When the Duke Returns Page 16

  Jemma sank into a deep curtsy. “But of course I am acquainted with the marquise,” she said, her smile hitting a perfect register between indifference and recognition.

  The marquise had the near expressionless countenance of a woman who understood face paint and used it with consummate skill. In fact, she would have been alluring except that her penchant for black and white drew attention to her costumes rather than her face. Those affectations, Jemma thought uncharitably, made her appear much older than her twenty-seven years.

  “Ah, the délicieuse Duchess of Beaumont! How happy were all the ladies of the French court when you returned to England. As you know,” she said, turning to Madame Bertière, “the duchess provides such formidable competition for the gentlemen!”

  A nice hit, Jemma thought. She managed to praise me and yet note my adulterous tendencies. She unfurled her fan and smiled over the edge of it. “What a delightful costume you are wearing, madame. I wish I had the courage to go against fashion the way you do. I’m sure I would be sadly clumsy if my hips were quite as wide as yours, and yet you manage with such grace.”

  The marquise was far too sophisticated to stiffen; instead, she threw Jemma a sweet, roguish smile. “And I adore those delicious little flowers on your gown, duchess. I can certainly understand why you keep your panniers so small…when a woman has been gifted with such an ample bosom, large panniers inevitably make her look like an hourglass. Or a haystack. Your skill in dressing is so admirable!”

  “Do you intend to pay us a long visit?” Jemma inquired.

  “Ah, one travels to escape the ennui of life,” sighed the marquise. “In truth, without your entertainments to enliven Paris, it is a tediously puritanical place.”

  Another hit, Jemma thought. Not as potent, though. There was something a little tired about the marquise, as if she had lost interest in the verbal fencing matches, the flares of witty comments, that had shaped her days in Versailles.

  In fact, now that Jemma looked beyond her face powder, she saw that the marquise’s cheeks were rather gaunt.

  Jemma slipped her hand through the marquise’s, an action she would never have taken in Versailles. She waved off Madame Bertière. “The marquise and I will take a turn or two and allow everyone to admire us. ’Tis an act of great kindness on my part, given the marquise’s elegance will so put mine in the shade.”

  Previously, the marquise would have laughed in a way that indicated her complete agreement. Now she said nothing. It was almost unnerving.

  They walked through the crowd, lowering their chins at acquaintances. Jemma made her way unerringly toward the ladies’ salon. They entered to find three chattering debutantes, who wisely fled. Jemma turned to the attending maid. “I am feeling quite faint. Please stand outside the door and make certain that no one enters.”

  The maid whisked herself through the door.

  The marquise sat down heavily, as if the weight of her enormous panniers dragged her to the ground. She had aged from the woman Jemma knew two years ago, the woman who snapped and laughed her way through the French court, grinding insouciant courtiers under her jeweled heels, making—and destroying—a lady’s reputation with one mocking glance.

  She had never been a nice person. But all the same, she had been a strong person.

  “And now,” Jemma said, sitting down opposite her, “are you quite all right, Madame la Marquise? You do not seem yourself.”

  The marquise started to laugh, her response to everything. But it broke off, and the sound that emerged sounded like a violent hiccup instead. Jemma waited.

  “Have you seen my husband?” she finally asked. Her voice was hoarse.

  “No,” Jemma replied. “He is not in London, to the best of my knowledge.” She hesitated.

  But the marquise intervened before she could think of a tactful question. “He left. He followed une femme to England. He said it would be a brief visit, some weeks. It has been eight months.”

  “I did hear such a rumor,” Jemma said cautiously.

  The marquise had a delicate lace handkerchief clutched in her hand. For a moment Jemma thought she was going to start tearing it apart, ripping it to shreds like a madwoman in a play. But no: she opened her hand and let it fall to the ground.

  It lay on the floor, crumpled, and their eyes met over it. “That is how he treated me,” the marquise said. “Like a piece of dirty linen, to be thrown to the side after it has been soiled.”

