw him doing his duty with every unattached woman in the room. The only woman in whom Vil iers showed interest was Lady Nevil . Jemma didn’t know her, other than by reputation, but she had to admit she was delicious, with her satiny smile and sleepy eyes.

Jemma bided her time. The whole business of avenging Benjamin’s suicide had taken on its own pleasurable edge, giving her a flare of excitement. Would she seduce? Or would she merely beat him at chess? Or both? She danced near Vil iers, and he didn’t look at her.

Then, quite suddenly, those heavy-lidded eyes lifted and the shock of it went down her spine. The glitter in his eyes was that of a chess player, the same light she’d seen in Philidor’s eyes, but only when he watched her queen take his pawns.

She whirled away into the steps of the dance, and found her corset felt unexpectedly tight around her ribs. She looked one more time, and he was murmuring in the ear of Lady Nevil . He wasn’t nearly as handsome as Beaumont, but he had an irresistibly wicked look that her straitlaced husband could never achieve.

Roberta danced by, smiling beatifical y at a young squire. He looked besotted, as wel he might. Roberta raised a cynical eyebrow over his shoulder.

At that same moment, Jemma realized something. Her revenge wouldn’t run paral el to Roberta’s pursuit of Vil iers. It would be an integral part of it. She, Jemma, would wrap up the man whom al London had tried to tame—and deliver him to Roberta as part of Harriet’s revenge.

Marriage laid the ground for a hundred—nay, a thousand—petty humiliations of the type that Harriet longed to visit on Vil iers.

It was the ultimate revenge.

Suddenly Vil iers was in front of her, eyebrow raised. “A black bandit knight at your service.”

“Not a king?”

He took out a cheroot. “Let’s go outside, shal we?” And without waiting for her response, he walked straight outside onto the balcony. He shook back his deep lace cuffs and lit the cheroot from a torch on the balcony. The light flickered against his face. His skin was startling clear and white against the black hair, sleekly pul ed back from his face. No, he wasn’t handsome.

And yet he wasn’t the sort of man who would find himself in a friendly cuffing match with the lads down at the pub either.

He was altogether more refined and intel igent. No wonder he was the best player in England.

Every instinct told her that he would be a powerful partner. For a moment she couldn’t distinguish between the wish to play him and to have him. A chal enge—and what a chal enge! Vil iers was famous for drifting from woman to woman with limpid disinterest. If Roberta was to marry him, she would have to take the law into her own hands, or rather use the law on her side, because he would never propose due to love.

The truth was that he
was
in love…with chess. A man bound to the chessboard has little left over, as poor Harriet had found to her distress.

Vil iers stood silently, drawing on his cheroot and watching her. Jemma said nothing. She disliked opening conversations. It was such an immediate way to give away one’s strategy. Women, she found, were general y too eager to rush into flirtation.

Instead, she turned and looked over the gardens. The great elms were putting out new leaves that looked almost blue because of swathes of bluebel s planted beneath them.

“Black King by a smothered mate,” came a drawling voice behind her.

“An old but pretty trick,” she said, turning around. She was conscious of a slight feeling of disappointment. Did he real y need to test her knowledge?

“Do you know,” he said softly, watching her unblinkingly over the glowing end of his cheroot, “that I often walk into Parsloe’s and find there is no one worth playing?”

She shrugged. What was his point? She rarely had a partner at her own level other than Philidor.

“You’l forgive me, then, for seeming brash in my enthusiasm.”

“Benjamin, the Duke of Berrow, used to play a fine game,” she said, testing him.

His whole face changed. His cheekbones hol owed and his eyes looked haunted. “He was a good match. Better five years ago…”

“Has your skil fal en, as did his?”

“I was best when I was twenty,” he said, taking a long draw on his cheroot. “And you?”

“I am best now,” she said. It was the truth; she met his eyes and knew that he understood it.

“What did Philidor make of you? I heard little of a female chess player in France though”—he paused—“I heard much of
you
.”

