When the Duke Returns (29 page)

“Oh.” Isidore stood for a moment, trying to catch her breath. “I suppose we'd better leave then.” She found one of her shoes and turned it right side up.

“Can you run in those?” Simeon was listening at the door.

“No.”

“Leave them.” He tossed Villiers's beautiful coat into the corner.

“But the diamonds—” Isidore looked about swiftly, and then flung her shoes under the sofa. She could always retrieve them later.

Simeon pulled the chair out of the way. “I think from the noise the prisoners have escaped and are getting onto the yacht,” he said. “We need to get out of here.”

“Couldn't that chair protect us?” Isidore asked longingly, running her hands up his chest.

“Not if they fire the vessel.”

Isidore's eyes rounded. “I can't swim in this gown, Simeon.”

“Do you remember that conversation we had, back when I was afraid of crises and you told me there weren't any in England?” He couldn't help it; she was so delicious that he had to kiss her again.

“You're my
bally-
something,” Isidore said a moment later, looking a great deal less frightened. “Just tell me what to do,
capo
.”

“We're going overboard,” he said. “We can't stay here, with you in that gown. And we need to get off as quickly as possible.”

Isidore nodded and put her hand in his. He pulled the door open cautiously and looked out. There was no one in the ballroom. But with the door open, the sound from the deck swelled. There was screaming and the unmistakable sound of swords clashing. “They're fighting,” Isidore breathed.

“The king's own guard is likely here. Not to mention parish constables, the Watch, and guards from the prison ship.” But he didn't really give a damn about that. The only thing he cared about was the most precious bundle of his entire life, her hand trustingly clasped in his. “Don't worry,” Simeon said fiercely.

The smile she gave him blinded him. “I'm not.”

They walked silently into the ballroom, keeping to the edge of the wall, heading to the doors on the other side of the room, away from the deck. Once through the door, Simeon made his way swiftly through the corridors until he came to the staircase at the very end of the yacht.

“We'll go up here,” he said in her ear. “We have to go straight over the railing, Isidore. If they see you, they'll fight to the death to have you.”

She nodded. He wrapped his hands around her and gave her one last, fierce kiss.

“I'll go off the railing to the left and distract them. I doubt they can swim, and at any rate, I don't think they'll bother. But they'll certainly come to the railing on that side.” His voice was just a thread of sound. “Stay behind this door and count to twenty. Then run through the door and over the railing to the right without pausing to think or listen. Promise?”

She nodded again.

He eased open the door and launched himself through it. Isidore began to count. Don't listen, she told herself. You said you wouldn't listen. You just count to twenty, and then run. That's all—

She couldn't help it. Ears were made for listening. She heard Simeon's footsteps and a splash and then shouts. Happy shouts in rough accents. With a leaden feeling of terror, she realized that Simeon had dived overboard but that a ruffian already in the water had grabbed him instantly.

She crept to the door and peered through it. A few ragged men were hanging over the railing, then a head appeared and they were hauling up Simeon, dripping and furious. They had his arms behind his back.

The prisoner who'd caught Simeon climbed over the railing. “Kicked me right good, he did,” the man said, adding a word that Isidore had never heard before. “I'll have my own back for that.” And before Isidore could draw a breath he pulled back his arm and socked Simeon in the cheek. Simeon fell backward against the deck, pinned by the two men holding his arms.

Isidore almost screamed, but stopped herself. Simeon didn't deign to say a word in response to the blow. He just looked deliberately from face to face, studying the five men clustered around him.

“Here, what you doing then?” one of the prisoners said, obviously uncomfortable that Simeon didn't make a sound.

“Memorizing your faces,” he said. The rage so potent in his voice made Isidore shiver.

“I'll just give him two black eyes, why don't I?” the man snarled. “That'll stop him.”

Isidore's stomach lurched. She couldn't stay here, hidden, while they beat Simeon. She had to startle them enough so that they would drop his arms, because then he could knock them all out with his kick. Soundlessly, she crept back down the stairs. She needed a weapon. Unfortunately, the king's yacht didn't seem to have any weapons. She couldn't even find a heavy candlestick.