  “Oh—”

  “I must find him. I must.” There was some sort of suppressed rage about her that made Jemma twitch, and long to leave the room.

  “Do you wish him to return to you?” Jemma asked.

  “That—that salaud! Never. But I want to tell him to his face what sort of man he is. I want to tell his petite amie what sort of woman she is. I want—I want to—”

  Jemma reached forward and put a hand on her arm. “Forgive me,” she said gently, “for my impertinence. But what will the conversation change?”

  The marquise raised her head. “He left me.”

  Jemma suddenly remembered that the marquise was the daughter of a duke, and connected to French royalty. She looked, in that moment, like a queen whose subjects had inexplicably snuck away and crossed a border to another kingdom.

  “He had no right to leave me!”

  “Men are prone to extreme foolishness,” Jemma said.

  “He has humiliated me in front of the court. He has—he has caused me great distress.”

  For the marquise, Jemma thought that was probably close to saying that her husband had beaten her in the open marketplace.

  “But what do you hope to—”

  “Repentence,” the marquise said, “is too much to ask. No one repents anymore. It is as out of fashion as fidelity. But he has degraded me, brought me to his level. He must—”

  She stopped.

  Jemma nodded. “I faced the same problem, many years ago. My husband had made clear to me his utter lack of respect, his love for another woman. I lived in France for years as a result. It took me a great many years to understand that marriage lines do not control the heart.”

  The marquise’s face twisted.

  “My husband was in love with someone else,” Jemma repeated. “There was nothing I could say or do to change that circumstance. My advice, and I mean this seriously, is that you do not choose to follow him. Fashion a life of your own. I was not always happy in Paris, but I was often content.”

  The marquise snapped open her fan, but not before Jemma saw the glint of tears in her eyes. Jemma rose to her feet and held out her hand.

  “We must return to the ball. It is too demoralizing for the men to discover that women are talking amongst themselves. Their fear of conspiracy moves them to overprize virtue in the female sex. They grow more conservative as a result.”

  The marquise chuckled. It wasn’t the laughter that Jemma remembered, but it was a reasonable approximation.

  Elijah was leaning casually against the wall just outside the door when they emerged. Jemma couldn’t help it; a smile leapt from her heart to her lips. The marquise threw her a sour look. “It seems that men are not the only ones with ambitions to virtue,” she said. “Beware lest you grow conservative, duchess.”

  It was almost worthy of her former waspishness.

  Elijah was bowing before the marquise, taking her hand to his lips. “You are as exquisite as ever,” he said, using his politician’s voice, the one that sounded as sincere as if he were prophesying rain while drops fell on his hat.

  The marquise sauntered away. She looked back, over her shoulder, and caught Jemma’s eye. There was something like envy—or rage—on her face.

  “Do not ever imagine yourself comfortable, duchess. A mistake I committed.”

  Then she turned with a swish of her skirts and disappeared into the ballroom.

  “Dear me, what an uncomfortable woman she is!” Elijah says. “All in white and black like that. She reminds me of a chess board.”

/>   Jemma closed her fan. “She’s beautiful, though. Don’t you think?”

  “Undoubtedly.” He hesitated. “Villiers is here. He asked me whether you and I had begun our third game in the match.”

  “And you told him?” She looked up at Elijah’s face, at his stark cheekbones, deep eyes, tired intelligence.

  “I told him that I only wished I had you blindfolded and in bed,” he said, looking down at her. It should have been a joke…

  It wasn’t a joke.

  His eyes were serious.

  “You do?” she said. It was hard even to force the air into her lungs to say that.

  “And I told him that I would prefer that he complete his game immediately, under the circumstances.”

  “You mean because if people suspect that I am having an affaire with him, they will not countenance our child as our own.”

