This Duchess of Mine (23 page)

“My heart,” he said hoarsely, “is happy, Jemma.”

Her fingers pressed his chest, and then he saw her start to smile.

“Enough,” he said, pulling back.

“But—”

“We're making love, Jemma. I'm—” But he couldn't shape the words anymore. Instead he just stared at her as he thrust, at her beauty, at the deep goodness of her. She couldn't resist either. Her eyes squeezed shut and her arms flew restlessly around his arms, his shoulders, his chest, caressing him, leaving trails of fire, sliding down his back, clutching his rear.

He pumped harder and harder, until neither one of them had a thought for the rain. Not for anything but the two of them: God's creatures, lucky enough to experience His greatest pleasure.

Elijah lost control. The world narrowed to just the sweet smell of his wife, the taste of her skin, the movement of his hips.

Still, he waited to be sure that her fear was gone. Waited until she cried out and surged against him. And then he flew. The world dissolved into such acute pleasure that his bones flamed with it.

 

Blissful moments later, he rolled onto the slick stones, enjoying the cool, wet stone against his buttocks and back. His heart beat steadily.

“What are you smiling about?” Jemma asked, but there was a smile in her voice too.

“My body's happy,” he said, stretching.

She was already sitting up, pulling her bodice into place.

Elijah just folded his arms behind his head and watched her. It felt wonderful to lie there, stretched out in the warm rain. He didn't give a damn if the monk came along. In fact, he didn't give a damn if the whole House of Lords decided to go for an afternoon stroll, happened down this particular path, and saw the Duke of Beaumont, lying naked on an old stone path.

No one told you that almost dying was so freeing. “I could live here,” he said dreamily. “In my house the birds would sing day and night.”

“Where will you sleep?”

“Under that huge horse chestnut. We'll have a bed of eiderdown and make love every morning before the birds rise.”

“I shall miss my morning tea,” Jemma said. She had managed to wrench her bodice up just enough so that it covered her nipples. The plump tops of her breasts looked ready to fall out at any moment.

“That gown will never be the same,” he said, watching her. “That yellow part, that pleated cloth on top, looks as if a dog has chewed on it.”

“One did,” Jemma retorted. “At least it covers my nipples now.” She looked over and seemed to realize that he was making no attempt to dress. “Are you going home like that? Or are you truly planning to sleep under the horse chestnut?”

He was too happy to move. “Why not? My blanket could be made of those little green hearts it throws out in spring, the ones with little crimson centers.”

Jemma being Jemma, she didn't break into a chorus of little remonstrances. Instead, she surprised him. Again. She turned around and lay down, her head on his bare stomach as the rain spattered her face.

“I never imagined, ever, a duchess lying on the ground, being rained on,” he said, after a time.

“It's not really raining. But you're right. I suppose duchesses don't lie about in the rain.”

“With their naked husbands,” he added.

“That makes it even worse,” she agreed. Her hair was all rumpled and fallen from its nest of curls, so he picked a spray of flowers and started poking blossoms in it.

“What are you doing?” she asked, twisting her head so she could see him.

“Turning you into a pagan goddess,” he murmured.

“Why?”

“See Apollo there?” In the center of the little stone courtyard was a statue of the god wearing little more than a shawl. He stood on a stone pedestal, its latticework woven through with knot grass and other weeds.

“Poor soul. What's happened to his arms?”

“Knocked off,” Elijah said. “He kept his fig leaf, though. A man—even better, a god—likes to keep some things covered through the centuries.”

“He looks a bit scrawny,” Jemma said critically. “I like your legs better. Who knows what's under that fig leaf? You would need a fig leaf twice that size.”

“Hush. You'll insult the god, and right in his own backyard. There.” He poked in a last few flowers. “I'll have to be very lucky or Apollo will come to life and claim you for his own.”

“If you remember, Apollo had no luck with women. Didn't Daphne turn herself into a tree rather than be with him? And now we know why. It was undoubtedly due to those bony little knees of his, not to mention the tiny fig leaf.” Jemma started to sit up, so Elijah got up and pulled her to her feet. “I am ready to return to being a duchess, if it means that my bottom can warm up.”