Suddenly, she had an idea, and flew back into the ladies' salon, retrieving her diamond slippers. These should get their attention. She ran up the stairs again, breathing hard, and found that not much had changed.

The same two ruffians were clutching Simeon's arms, though thankfully he didn't seem to have taken any
more blows. From what she could understand, they were going to bargain his life for their freedom.

She waited for the right moment, eased open the door, and tossed out the diamond shoe.

It somersaulted in the light of the torches illuminating the deck and landed just in front of the group. For a moment they all stared at it, as if a bird of paradise had landed on the deck. The shoe glistened with jewels.

Then, with a muffled shout, all five men dove for it.

Simeon kicked the man closest to him so hard that the convict flew back against the wall of the yacht. In a swift, swirling circle he sent the other four spinning to the deck, one after another. Isidore wrenched open the door and flew at Simeon. His muscled arms closed around her and he threw himself backward, overboard.

They struck the water with such force that Simeon's arms spun away from Isidore's waist. Icy water closed over her face and her heavy skirts pulled her down into the acid-tasting water as effectively as if she had stones in her pockets.

Something brushed her face and she thought of waterlogged corpses rescued by the Dead Watch. Frantically, she beat her arms, trying to rise to the surface, but she couldn't counteract the plummeting weight of all those diamonds.

Then, like a benediction, like a prayer, Simeon's strong arms closed around her and he pulled her upward with a strong, smooth stroke. Isidore broke the surface, choking and gasping for breath.

“Easy,” he said, holding her up. “I've got you, sweetheart. I've got you.”

“I—I thought—”

He gave her a hard, swift kiss. “I want you out of the river.” And without another word he began towing her through the water as if she were no heavier than a babe.
Isidore had just enough time to be confusedly grateful for Simeon's passion for running and the strength it gave him. (Turquoise Coat would have left her to sink or, rather, he would have plummeted down right next to her.)

Then they were at the shore, where a hundred helping hands reached out to them. Simeon was up in a flash, turning around to pull Isidore up the bank. Her skirts seemed ten times heavier than they had been, and the weight of water and jewels made the silk of her overskirts stretch past her feet, tripping her. Finally Simeon just bent down, picked her up in his arms and walked up the slope.

Everyone on the bank was screaming and howling “Hurrah!” The noise was deafening. Isidore felt a sudden breeze, took one appalled glance down, and realized that the diamond-encrusted cloth of her bodice had given up its battle with gravity and had fallen below her nipples. She looked up, horrified, and met Simeon's eyes. He was laughing.

A second later they were on the bankside, and Simeon wrapped a coat tightly around her. “I can't let
all
of London know what they're missing,” he said into her ear.

“Oh, Simeon,” she said, hiccupping, half-crying. “He struck you, Simeon. He struck you and I couldn't do anything to stop him.”

“You did stop him,” Simeon said. “I might have died, but for you.”

“And then we were in the water,” Isidore said with another hiccup, “and I was going down, and all I could think of was the Dead Watch and how they would gloat when they were sent to find my body.”

“Never,” he said, his arms tightening around her. “I would never allow that to happen.”

“Don't ever let them be the ones to rescue my body, Simeon,” she said. “
Promise
me.”

“You're not going to drown. Ever.”

She put her head against his chest and listened to the strong beat of his heart. They were safe. Tears slid slowly down her cheeks.

He said something she couldn't hear.

“What?”

“Don't you see how lucky we are, Isidore?”

“Yes,” she said, a little damply. Her heart was still pounding with fear, even now she was in the warm circle of his arms.

He pulled back and cupped her face in his hands. “We're like your parents, sweetheart. If one of us is going to be lost, both of us will go. I would never, ever stop searching for you if our boat overturned.”

Then he was kissing her, the kind of possessive, loving kiss that she'd seen her father give her mother a hundred times. Tears welled out of her eyes, and Isidore wound her arms around Simeon's neck and held on as tightly as she could, even as her tears made him a little wetter than he already was.

