When the Duke Returns (10 page)

Revels House
February 29, 1784

I
sidore had never selected a room on this basis before: she and Honeydew entered each room and then sniffed. But the stench was pervasive. It followed them from room to room like a friendly dog.

She was beginning to wonder if there was an inn within ready distance when Honeydew suddenly said, “Perhaps the Dower House, Your Grace. Would you consider it? I'm afraid it hasn't been opened or aired, but it's a lovely little house.”

“Honeydew, I will consider any place that was not refurbished to include a water closet.”

“The water closets in this house might be excellent,” Honeydew said, “if only I could have persuaded His
Grace's father, the late duke, to take proper care of the pipes.”

“When are they to be cleaned?” she asked.

Honeydew had a look of near agony on his face. “I'm afraid that the duke has encountered some difficulty finding appropriate help, but we should have men here within a day or two. It truly wasn't as bad until this week…the damp weather.” He wrung his hands.

“I can see that there was little you could do.” They walked downstairs and out a side door, and though Isidore would never say so, the relief of walking into the fresh outdoor air, brisk though it might be, was considerable. She saw Honeydew take a lungful as well. “I suppose one gets used to it?” she asked.

“Some do,” Honeydew said. It was clear that he had not grown accustomed.

They followed a gravel path around the house. The shambles of a formal garden stretched before them.

She turned to Honeydew, mouth open, but he had the answer. “As of two days ago, His Grace instructed the estate's remaining gardener to hire additional staff as expeditiously as possible. They will bring the gardens back into trim.”

The Dower House was not really a house; it was more of a cottage. But it was charming, with a rosebush climbing over the windows. It was like a doll's house.

“What color will the roses be?” she asked.

“Pale pink,” the butler replied. “There are a great many of them. The vine hasn't been pruned as it ought, but it puts out a quantity of roses all the same. There are lilac trees around the back, but they won't bloom, of course, until late April.”

He took out a huge circle of keys and finally managed to fit one to the lock. “There hasn't been anyone living here since His Grace's grandmother,” he said, over his
shoulder. “We used to air it out and clean it thoroughly, but in the past few years…”

Of course, he hadn't enough staff to spare.

After a small entryway, sunlight fell into a surprisingly large sitting room. The furniture was soft and covered with Holland cloths. There was no attempt at ducal elegance, quite the opposite. The walls were paneled in elmwood, painted a cream color with little pansies scattered here and there. The floor was flagstone, but a cheerful, if faded, rug hugged the middle. Best of all, the house smelled dusty but without even a whiff of sewage.

“How lovely!” Isidore exclaimed.

“The late duke's mother disliked formality,” Honeydew said, bustling to pull open the curtains. “Phew! Look at this dust. I'll summon all the housemaids immediately, Your Grace, and we'll have it clean and aired in no time.”

Isidore had discovered a charming little bedchamber containing a large sleigh bed and one table stacked with worn, leather-bound books.

“The duke's grandmother was a great reader by all accounts,” Honeydew said. “Her own life was quite a romantic tale.”

Isidore looked up from a small copy of
Tales of the Nile
that she'd discovered. It was falling apart, though she couldn't tell whether that was due to age or over-reading. “Romantic?”

“Yes, you must ask His Grace to tell you about it,” Honeydew said, darting about to throw back the shutters. “There now, if you would be so kind as to accompany me back to the house, we'll get the house tidy for you.”

Isidore shook her head. She supposed she would have to reenter the house for dinner. But she couldn't face
that yet. She tucked herself into a rocking chair, book in hand. “I am exactly like my husband's grandmother,” she said. “A great reader. I shall be quite happy here. When the maids arrive, I'll simply go for a little stroll.”

“Will your personal maid be arriving in the later carriages?”

“Yes, Lucille experiences stomach problems when she travels, so she generally follows me in a slow-moving carriage. If it were possible, I would love a bath. I'm quite dusty from the journey.”