“I can do that for you,” Elijah said with an exaggerated leer, cupping his hand over the part of her body in question. Her skirts were soaked, and he could feel her intoxicating, soft curve. “God, I'm so lucky.”

Her eyes contained such a beautiful smile that he had to stop and kiss her. “And happy,” he said a moment later.

She leaned her head against his chest. “I love you,” she said, but not:
I'm happy
.

“I love you,” he said, the words rising from his heart naturally. “I love you, Jemma. I love you.”

The joy in her face shamed him. “To find all this bliss, at the end,” he said, holding her tightly. “I don't deserve it, Jemma. God knows, I don't deserve you.”

“Maybe it's not the end,” she said fiercely.

“If it is, I've had more joy in the last week than in the rest of my life.”

Her arms tightened around him and she said something, so low he couldn't hear. But he thought she said she loved him, and he knew that already.

He dressed, and kissed her a few more times, and they walked back to the little door where the carriage waited.

That evening

E
lijah had banished Fowle and the footmen, and there were only the two of them, down at one end of a long mahogany table with a great deal of silver reflecting the candlelight.

“I don't know how to live like this,” Jemma said after a few minutes of moving her food around her plate. Every time she looked at her husband, her throat tightened and she felt ill.

“I don't think about it,” Elijah offered.

He was eating. How could he eat? How could anyone eat, sleep, think in his situation? There had to be some way, someone, who could help Elijah's heart.

“Have you seen a doctor?” she asked.

“There's no point.”

“But have you seen one?”

Her annoying, stubborn husband shrugged. “Vil
liers dragged me to a physician who studies hearts. The man said I may live for years.”

“Or not.”

“There's a doctor in Birmingham who's apparently doing miraculous things with hearts like mine. Villiers sent a carriage up there to get him.”

“How uncharacteristically generous of him,” Jemma said, ringing the bell. “Fowle, send around to the Duke of Villiers and find out when he expects his carriage to return from Birmingham. Wait for a response, if you please.”

Fowle disappeared with all the efficiency of a man who recognizes a woman on the verge of hysterics.

“Darling—” Elijah said.

“Don't. Not now.” Her mind was racing. “There must be a way to cure this. There must be. The doctor in Birmingham will come here and cure you.”

“Eat your supper,” Elijah ordered.

She shook her head. “When did Villiers send the coach? I heard of a very good doctor the other day. Siffle, I think his name was.”

“It was in the
Morning Post
,” Elijah said, taking another bite of asparagus. “He's doing miraculous things with broken limbs.”

“Well, perhaps he—”

“Come here,” Elijah said, pushing back his chair and holding out his arms.

She responded, then sat nestled against him, only to feel her heart beating furiously in her chest. Regularly. A scream threatened at the back of her throat.

He was stroking her hair as if she were a cat. “It's all right, Jemma.”

“No, it isn't.” She forced out the words.

They were both silent a moment. “Well, it's not all right, but it is—”

“Don't tell me it's acceptable,” she said fiercely.

“This is
not acceptable
.”

“There's nothing I can do about it.” The raw pain in his voice silenced her. “There's nothing you can do about it.”

“Why didn't you tell me as soon as I returned from Paris?” She whispered it into his chest. “You've known…alone. You could have told me!”

“You had the chess match with Villiers. And I wanted to
win
you, Jemma.”

“You already had me,” she said painfully. “You always had me, Elijah.”

“I wanted all of you. When you made the match with Villiers, I seized the opportunity to try to win you myself.”

“You could have just told me.”

“And then what? Would you have fallen in love with me again, as you have?” She said nothing, and he gave her a little shake. “As you have, Jemma?”

“I loved you already,” she said.

“I wanted you in love with me.”

“That was selfish. You didn't think that I wanted time with you.”

“Forgive me?”

She sniffed and buried her head in his shoulder.

“No.”

“I've never been so happy as the last days. When you were wooing me, Jemma. When you were loving me. When you were laughing at me, or letting me make love to you. When you were making love to me.”

Huge tears were burning in her eyes. “I could have done all that a year ago.”

“We may have another year. My faint in the House of Lords occurred over a year ago.”

She heard the slightest note in his voice, knew he was lying. He knew, he knew. There was saltwater on her cheeks, the taste of it on her lips.