  He nodded. But there seemed to be so much more going on in the conversation, so much that was unsaid. Jemma’s heart was beating rapidly in her throat. “I don’t…” She cleared her throat and tried again. “I don’t wish to play that final game.”

  His face went utterly still. He stayed there for a moment, looking down at her. Then his utterly charming smile appeared and he bowed.

  “In that case, my lady, I certainly will never urge the unpleasantness on you.”

  He was gone, Jemma staring after him.

  “The game with Villiers,” she clarified. But he was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The Dower House

  March 2, 1784

  Early evening

  Simeon’s papers had been transferred to the Dower House. He was seated at a small desk and stood up when Isidore entered, keeping one hand on the desk, a sheet of paper in his other hand.

  Isidore sat down, trying very hard to forget that the last time she saw him, he was naked. “As you didn’t join me for dinner last night, I had no chance to tell you that I went to the village. I bought one hundred and thirty-five yards of wool, and twenty-seven meat pies.”

  He blinked and put down the paper. “Do we have a sudden need for meat pies? Or wool?”

  “They are gifts from the duchy to the villagers, to mend relations. Everyone in the village will receive a meat pie and five yards of wool, courtesy of the duke and duchess.”

  “Ah.” He looked down at the sheet before him. “Did you go into Mopser’s shop?”

  “Yes. He sold me the wool.”

  Simeon’s jaw clenched. “I have a letter from him demanding back payment for candles.”

  “I can imagine there must be many such letters. People apparently believed that your father would have them taken up by the magistrates if they failed to provide the duchy with his requests, even when he didn’t pay,” Isidore said cheerfully. She pulled off her gloves and smoothed them on her knee.

  Simeon’s eye rested on them for a moment and then he said, “Isidore, I am having to pay bills that I am certain are fraudulent.”

  “Oh.”

  “I briefly calculated Mopser’s request, for example. In order to use the number of candles that he says he sent to the house over the last five years, we’d need seven to nine candles burning at all hours of the day or night in every room in this house.”

  Isidore bit her lip. “But the candelabra…”

  “That’s calculating a rate of burn at about four hours, although most candles actually burn in approximately six,” he said, folding his hands. “Honeydew says that the candelabra haven’t been lit for years.”

  “Mopser was probably trying to make up for other bills that your father didn’t pay,” Isidore pointed out.

  “Or he’s a rascal taking advantage of the situation.”

  “I truly don’t think so,” Isidore said. “In any event, I asked him to deliver five yards of wool to every house in the village. That’s well over one hundred yards, given that we have twenty-seven dwellings.”

  “Did you say twenty-seven?”

  “Including the huts down by the river,” Isidore said.

  “There are nineteen houses in the village,” Simeon said. “Thirteen are occupied. There are indeed two hut-like structures by the river, but they are counted among the nineteen. He’s a thief.”

  “Everyone in the village has suffered horribly because of your father’s peculiarities,” Isidore protested. “They have learned to scramble and perhaps to prevaricate. The smith, Silas Pegg, told me that the bridge is extremely unsafe, as there is dust mixed with the steel. Pegg himself refused to fulfill your father’s request due to previous unpaid bills, and so the smith in the next village did it, but only after he charged the duke twice as much to try to get his expenses…” Her voice trailed off.

  Simeon’s was frowning so hard that his brows almost met in the middle. “You’re telling me that the smith in the next village sent in a false bill.”

  “He had to!” Isidore said. “He calculated that your father would pay at most fifty percent, and so if he made the bill for twice as much, he might end up with his expenses.”

  “This is the kind of thing that clearly drove my father into madness.”

  “Mad—” Isidore stopped.

  “He must have been mad,” Simeon said, moving the papers about on his desk. Isidore’s attention was caught for a moment by the beauty of his long fingers. He plucked out a sheet of paper. “From a seamstress in the village, asking for remuneration for two christening gowns. Christening gowns. Never paid.”

  “I assume the bill is thirteen years old, given your brother’s age,” Isidore said.