“I'll set up a hot bath as soon as the maids have finished. If you're quite certain that you're comfortable…” He lingered, obviously disturbed by the idea of leaving her.

But Isidore was already opening up a book. “I shall be perfectly happy here, Honeydew. Truly. Please send the dowager duchess my regrets that I cannot greet her due to the absence of my maid.”

She had a sudden thought. “Do you know, I believe that I am strangely fatigued by my journey.” She smiled at the butler, who had the discretion not to indicate that she seemed in the utter pink of health. “I shall dine here tonight.”

He bowed.

“I should be honored if the duke would disrupt his schedule and join me,” she added. “Quite informally, of course. He needn't wear a cravat.”

Honeydew's eyes were smiling, even if his face kept to a servantlike solemnity. “Just so, Your Grace. I shall inform him.” He bowed again. “May I add that your generosity as regards His Grace's attire will be greatly appreciated?”

Revels House
February 29, 1784

“H
er Grace is in the Dower House,” Honeydew informed the duke. “The maids have been to clean, and she seems quite comfortable. We started a fire in the grate. The walls are damp, and it should quickly take away the chill.”

The duke looked up from the letter he was writing and dragged a hand through his hair. “Really? Because of the stench? I think I must be getting used to it, Honeydew.”

“No, Your Grace. The air is somewhat drier than it was this morning and it's not so obvious. But we are due for more rain tonight, or so Mr. Sumerall, the gardener, has told me.”

“She's well out of it, then,” the duke said, looking exhausted.

“The duchess requests that you dine with her in the Dower House,” Honeydew said. In his estimation, the duchess wasn't coming back into the main house until the water closets were cleaned. Even if Mr. Kinnaird managed to find cleaning men in London—and given the amount of money that the duke had given him, he ought to—Honeydew thought that they wouldn't arrive for a day or two.

Besides, Honeydew was discovering he had alarmingly affectionate feelings toward the young duke who worked all day and half the night, and who was paying everyone, honest and true. The whole countryside was talking about it. A year ago he couldn't find a ripe melon without ready money, but now offers were flowing from all sides.

“This Mr. Purfew who claims to have done great service for the late duke,” the duke said. “Do you have any idea who that might be, Honeydew?”

Honeydew pursed his lips. “It doesn't ring a bell. There was a Pursloe—”

The duke turned to an enormous ledger that lay open to his right. “I've already noted a payment to Pursloe, made yesterday, for four wigs purchased by my father ten years ago, payment refused on the grounds that they were too old-fashioned.”

Honeydew judged it best to be silent.

But the duke smiled faintly. “I suspect my father was buried in one of those old-fashioned wigs?”

“I believe, sir, that there should be a letter thereabouts from a London wigmaker named Mr. Westby, who made the burial wig. It was His Grace's favorite.”

The smile fell from the duke's face and he looked to his ledger with a sigh. “I haven't found Westby's letter,
Honeydew. But I attempted to take a nap at one point and discovered a great trove of letters propping up the leg of the sofa. When you get a moment, could you have the footmen remove that sofa? It's beyond repair.”

Honeydew saw that the velvet, claw-footed sofa had lurched to the ground, minus a leg. Moreover a sprinkle of straw haloed the floor around it, showing that its innards were openly disintegrating. He felt a rush of embarrassment. “I am sorry that—your father wouldn't—”

The duke held up his hand. “There's no need,” he said wearily. “Truly. I am learning the depths of my father's stubbornness letter by letter and I can only admire you for staying in your post. I have instructed Kinnaird to double your wages; consider it hardship pay.”

Honeydew drew himself upright. “I thank you, Your Grace.” Happy visions of retirement and a small cottage danced before his eyes. Then he returned to the subject at hand. It seemed to him quite odd that the duke and duchess were married, and yet not married. Not to mention sleeping, quite obviously, in different quarters.