It sounded as if the cheers grew even louder when he lowered his head to hers again…but maybe that was just her imagination.

Two minutes later, Simeon picked her up again and carried her through the crowd, regardless of her wet, heavy dress trailing behind them. Isidore hadn't paid much attention to what was happening around her, but when the groomsmen closed the carriage door behind them and Simeon deposited her on a seat, she looked about. She was placed in the most luxurious carriage she had ever ridden in, upholstered in red velvet with gold coronets sprinkled everywhere. The horses started
and she could hardly feel the motion, so sweetly was the coach designed and calibrated.

“Where are we?” she asked, half laughing.

Simeon was wrestling off his wet shirt and didn't look up. “The Duke of Buckingham's carriage.”

“A royal carriage,” she said, watching him under her eyelashes. Her breath felt hot in her chest. Surely he couldn't mean to…

He did mean precisely that.

Because a second later Simeon was tenderly peeling her drenched bodice down to her waist. There were red marks on her skin left by the diamonds as she struck the surface of the water. He kissed every little bruise, moving down her body like a man who knew exactly where those kisses were most needed.

And though Isidore had never imagined such a thing was possible—making love in a carriage, let alone a prince's carriage!—she found herself laying back on red velvet upholstery as her husband deftly woke her body into the same trembling, vibrating state she had experienced on the yacht.

“We shouldn't,” she whispered at some point, and lost her train of thought when a wave of pleasure swept her into a place where words were impossible.

And when he thrust into her, she plummeted into a state where she could do nothing but sob for the pure pleasure of it.

Simeon's body begged him to follow her, but instead he chose to make love to Isidore slowly. It was only by kissing her, by stroking her, by stroking in her, that he could tell her in a way that scorched the truth into both their hearts.

Finally, he couldn't keep to his slow rhythm. He began pumping hard and fast, keeping his eyes open so he could see the way she strained to meet him, the way she
gasped and cried out, the sheer beauty of her eyes and mouth.

The carriage rocked as it rounded a corner, and the sensation just increased their pleasure. “Simeon,” Isidore gasped, “we must be nearly home.”

“I told them not to open the door,” he said, but he could feel his control slipping away.

“Simeon!” Isidore cried, pulling his body even deeper inside her own, forcing him to throw away the remnants of his control and surrender to something wilder and more beautiful. Something that left Isidore crying ( just a little), and Simeon's eyes misty ( just a little).

In the moments that followed, broken only by their whispered endearments, he realized something his heart already knew. They were partners. She would always make impulsive decisions and he would make slow, reasoned ones. He would always be a little terrified that she would look at him with the scorn he saw in his mother's eyes. And she would always be a little terrified that he would look at her and not love her enough.

In short, they were made for each other.

He thought of eloquent things he should say, all the tenderness and passion and hope in his chest, and distilled it to one sentence. “I love you.”

She kissed him. And kissed him.

“Whither thou goest,” he said to her, in a voice so quiet that she could hardly hear it over the clattering wheels. “There will I go too.”

St. James's Palace
London
April 10, 1784

I
t wasn't until two weeks afterward that Isidore understood the whole of what happened. She hadn't realized that most of London saw their daring escape, and Simeon's rescue of her. Nor that the King himself watched Simeon carry her from the water and kiss her afterwards, and then swore that he would never listen to another solicitor bleating on about one of his noblemen being mad, let alone annul a marriage on those grounds.

She didn't understand that by knocking out the ringleaders of the prisoners' rebellion, Simeon had enabled the king's guards to trounce the uprising. And she certainly didn't envision her husband being summoned to
St. James's Palace for a public proclamation of the nation's gratitude, during which the Duke of Cosway declared that any success was the result of working together with his duchess.

It was the ball following the king's declaration, and Isidore hadn't seen her husband for at least an hour. She kept glancing over her dancing partners' shoulders, wondering where he might be. She had developed a horror of the silver gown, and so Lucille had carefully removed all the diamonds—the ones that weren't left behind in the mud of the Thames—and sewn them onto a presentation gown.