“You’l find, if you travel to Paris to play him—and you should—that he is ranked among my lovers. We played almost every day, in my bedchamber, at a table beside my bed.”

“I take it he had no interest in that bed,” Vil iers said. His eyes were dark, too dark to read.

“Of course not,” she said tranquil y. “We would play a game, or sometimes make a match last by playing only one move a day.”

“That must have been a remarkable pleasure.”

“Indeed.”

“Who do you play otherwise?”

“General y, I play myself.”

“Al by yourself?” he asked, and suddenly she was unsure whether he was talking of chess or bedroom matters.

“Life is so much less complicated by oneself,” she said, sighing.

“I wouldn’t know,” he said. The smoke drifted past his eyes. “I find partners at Parsloe’s or White’s. I would prefer to play with strangers—or those with less skil —than find myself holding my own pawn in the safety of my bedchamber.”

“The difference between a man and a woman perhaps,” she said. “For myself, I find that my knowledge of chess comes from long moments of self-study.”

He grinned at that, the flash of a tiger’s white teeth when it spots its prey.

“I think this game wil be very interesting,” he said. “Because there is to be a game between us, is there not?”

She held his eyes. “Let’s make it a match. Two out of three games.”

“You are a formidable opponent,” he said.

There was a rustle of the silk hangings and Elijah came onto the balcony, accompanying a young girl who was feeling faint, apparently. Her mother rushed after them.

Elijah glanced in Jemma’s direction and froze. A second later, the girl was wilting in her mother’s arms, and Elijah was standing beside them. “What an inestimable pleasure,” he said. “My boyhood friend enters my house.”

“That would be I,” Vil iers said indifferently. “The one you don’t speak to. Your wife—who invited me to your bal —and I were just extol ing the benefits of the solitary life.”

“Real y?”

They were like night and day. Beaumont burned with the raw intensity that fueled his political ambitions, that had propel ed him to the most important cabinet place under the Prime Minister, that had given him the ear of the King. Vil iers drooped against the balcony, his cheroot held in long, lean fingers, his eyelids half open. He had a frown line between his brows and wrinkles by his eyes. Yet Beaumont stil looked as he had in his early twenties, though he surely had as many late nights in politics as Vil iers did in gaming.

“She tel s me,” Vil iers said, “that she beat Philidor many times.”

“To be fair, Philidor beat me as many times,” Jemma remarked.

Elijah lifted an eyebrow. “You must have improved.”

A slow burn went through Jemma’s chest. Since her husband had played her only a few times, in the earliest days of their marriage, how could he know whether she had improved? She said nothing.

Vil iers’s eyes slid back to her like sweet honey. “Our match is on, then?” he said, flicking his cheroot into the air. It flew through the evening sky like a glowing spark, landing on the gravel path below. Of course Elijah’s eyes fol owed it. He would never do such a thing. Why make work for a servant or possibly cause a fire?

“Of course,” she said. “Shal we play one move a day? The match wil be slower, but al the more satisfying.”

“If there’s a tie with the first two, the last game blindfolded.”

She couldn’t help a little smile at that. She had played herself blindfolded, but it would be much better to have an opponent.

Vil iers bowed with careless ease. His coat was as beautiful as one worn by the finest dandy in Paris.

Elijah was in unrelieved black.

When Vil iers walked away, Jemma saw that his hair was tied back with a poppy-red ribbon. It looked shocking against the dark silk of his hair. He must be setting his own fashion; in Paris men used only black ribbons.

“Where wil you play chess with him?” Elijah asked. His voice was even, but his eyes were burning with rage.

Jemma mental y shrugged. Elijah was a creature of anger. “I suspect I shal play him precisely where I played Philidor.”

“And where was that?”

“In my bedchamber.”

With some pleasure she watched his eyes smolder. “And the prize?”