What was needed was to create some good old-fashioned propinquity.

“Her Grace has requested supper to be served in the Dower House,” he said. “I shall set a cover for you.”

The duke nodded. But then, as Honeydew was leaving, he looked up from his desk and said, “Don't forget to ask Godfrey to join us.”

Godfrey? A thirteen-year-old joining the intimate dinner between a barely married man and wife? Honeydew could not approve.

“I shall ascertain whether the young master is free to join you,” he said, vowing to make quite certain that Godfrey was occupied.

“Of course, I'm free,” piped up a voice from the other side of the room.

“Lord Godfrey!”

The boy's brown curls popped up from the far side of yet another faded sofa. “I haven't even met the duchess.”

“I didn't know you were still there,” the duke said, smiling at his brother. “One hour more and I'm dragging you out on the roads for a run, Godfrey.”

Defeated, Honeydew bowed and departed.

The Dower House
February 29, 1784

I
sidore prepared her cottage with great care. A small army of housemaids cleaned it from floor to rafters. Then she sent two of the most capable-looking ones searching all over Revels House for bits of furniture.

By the end of the afternoon, she had her little dollhouse made up a trifle more comfortably. Candles shone all over the room. Upholstered chairs replaced the unpadded armchairs favored by the late dowager duchess. There was a vase of snowdrops that Isidore gathered in the garden, and the bed (large enough for two) was made up with snowy white linens and piled with pillows.

It was still a doll's house, but polished to a high
gleam and smelling deliciously of French lilacs (thanks to some very expensive
parfum
), it spoke of creature comforts.

And seduction.

The footmen arrived with a small dining room table and Isidore had them move it twice before she decided the best place for it was in the corner of the sitting room, where she and Simeon would eat in a mysterious, slightly shadowed intimacy.

She sent a suggested menu to Honeydew, including hot, spiced wine that she could prepare herself at fireside.

She could just picture it: the duke with his broad shoulders, his jacket thrown open and his hair tumbling to his shoulders. She would play the immaculate, utterly delicious wife. If what he wanted was English womanhood in all its delicate docility, she could do that.

It was like a favorite story that she had already read, and now got to enact. The Taming of the Wild Man…

Isidore started humming as she dropped into a steaming bath, delicately scented with jasmine. Jasmine had an innocent touch, she thought.

As she sat in the hot water, she refined her story to a trembling virginal bride facing a wild pirate king.

That sounded like just the sort of setting to appeal to Simeon. And he obviously wanted to believe it. Look how he'd leapt at the idea that she'd never pleasured herself.

She found herself smiling. This was going to be fun. She tried out a few sentences in her mind.
Oh dear! It's far too large!

Or would one say,
You're
far too large?

The etiquette of it all…Maybe she could just shudder, throw a hand over her eye and squeak,
No, no, no!

Of course, the wild pirate would overcome the deli
cate flower's resistance. The key was to pretend not to enjoy it.

Or perhaps the key was to be afraid?

Simeon wasn't mad. And she had a fair idea that he truly was capable in bed. He was dressed oddly. But he looked male. In fact the very idea of him without clothes made her feel the opposite of frightened.

She got out of the bath and picked up the toweling cloth left for her by Lucille. All she had to do was flirt with him until he took some liberties. Then she would launch into a version of the fragile English rose, and, she hoped, he would revert to wild pirate, and all her worries would be resolved.

Gore House, Kensington
London Seat of the Duke of Beaumont
February 29, 1784

“W
hat would you like to do this evening?” Jemma looked down the table at her husband. “We've been invited to Lady Feddrington's soirée in honor of the visit of the Prussian prince, Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick; or there is a musicale given by Lady Cholmondelay; and of course there's the performance of
As You Like It
that we discussed last week, in which all the women's parts are played by boys.”

Elijah put down his napkin and stood up, walking around the long table to Jemma. She looked up at him inquiringly. He looked somewhat better than he had before eating: he was too young to look so bone-tired.

