When the Duke Returns (9 page)

Gore House, Kensington
London Seat of the Duke of Beaumont
February 27, 1784

T
he Duke of Beaumont had had a detestable day. His wife had not appeared at breakfast, and though Jemma rarely made an appearance, he had rather hoped she would. The House of Lords was erupting into all sorts of strange battles to do with Pitt's India Bill and the Mutiny Bill. The king had said Fox was trying to reduce him to a mere figurehead. Fox was trying to force the resignation of the ministry…

He was tired. He was so bone-tired that he actually wavered a bit as he descended from his carriage. One of his footmen darted forward as if he were a man of eighty, and Elijah had to wave him away. It was humiliating.

His body was failing him.

Oh, he'd never fainted in public again, as he had last year. Right on the floor of the House of Lords, he had collapsed.

These days, to everyone's eyes, he seemed absolutely fine.

But he knew he wasn't. He felt a clock ticking over his shoulder, and its tick was louder since they'd returned from the Christmas holidays. Perhaps because it had been so relaxing to go to the country for the holidays, to wander through one of Jemma's outrageous masquerades, to play chess with his wife, to bicker amiably about politics with acquaintances who didn't think the outcome of any particular vote was of much importance.

Returning to the seething brew that was the House of Lords was difficult.

No, he hadn't fainted since the first time.

But he
had
passed out, just for a second, now and then. So far he had always been sitting down, and no one had realized.

But the truth—the truth was that he needed to talk to his wife.

Jemma had come back from Paris so they could create an heir. He could hardly bring the words to the surface of his mind. This wasn't the way he wanted to bed Jemma. They had engaged in an elaborate, intricate ballet over the last year. They were beginning…

He wasn't sure what they were beginning. But he knew that it was important. More important than anything before.

And still his body failed him.

“You work too hard, Your Grace!” his butler scolded him. “Those rapscallions in the government need to learn to do without you for a time.”

Only he knew that he had already cut back his work
load. He smiled at Fowle, handed over his greatcoat, inquired of the duchess's whereabouts.

“In the library, Your Grace,” the butler said. “With a chess board, and waiting for you, I believe.”

He walked into the library and paused for a moment just to savor what lay before him. Jemma was heartbreakingly, astoundingly beautiful. She was sitting in a patch of light cast by many candles, examining her chess board. She had her hair swept up in some sort of complicated arrangement, but not powdered. It was the color of old gold, the deep happy color of sunshine. She was wearing an open robe of flowered gauze, worked with gold twists, that came to a deep V over her breasts.

The pulse of longing he felt was for everything about his wife: her wit, her beauty, her breasts, her brilliance…

How in the hell could he not have realized it when they first married? How could he have wasted those years, thrown them away on politics and his mistress? Couldn't he have thought—just imagined—that perhaps time wasn't a gift one had for the asking? Couldn't he have remembered that his father had died at thirty-four?

And
he
was thirty-four, as of this month. Time wove its changes, marched apace…he would give anything to have back those first weeks of marriage when Jemma looked to him for advice, when she cuddled beside him in the morning, asking questions about the House.

Great fool that he was back then, he had leapt from their bed eager to be at the House, not sitting about with a wife whom he barely knew. Off to his mistress, who appeared during the noon hour on Tuesdays and Fridays. That was part of his routine: emerge from the House of Lords and exhaust himself with Sarah, right there in his office.

Good old Sarah Cobbett. She loved him; he loved her in a way. One had to hope that she was happy.

He'd pensioned her off after Jemma caught them on the desk in his chambers.

The stab of guilt was an old friend, though it seemed to grow fiercer with the years, not less so.

For her part, Jemma seemed to have forgiven him. Perhaps.

She looked up at him, and her smile made his heart stop.

Life had given him a woman who was—he knew it with a bone-deep certainty—the most intelligent woman in Europe. And he had thrown her away to rut with a kindly woman whose only claim to intelligence was that she was never late to their twice-weekly appointment, not once during the six years in which Sarah was his mistress.

He couldn't even remember Sarah's face now, which just made him feel guiltier.

“Look at this!” Jemma called to him.

He walked over and looked down at the board, rather blindly.

“It's a counter gambit credited to Giuoco. I think I've improved on it. Look…” and she moved the pieces so quickly that he almost didn't follow, but of course he did. Their brains were remarkably similar.