She shrugged again, one languid movement that showed her shoulder to creamy advantage. Though why she should bother with such a thing around her husband, she didn’t know. “Need there be a prize?” she asked, and made to leave.

But he was blocking her way. He’d grown bigger in the past eight years. When she had left England, he had lean legs and large shoulders. But now he had turned into a proper man. Jemma pushed away that thought with irritation.

“I gather that you are the prize?” To do him credit, his voice was silky.

“I am no prize of any man’s,” she said, meeting his eyes to make sure that he understood. “I’m a free gift…to those upon whom I choose to bestow myself.”

“A gift many times given is cheapened by its traffic.”

“Dear me,” Jemma said. “It seems to me I’ve heard that before. Yes! It must have been in church. How unusual to find a politician quoting the catechism. Perhaps you missed your cal ing.”

“If you are playing chess with him—” Beaumont said, and paused.

Jemma was already past him, but she stopped. And then turned, slowly. “You would play chess with me simply because I have scheduled a match with Vil iers? Surely you jest.”

“Cannot a man play a game with his wife?” His mouth was set in a firm line. “I see nothing particularly interesting about the fact.”

She laughed. “And wil it be on the same terms? One move a day for each of us; best of three games; final game is blindfolded, if played at al ?”

He shrugged.

“But Beaumont, you have not played chess, to the best of my knowledge, in years. Is it not il -advised to wager so much on a rusty skil ?”

“What do I wager? As you say, there is no prize.”

She closed her lips. Far be it from her to point out that he played from the dislike he felt for Vil iers. “You’d have to speak to me civil y,” she pointed out, “and come home every day to play. As I understand it, there are many nights when you sleep in your chambers.”

They both knew that he did not sleep alone when he stayed in his apartments in Westminster.

But he shrugged. Of course, a man in his thirties was presumably not quite as active as a man in his twenties. The day she discovered him on the desk with his mistress, he had risen from her bed but a few hours earlier. It was rather dismaying to realize that the memory stil gave her a moment’s heartache, even so many years later.

“I’l play you,” she said over her shoulder. “But I shal al ow you a handicap.”

“I need no handicap.” He said it evenly.

The memory of that day was stil like a coal under her breastbone, so she smiled at him. “To make our match a chal enge.

”

There was a faint color, high in his cheek, that betold rage. But Elijah was much better at containing himself than he had been when they were young.

“No,” he said steadily. “Remember: when you play
as me
, I frequently win. I would venture to say that I can equal that performance.”

Either he thought to humiliate her, or he completely underestimated her current skil . The latter made much more sense.

She curtsied. “By al means, Your Grace. Shal we begin the game tomorrow?”

“There is an important vote in Lords. But I suppose Vil iers wil lose no time attending you.”

“Gentlemen rarely do, once I admit them into my presence.”

He bowed. “Tomorrow.”

T
he news spread throughout the balroom within a few minutes. The Duchess of Beaumont was engaged in
two
chess matches: one with her husband’s enemy, the Duke of Vil iers, and the second with her husband himself.

“They say,” May said at one in the morning, “that she’s a remarkably fine chess player.”

“Perhaps that’s the case,” Charlotte said, thinking of the intense eyes of the duke. “But she’s making a fool of herself to play with Vil iers.”

May laughed. “Then you must be settling into old age indeed, sister. Even I can see that Vil iers is a man to savor.” She looked slightly startled, as if such a word could not have come from her lips.

“The duchess’s young ward, Lady Roberta, seems entirely acceptable,” Charlotte said, changing the subject.

“Yes, a naïve little slip of a girl, isn’t she?”

Suddenly Charlotte realized that May was gazing at her hand. And there, crammed over her glove, was a signet ring.

A ring.

It seemed that she would now be the only old maid in the Tatlock family. She snapped out of her momentary bleakness, embraced her sister and said al the proper things. In the flurry of congratulations, the docile young ward of the Duchess of Beaumont was quite forgotten.