“I am in no mood to watch boys prance about the stage,” he said, taking her arm to bring her to her feet, “but I should be happy to escort you to either of the other events.”

Jemma blinked at him. She fully expected him to say that he had to work. To read those documents that he was always reading, even at the supper table. “You mean—”

He held out his arm. “I have decided not to work in the evenings. I am at your command, duchess.”

“Oh,” Jemma said, rather uncertainly.

They strolled toward the drawing room. “I suppose the soirée,” Jemma said, deciding. “I should like to dance.” She was wearing a new dress, a delicious gown of figured pale yellow satin with a pattern of tiny green leaves. Her skirts were trimmed with double flounces and rather shorter than in the previous year.

Elijah looked down at her with a smile in his eyes.

“Yes, I am wearing a new gown and I should like to show it off,” she told him, thinking that there were nice aspects to having been married so long.

“The hem reveals a delectable bit of your slipper,” he said gravely.

“You noticed!” She stuck out her toe. She wore yellow slippers with very high heels, ornamented with a cunning little rose.

“Yellow roses,” he said, “are not nearly as rare as a perfect ankle like yours, Jemma.”

“Good lord,” she said, smiling at him. “It must be a blue moon. You're complimenting your wife. Let me find my fan and my knotting bag—”

Fowle handed them to her.

“What a lovely fan,” Elijah said, taking it from her. “What is the imagery?”

“I hadn't looked closely,” she said, turning away so that Fowle could help her with her cloak.

“Venus and Adonis…and a very lovely rendition as well.”

She came back and stood on tiptoe to see the fan, which he had spread before him. “Oh, I see. Yes, there is Venus. My goodness.”

“She seems to be pulling poor Adonis into the bushes,” Elijah said. She loved the dry humor he displayed when he wasn't acting like a hidebound and moralistic politician. “Look at her breasts! No wonder the poor lad looks frightened and titillated, all at once. A tantalizing bit of art, this.”

“Surely you don't approve?” she said. “You, the proper politician?”

“No Venus has offered to pull me into the bushes, so I could hardly say.” He closed the fan. “Where on earth did it come from, Jemma? You didn't purchase the piece without looking at the illustration?” Fowle threw a cloak around his shoulders.

“Fans are a popular gift at the moment,” Jemma said. “This came from Villiers. He gave it to me a few days ago.”

“I didn't know he paid you a visit.”

Jemma felt a strange qualm. It was all so difficult, having her husband's boyhood friend trying to seduce her. “He came by to tell me of the strange doings of the Duke of Cosway.”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Elijah toss the fan dismissively toward one of the footmen. Of course, that left her without a fan for the evening. No one was ever without a fan. But she could say that she left it in the carriage.

She climbed into the carriage and sank into the corner, suddenly struck by a profound realization. It was too late for Villiers, fan or no. She would never drag him into the bushes. When she first returned from France,
she was so angry with Elijah that she thought to have an
affaire
with Villiers, but he had refused her.

And now, now that Villiers had changed his mind…it was too late.

Elijah had kissed her a few weeks ago. He had kissed her twice, actually. It was absurd, it was deluded. She was riveted by the memory of those kisses.

He was her first, her only husband, her…

Whatever he was to her.

The truth was that she was infatuated. She spent her afternoons in the library, waiting for him to return from the House of Lords. She secretly read all the papers so that she could engage in clever conversation about the events of the day. She thrilled when reading accounts of his speeches, and trembled when he set out in the morning on a day that included a talk before Parliament.

Not that he knew it, of course.

She would rather die of humiliation than let her husband know that she was infatuated by him.

She kept telling herself that Elijah never bothered to come to Paris to bring her home when she had fled there as a young bride. She kept reminding herself of his mistress, but somehow she had lost her rage, or perhaps her enthusiasm for that rage.