He sat down.

“Terrible day?” she asked.

It was almost too much. Her eyes were blue, like the midnight blue of the sky at night. And he wanted—her. Life. To stay here, on this earth with Jemma. To see the child they would create, if they had time.

“Elijah!” she said, startled. Slipped from her seat and sat on his knee. He turned his face into her shoulder. She smelled like roses.

He didn't cry, of course. He never cried. He hadn't when his father died, and he wouldn't cry over his own death either.

But he put an arm around his wife and pulled her closer. She hadn't been this near to him in years.

It felt good.

Revels House
February 29, 1784

S
imeon knew the moment that Honeydew opened the study door that there was more trouble. He put down his quill.

The news that the Duke of Cosway had returned, and that he was actually paying the family debts, had spread like wildfire. Half of England seemed to be lined up outside the servants' door, begging five minutes to plead cases, generally to do with bills that his father or mother had refused to pay. Some stretched back twenty years.

“Yes?”

“We have a visitor,” Honeydew announced.

Simeon waited, bracing himself for an irate creditor.

“Her Grace, the Duchess of Cosway.”

“Oh—” He bit off the curse. He was exhausted, he was dusty, and he could smell the water closets even with the door to his study closed. Isidore would probably take one look at this moldering excuse for a ducal palace and demand the annulment by tomorrow. Which would be a good thing, of course.

Honeydew had become distinctly more friendly, and had even stopped giving Simeon directives regarding his attire and manners. But he didn't seem to be able to stop himself this time. “If you'd like to—”

Simeon looked at him and Honeydew dropped the suggestion. Likely Isidore did think he should be wearing a wig and waistcoat buttoned to the neck with a cravat on top. Even more likely, she pictured Revels House as perfumed and elegant.

He pulled his coat down, straightened his cuffs, noted the ink stain and dismissed it. He could bother with white cuffs and a cravat when he had to go to London and find himself another wife.

“Her Grace is in the Yellow Salon,” Honeydew said rather nervously.

“Yellow? Which one is that?”

“The drapes used to be yellow,” Honeydew admitted.

“Ah,” Simeon said. “The Curdled Milk Salon.”

There was actually a smile on his butler's face. “This way, Your Grace.”

Isidore was seated on a straw-colored sofa, facing away from him. That straw color had once been lemon yellow, Simeon noted to himself. Isidore looked like a bright jewel perched on a haystack. His wife's hair was the glossy black of a raven's breast; her lips were cherries at their reddest. She looked like every boyhood fantasy he'd ever had about an exotic princess who would dance before him, wearing little more than a scarf.

He glanced down and groaned silently.

He'd tamed his body into perfect submission until he met his wife. He started buttoning his long coat as he walked forward, starting from the bottom.

“Isidore,” he said, when he had crossed enough of the faded carpet so that she could hear him without a shout. The only thing his house had in abundance was space.

She leapt to her feet, turning to face him. She was wearing a tight jacket over a buttoned waistcoat, with a tall beehive hat on top of her curls. The jacket was a rich plum color; gloves of the same color lay discarded on the sofa beside her.

“Duke,” she said, sinking into a curtsy.

He walked toward her and didn't bow. Instead he took her hands in his and smiled down at her, resisting a sudden temptation to snatch her into his arms and steal a kiss. One didn't kiss a wife who was not a wife. “This is a lovely surprise.”

When she smiled, her lips formed a perfect cupid's bow. “I told you I might not wait for your visit to London. I hope I'm not disturbing you,” she said sweetly. She pulled her hands free and sat down.

He sat on the sofa facing hers. It gave a great squeaking groan on feeling his weight, as if it were about to collapse to the ground. “I am embarrassed to welcome you here. The house is in a terrible state. This room, for example…”

“It looks clean,” she offered, looking about.

It was clean. Honeydew would tolerate no dirt, but he had the feeling the butler worked to death the few housemaids his mother had kept in the household. He might as well get over the rough ground as quickly as possible. “My mother stopped paying bills a while ago. And she dismissed most of the household staff.”

Isidore had a strange look on her face and he knew
just what she was thinking. The odor had begun drifting through the room like a fetid suitor.

“She didn't have the water closets cleaned, the slates repaired, the house painted, the furniture upholstered, the servants paid, the cottages re-thatched…”

Isidore's hand flew to her mouth, and over her nose as well. “Oh, dear!”