“You've given me what I thought I'd never have,” he continued.

“Don't talk as if you're dying tomorrow,” she said. “I can't bear it. I can't bear it!”

“You're my Jemma. You were strong enough to leave me when I had to be left, and strong enough to come home when I needed you. You will care for my house, and my lands, and my poor Cacky Street men. You can bear it.”

“No.”

His arms tightened around her. “Don't cry.”

“I shall cry if I want to,” she said fiercely. “Oh God, I suddenly understand widows' weeds.”

“You mustn't—”

But she didn't listen to him. “Because if you die, I shan't want to wear anything but black,” she said, a great sob rising in her throat. “I shall cry for a year and a day in my blacks, and no one can fault me. I didn't understand why Harriet was still grieving for her husband although it had been almost two years.”

“No!” He was almost shouting now, but Jemma was convulsed by grief, bending at the waist, ugly sobs tearing through her lungs. Elijah bent over with her, his strong, warm body curved over her back, holding her, warming her.

“It can't be true,” she sobbed. “It's not true, it's not true, it's not true.”

He picked her up then and carried her away to bed, and they lay there together while sobs shook her body. Because it was true. He was leaving her.

He had to leave her unless some sort of miracle happened…and neither of them believed in miracles. They were chess players. They were logical, and rational.

And thus, brokenhearted.

After her sobs had quieted, Elijah said, “Jemma, I think you should leave me.”

She sat up, her eyes burning, and stared at him incredulously. “What did you just say?”

“It's horrible that you should have to live through this with me. You—”

He broke off because she was slapping him, great, open-handed slaps to his chest. “You don't get to send me away again, Elijah! Don't you understand? Why don't you understand?”

She was sobbing again.
“You never get to send me away again!”

“I'm sorry,” he said, pulling her into his arms. “I'm a fool, Jemma. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.”

Her face was stricken but her eyes blazed at him. “You made a mistake and you broke us in half,” she said. Her voice was quieter, but still passionate. “You keep saying that I'm yours, Elijah, but the truth is that you are
mine
as well.”

He heard the urgency behind her voice and he suddenly understood. She loved him. Loved him enough to forgive him for his mistress, for not following her to Paris.

But there was one thing he had to know. He cupped her face in his hands, noting absently that his fingers were shaking. “Will you forgive me?”

She blinked. “For what?”

“For not being able to stay with you forever. Because I would, Jemma. I promise I would.”

“I know,” she whispered, brushing his lips with her own. “I know.”

April 2

T
he next morning, Jemma retired to the morning parlor and began trying to understand how one lived with this kind of knowledge. It wasn't healthy for her to follow Elijah about, nervously demanding to listen to his heart. He disliked it. Besides, every time she listened to his chest, she heard skipped beats and her own heart felt as if it were filled with hot coals.

Yet she was wrung with fear. Her fingers trembled as she picked up the chess pieces. She was on the point of giving up, and joining Elijah in his study, when Fowle entered, a grim look on his face.

She sprang to her feet so quickly that she knocked over the chessboard. Pieces rolled on the ground. “Is he—”

Reading her mind, a look of deep sympathy crossed Fowle's eyes. “He is fine, Your Grace. Should His Grace
faint again, I shall call you from outside the room, as I approach.”

She sank back down into her chair. “Thank you, Fowle.” Her fingers were shaking like leaves in a high wind.

“The dowager duchess has arrived,” he announced.

She'd forgotten that there had to be a reason for his entry. “The—The dowager? The duke's
mother
?”

“I have placed her in the rose chamber,” Fowle said.

“She expressed the wish that you would join her immediately. Apparently she intends to return to Scotland very shortly.”

“Return to Scotland?” Jemma asked. “That's impossible! I am certain she will change her mind. She will be making a prolonged stay with us. Please inform Mrs. Tulip.”

Now Jemma understood the grim look on Fowle's face when he first entered. Her own memories of her mother-in-law were distinctly unpleasant. The dowager duchess was tall and angry. She carried herself like a man, and Jemma found her alarming.

Jemma had lived the first weeks of her marriage in a house full of portraits of Judith holding Holofernes's head (minus his body) because she was worried about the dowager's reaction if she removed them.