It was gone, tucked away in a faded box of memories. And the only clear thing she knew about her marriage was that she was married to a man who was so beautiful, with his sharp cheekbones and English grace, his tall, strong body and intelligent eyes—so beautiful that she would do anything to lure him back to her bed.

She was aware, while dressing, while putting on lip rouge, while putting on her shoes, that she was playing the most serious game of her life.
He
had to come to
her
.
She could not chase him, beg him, or by any means at her disposal make it clear that he was welcome to her person…to her heart.

Though he was.

It wouldn't work, not for life.

She wanted Elijah—not the way she had him when they were first married, not with the genial affection and enthusiasm he showed for their awkward couplings. She wanted him, the Duke of Beaumont, one of the most powerful men in government,
at her feet
.

And she wouldn't settle for less.

Villiers would be useful in her campaign. He and Elijah had been childhood friends and were now estranged. Good. She would use him. She would use any man in London who asked her to dance, if it would fan a spark of jealousy in her husband's civilized heart.

But it wasn't jealousy that could do it. It was she: she had to be more witty, more beautiful, more desirable than she ever had been.

Elijah was seated in the opposite corner of the carriage, looking absently out of the window. As always, his wig was immaculate and discreet. Not for the Duke of Beaumont were pyramids of scented curls or immovable rolls perched on top of frizzled locks. He wore a simple, short-cut wig with curls so small they hardly deserved the label.

Underneath, she knew, he had his hair clipped close to his skull. It was a style that would destroy the appeal of almost every man. But on Elijah it brought into focus his cheekbones and the gaunt, courteous, restrained masculinity of him.

By the time they arrived at Lady Feddrington's soirée, the receiving line had broken up and the ballroom was crowded. They stood for a moment at the top of the steps leading down into the room.

“It's a bit overwhelming,” Elijah murmured. “How on earth do you ladies manage to move about a room like this, given the width of your panniers?”

Jemma smiled at him. “'Tis only the unfashionable who have
very
wide panniers this season. Look at myself, for instance.”

He looked, and she felt his glance as if it were a touch. Not that she showed it. She had spent years in the court of Versailles; if those years had taught her anything, it was that she should never reveal vulnerability.

“Your skirts look as wide as a barnyard door,” he said to her. But she saw the laughter in his grave eyes. He needed to laugh more.

She met his eyes with the kind of smile that told a man she liked him. It felt odd to give it to her husband. “Narrower than many,” she told him.

“I'm sure you are precisely
à la mode
,” he said, taking her arm again. “Shall we?”

They reached the bottom of the steps just as the first notes of a minuet sounded. “Would you like to dance?” he asked her. “I realize it is a great
faux pas
to dance with one's husband, but you could always say that you got it out of the way.”

She looked up at him and had to swallow because of the beauty of his eyes. She put her hand in his. “You do me too much honor.”

He bowed before her as the music continued, and they moved smoothly, together, into the steps of the dance. It separated them; she felt it as a physical ache.

It brought them back together; she was afraid that her pleasure showed too much in her eyes, and she refused to look at his face. “Look!” she cried, her voice witless, “there's Lady Piddleton, dancing with Saint Albans. He must be gathering material…he is always so cruel about her.”

Elijah didn't reply. When she stole a look at him, he met her eyes and there was something there.

Surely he would speak to her. Kiss her again. Tell her…

The dance ended and he bowed. Saint Albans was at her right elbow, her friend Lord Corbin at her left. Lord Sosney walked up with Lord Killigrew, veritably shouting over the din, “Duchess!”

She caught Elijah's eye for a moment, but he turned away.

And she turned away.

A chess player never shows the moment when she realizes that she might lose a game. That the board has turned against her; the black pieces are clustered for attack. The very best chess players revel in the chance to save themselves.

Jemma reminded herself that she was the very best.

She turned, laughing, to Lord Corbin, holding out her gloved hand to be kissed.