  “A long illness,” Simeon said. “It’s the only thing that explains it.”

  “Did your father note why he refused?”

  “He said that he didn’t care for the gowns, and that she should take them back again. The note is undated, but my guess is that he rejected the gowns only after the christening.”

  “I don’t think that Mopser could be charged with your father’s madness, if we call it that.”

  Simeon’s jaw set again, Isidore noticed. “He was plagued by false invoices. He felt that he was beset by criminals asking for money, and so, to some extent, he truly was.”

  “They were desperate.”

  “I suppose.” He straightened the papers again. “There’s nothing that can be done now, except pay these requests, fraudulent though they might be.”

  “The most important thing is that we establish ourselves as honorable,” Isidore said. “That we make it clear that we will pay our bills honestly and on time.”

  “I am not convinced that giving money to a thief like Mopser is the way to reestablish that confidence.”

  “He won’t be able to fool you,” Isidore pointed out. “From what you describe today, you could enumerate every candle burned in the future.”

  His hands stilled. “That doesn’t sound entirely complimentary.”

  Isidore got up and drifted around the corner of the desk. She reached out and drew a finger down his thick, unpowdered hair. She had to admit that it was enticing without powder. She was so used to men with little piles of white on their shoulders, with hair stiff with unguent, curled, or powdered. But Simeon’s hair shone with health as it tumbled around his brow in disordered curls.

  He looked up at her inquiringly and their eyes met. Her finger wandered from his hair to his strong forehead, down the bridge of his nose, to his lips.

  “Are you trying to distract me?” He sounded mildly interested.

  Isidore promptly sat on his knee. “Is it possible?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I am.” She put her arms around his neck, but disconcertingly, he didn’t embrace her back. In fact, there was a look in his eye that was not—

  “Why so condemning?” Isidore inquired. “Is it forbidden to kiss one’s wife, even if she might not be your wife for long?”

  “I am attempting to see whether I discern a pattern,” he said.

  Isidore sighed inwardly. He smelled like plums, spicy and clean. If s
he stayed close enough to him, she couldn’t even remember what the water closets smelled like. His lips were beautiful, so she reached up to touch them with her own.

  He brushed her lips, only to firmly move her back.

  Isidore was aware of a flare of hurt inside. Her eyes fell while she tried to think of a graceful way to clamber off his lap without looking as if she were offended.

  “Oh, hell,” he growled. And then suddenly he kissed her. Really kissed her. She had just brushed her mouth with his, but he didn’t bother with anything light and teasing. Simeon kissed the way he spoke: in a forward attack, in an utterly direct, heartbreakingly honest way. His kiss said, “I want you.”

  Their teeth bumped together, and he changed the angle of his neck, and suddenly his kiss was saying, “I have you. You’re mine.”

  Isidore’s head fell back and she clung to him, letting the touch of his mouth shimmer through her body like shards of fire. She pressed closer to him, knowing that what she was feeling was lust. Good, old-fashioned lust. Lust, she discovered, made her tremble and melt inside. It made her forget that he was showing signs of being as tight with money as his father.

  Lust made her mind reel and the only thought that went fuzzily through her head was some sort of repetition of don’t stop.

  Of course, he stopped.

  “I spent all these years avoiding kisses because I was told they led to nothing good,” she managed, pulling herself together. She kept her tone light, as if she wasn’t struggling to keep her spine straight.

  His eyes were fierce, like a preacher’s eyes. She groaned and let her forehead fall onto his shoulder. “Don’t tell me you’re going to apologize.”

  “For what?”

  “For kissing me. You have a look about you as if you thought you’d committed a sin.”

  “No.” But she thought he sounded unconvinced.

  “Do you ever lose control?” she asked, suddenly interested.

  “In what way?”

  Even his responses were cautious and thought out.

  “Do you swear?” she asked hopefully. “Take the Lord’s name in vain? Become blasphemous?”