But she hadn't chosen to wear that tonight; in fact, she thought it might be a long time before she chose to wear diamonds again. Her gown was a pale rose-colored velvet with Chantilly lace, and she wore it with a fortune in tiger rubies.

Her former suitors were out in force. Most of them hadn't lost hope that she would find herself disaffected with Simeon. Even if she weren't planning to annul her marriage, they hoped that she might turn to one of them by way of consoling herself for her husband's eccentricities. They smiled, capered and bowed…She felt overwhelmed by their florid scent, by the way they “accidentally” brushed her chest, by the way their teeth showed when they smiled.

Somehow she'd decided that a man should smile gravely, smell faintly like cardamom soap, and touch her breasts only in the privacy of the marital bedchamber.

The nature of marriage is such that a woman no sooner formulates rules of this nature…than they are broken.

The Earl of Bisselbate was just bowing before her, flourishing his hand as if he were a peasant sowing seeds (Isidore thought uncharitably), when suddenly
another hand touched her shoulder. She jumped and turned. Simeon. She smiled up at him, not even noticing that the earl had straightened and was expectantly holding out his hand to lead her into the dance.

“Simeon,” she breathed. “Where have you been?”

“The king had a private request,” he said, smiling down at her. “It seems the queen has taken a liking to tiger rubies.”

The earl cleared his throat.

“Do forgive me,” Isidore said, turning reluctantly back to her escort. “I—”

“As your
Baalomaal
,” Simeon said…His voice was low and meant for only her ears.

Without a second's thought, Isidore sank backwards, throwing a hand to her brow, knowing that Simeon would catch her, feeling his arms go around her. “Oh!” she cried. “I feel so faint! It must be the heat.”

Simeon was laughing silently. He carried her swiftly through the chattering nobles, out the door and down one of the myriad corridors of St. James's Palace.

Isidore lay her head against his chest, loving the strong beat of his heart, not bothering to ask what the danger was. Simeon was with her. All would be well.

A few moments later he whisked her through a door. It was a velvety dark space. He put her on her feet.

“Simeon?” she asked. It felt as if they were in a very small room. “Where are we?”

“A closet,” he said. “But there's room to lie down…in case you felt like it.”

She laughed, but he fell to his knees, and pulled up her skirts. She put her hands on his powerful shoulders, bracing herself against the intoxicating little kisses that were burning a path up her legs.

“But, Simeon,” she gasped, feeling her knees weaken,
knowing that in a moment she'd be lying on the floor of a broom closet in the king's own palace. “I thought you would use that word
baalomaal
only in moments of great danger.”

He didn't choose to answer until her breath was coming quickly and she was leaning against the wall, uttering broken little moans. Then he stood up, stripped off his coat, and put it on the floor. It was a magnificent coat, worked by Villiers's own embroiderer, black roses on deep brown…It was also soft and made an excellent improvised bed.

A moment later Simeon was kissing his wife's inner thigh again, and Isidore was having trouble keeping her mind on the conversation.

“There
was
danger,” he said, but only when she wasn't sure what he was talking about anymore.

He waited until her breath was coming and going in unsteady little pants, and he was poised above her in the velvety darkness, feeling her twist up against him, begging, pleading…

Then he entered her in one swift stroke, savoring the exquisite beauty of sharing her body, her breath, her love. “Because I love you,” he said, his voice rough, the voice of a man who was come to understand that control is only worth having if it's worth throwing away—at certain moments.

“I love you too,” she breathed, arching toward him, urging him on.

“It was a matter of some danger,” he told her.

He could feel her giggle. “Hmmm.”

The time for talking was over but he had to say it first. “Those men were in danger, Isidore. In grave danger. It makes me ache just to look at you. It makes me enraged to see other men look at you, let alone touch you.”

Her hands were sliding over his rear, inflaming him.

“You're
mine
,” he said fiercely, taking her mouth in a kiss as possessive as he felt.

“I'm yours,” she said, kissing him back. “And you're mine.”