Simeon nodded. “That's why I didn't invite you to Revels House. When rain comes, and the wind shifts…”

She put down her hand and to his great relief, she was smiling. “You looked tired when I first met you,” she observed. “But now you look even worse.”

“There is a great deal of paperwork. Unpaid bills, solicitors' letters…” He shrugged. “I haven't been sleeping much.”

“I have a large estate, and you are my husband, Cosway. It's yours. That is, it should have been yours long ago, but you never appeared to take charge of it so I have managed it.”

His heart lightened even further. “The truth is that I have a great deal of money as well. And mystifyingly, so does the duchy. I have no need of substance, though I thank you heartily for it.”

“Then why…”

He nodded. “Exactly. My mother has long been a mystery to me. Did you understand her during your sojourn here?”

Isidore picked up her gloves and carefully smoothed each finger. “I'm afraid that I was far too young and coarse. Your mother is a woman of great sensibility.”

He thought that was a nice way of saying the obvious: his mother was a raving lunatic, if not worse. “She didn't used to be like this,” he offered. “I'm afraid the shock of my father's death made things worse.”

“How can I help?”

“You can't, but I do appreciate the offer.”

“Nonsense,” she said, standing up. “You can't manage everything on your own, Simeon.” She looked around. “Have you even raised the question of redecorating with your mother?”

He rose, thinking about how casually she said his first name…finally. “My mother is having a difficult time adjusting to my presence. She is distressed by the fact that I am paying bills that she considers to have been presented by thieves. But after so much time has passed, I have no way of ascertaining whether the bills are fraudulent, so I am necessarily paying everything in full.”

She nodded. “Then I suppose my most pressing question is which bedchamber lies the farthest distance from a water closet?”

Of course she didn't plan to stay in the master bedchamber. Of course not. He'd told her that he wanted to dissolve the marriage. What in the hell had he been thinking?

“I'll ask the butler, shall I?” she said, turning away. The line of her back was straight and incredibly slender. And then her hoops…the way her skirt billowed as she walked made him long to follow the line of her back down to her hips with his hand. With a silent groan, he pushed open the door for Isidore and she swept through.

What would Honeydew make of the duchess's request for a bedchamber far, far away? As it turned out, he was in entire sympathy.

“The dowager duchess has her own water closet, of course,” Simeon heard him telling Isidore. “And how she can abide the odor on damp days…”

“She's probably used to it,” Isidore said, reasonably enough.

Back when Simeon was practicing meditation and
first learning to control his body, it had been easy to maintain a manly discretion. When he arrived in Africa, and discovered running, he learned how to control bodily appetites such as hunger.

But England was endangering all his carefully erected barriers. His imperturbable, manly façade was shaken. He was enraged at his dead father for avoiding his obligations. He was irritated by his mother. And worst of all, he was riveted by lust for his wife. If the truth be told, lust was absorbing at least half of his cognitive powers at any given moment, even given that he'd had so little sleep.

He could hear Valamksepa in his mind's ear, intoning that no man need be at the behest of his emotions, and certainly not of his body. The memory sounded like water running over pebbles a long way away.

Isidore put her hand on his sleeve and her touch sent a pulse of fire to his loin. “Simeon, is Godfrey away at school? He was just a toddler when I last saw him. He must be in long pants by now.”

Simeon gave her a wry smile. “He's thirteen and nearly as tall as I am. You'll meet him tonight.”

She gasped. “Thirteen?”

“I need to find him a tutor. My mother deemed Eton too expensive and yet she never hired a proper tutor. Luckily, he seems very bright and has taught himself, rather eclectically, from my father's library.”

“Beaumont is sure to know an appropriate young man. Godfrey taught
himself
?”

Another pulse of shame. He should have been here, making certain that his brother was properly raised. But Simeon made sure his face was impassive. It was weakness to admit weakness. “He will quickly catch up to his peers.”

Isidore gave him a quizzical look, but turned away to
speak to Honeydew. “I do not travel lightly,” she said. “Several carriages are following more slowly with my clothing.”

When Honeydew took her upstairs to explore the most palatable bedchamber—from an olfactory point of view—Simeon returned to his study.

The last thing he wanted to do was be in the same room with Isidore and a bed.