Of course, when she returned from Paris, she ordered all paintings removed without thinking about it twice.

“Your Grace,” Jemma said respectfully a moment later, dropping into a curtsy. As she raised her head, she realized that the dowager had hardly changed. She was still tall, and although she leaned on a cane, it gave her no air of weakness. In fact, the cane seemed more
like Villiers's sword stick: an affectation that could serve as a weapon.

She had Elijah's beauty, with sharp angles and sweeping lines. But on her the angles looked enraged, and what was calmness in his face was irritation in hers.

“Jemma,” her mother-in-law said. “I am grateful that you returned from Paris.”

That was an auspicious start.

“We must sit,” she continued. “My hip is quite troublesome these days.”

“I am so sorry to hear that,” Jemma said, seating herself opposite the dowager. “Did Elijah write you?”

“No.”

“But you know.” There was something in the dowager's face, a version of the same dread that she was feeling.

“I knew the moment I heard that he fainted in Lords. You don't appear to be with child.”

“I fear not,” Jemma replied, wincing inwardly.

“That is, there is a chance that I am with child, but I don't know yet.”

“I suppose Elijah's foolish second cousin will inherit after all. The man pads everything, you know, from his thighs to his chest. But he is, at least, a discreet creature. A foolish lust for admiration is better than the alternative.”

“Of course,” Jemma said, not at all sure what she was agreeing with.

They sat for a moment in silence. “I came to ask you something,” the dowager said, her fingers twisting the diamond cornucopia she wore on her bosom. Her fingers were swollen with rheumatism, and Jemma felt a pulse of sorrow. She remembered her mother-
in-law sweeping through the house like a whirlwind, her voice as stinging as smoke in the eyes. Back then the dowager had few wrinkles and her fingers were strong.

“Of course,” Jemma said again. The dowager fixed her eyes on Jemma's face, and they were so identical to Elijah's, like a dark flame, that Jemma added, “Anything you wish.”

“I wish,” the dowager said heavily, “no, I
insist
that you cease all marital relations and maintain separate chambers.” Her face was at once both mournful and belligerent.

Jemma swallowed a gasp. “I—”

“My husband was known as Bawdy Beaumont,” the duchess said. “Were you aware of that?”

Jemma nodded.

“He died in the very act, wearing a frilly lace chemise and tied to a bed,” the duchess said. There was no particular rage in her voice as she recounted the facts. “He was attended by several women wearing leather who were engaged in spanking him. I gather he took pleasure in something children strive to avoid, which says a great deal about his character.”

Jemma murmured something. Her mind was racing, wondering if she should assure the dowager that Elijah showed no interest in wearing a chemise.

But the dowager was continuing. “He was always a greedy man. One nightwalker wasn't enough; he had to have three or four. We did our best to keep the details a secret. I paid hundreds of pounds to the procuress in charge of The Palace of Salomé.”

She raised her eyes to Jemma. “I waited a year, and then I had her arrested. She was stripped and marched through London for prostitution, left in the stocks
for a day, and then sent to Bridewell. She died a few months later.” There was unmistakable satisfaction in her voice.

“Elijah has no interest in such practices,” Jemma said, hurrying into speech before her mother-in-law could say anything else.

“I brought him up to be
virtuous
,” his mother said.

“But it didn't take.”

“It didn't?” Jemma said, dumbfounded. There wasn't a person in England who wouldn't say that the Duke of Beaumont was virtuous. And they didn't even know about the Cacky Street Glassworks.

The dowager duchess looked unblinking at her. “I know why you left for Paris. My son inherited his father's deviant tendencies. It was good of you to return, and attempt to produce an heir. If I hadn't already had a son, I would have left the country as well.”

“It's customary for a man to have a mistress,” Jemma said desperately, hardly able to believe that she was defending Elijah, after all her years of resenting that same mistress. “Your son has no interest in the more…exotic practices that the former duke enjoyed.”

The dowager curled her lip. “I don't care about a mistress any more than you would have. But he couldn't keep the woman discreet, as other men do. He brought the woman into public. His own offices.” She straightened her back and said calmly, “Revolting. I gather that my husband also enjoyed being watched on occasion.”

“Elijah wasn't being
watched!
” Jemma gasped. “He was only trying to prove that his tastes weren't as deviant as those of his father. He was very young, Your Grace. By engaging his mistress to meet him in his chambers, he proved to all those who knew that he en
joyed normal intimacies. There was nothing deviant about it.”

The smallest noise made her lift her eyes. Elijah was standing in the open doorway. His face looked terrifyingly calm.

“All I'm asking is that you refrain from marital intimacies,” the dowager said, her voice tired and irritated. “If Algernon Tobier inherits the Beaumont dukedom because the current duke drops on the floor of the House of Lords, it will be unremarkable. But if a second Beaumont dies in bed with a woman, even if that woman is his wife, we will never live down the reputation. The Bawdy Beaumonts will go down in history.”

“I'm afraid that you cannot choose the hour of your son's passing,” Jemma said, her voice shaking, so shocked that she actually forgot Elijah was listening.

“If Elijah dies in my bed, in a pleasurable moment, that is something I would welcome.”

“You are a fool,” the dowager said heavily. “We duchesses live on, you know. My husband took his dissolute, frivolous self to the grave, but he left me to live through the titters and the veiled comments. He left his son to weather the debacle. He made me a laughingstock, and my son will do the same to you.”

“We needn't worry about a son since we have no children,” Jemma said. She was so caught by inarticulate anger that she couldn't continue.

Finally Elijah stepped into the room. He bent down and kissed the hand his mother held out to him. “I suppose you've heard our subject,” she said, her voice calm. But her fingers were twisting on the diamonds she wore on her chest.

“I see my responsibilities to the line rather differ
ently than you do, Mother,” he said, seating himself next to Jemma. “My wife and I shall continue to attempt to create an heir.”

“I beg to differ,” his mother said.

But she couldn't keep her face as fierce and still now that her son was sitting opposite her. Jemma saw that and her anger fled.

“Elijah's heart is stronger than his father's was,” Jemma told his mother, speaking to the grief, and not to what the woman was saying. “And we've heard of a doctor in Birmingham who is having excellent results with a new medicine he's developed. We're—”

Elijah put his hand over hers and she stopped. “I shall be very sorry if I leave you ashamed of me in any way,” he said to his mother.

The dowager's fingers were clenched over her diamond. “I can't stay here. I cannot. I shall depart for Aberdeen immediately.”

“You can't mean that,” Jemma said. “At least spend the night.”

The dowager's eyes skated to hers. “You will inform me when—”

“I'll take care of him,” Jemma said gently, standing up and pulling Elijah to his feet as well.

The dowager stood, looking up at her son as if from the bottom of a well. “You were a beautiful baby.”

Elijah held out his hand and she clung to it. “And you have a beautiful smile,” she said. “You have always had a beautiful smile.”

Jemma felt hot tears pressing in her eyes.

Elijah smiled his beautiful smile, as if his mother hadn't just said he was deviant, and bent to kiss her cheek. “I may well live for years, Mother.”

His mother's eyes met Jemma's, and they both
knew the truth. His mother closed her eyes for a long moment, her fingers tight on those diamonds.

“I shall stay for luncheon,” she announced, hunching a bit over her cane. “Then I shall begin my journey.”

 

They talked of nothing over the meal. The dowager was clumsy, her swollen fingers causing her to drop her fork repeatedly and knock a glass of wine to the table. But Jemma, watching, thought that it was a heavy heart that made her so awkward.

That night, Elijah came to her room. She held out her arms, and he came over to her, warm and hard, his hand sliding up beneath her nightdress. “We should talk,” he murmured. But his hands were already setting her aflame.

Jemma realized that in truth, she'd been waiting all day for this. In bed with her, Elijah's heart beat strong and true. She didn't have to worry.

“Later,” she said, her hands sliding lower on his body.

“But—”

“I want to taste you,” she said. And then his eyes were like dark flames, like his mother's, but she pushed that thought away and kissed her way down his chest. Her fear was gone, blissfully gone, because she could feel the blood pounding through his body.

He said something, scrambled and inarticulate, but he arched toward her and she laughed and opened her lips.

He was hers, and he was alive, and that was good enough for the moment.