This Duchess of Mine Page 17

  She knew she wasn’t being logical, or even fair, given that she was his wife. She’d returned from Paris explicitly so her husband could bed her and create an heir.

  It was practical. The honorable thing to do. And yet terror caught in her throat at the very idea. It had all made sense before…

  Before she loved him so much.

  She ran all the way to her bedchamber, but even so, a footman saw the tears on her cheeks.

  Chapter Fifteen

  March 31

  Elijah turned over from a confused dream in which Jemma was riding a white horse far ahead of him, disappearing into a wild, bramble-strewn forest. He was calling to her to wait, but she was too far ahead—

  “Wake up, damn it,” a cold voice said.

  He opened his eyes to find Villiers standing by his bedside. Vickery, his valet, was hurriedly throwing open the curtains.

  As always, Villiers was magnificently dressed, from his coat to his snowy neck cloth. “You’re a deep sleeper,” he said, tapping his sword stick.

  “It’s early.” Elijah pulled himself up in the bed. Then he added, “I’m shocked. I thought you were the sort who didn’t rouse until ten of the clock at the least, and after that would take the morning to dress.”

  “I don’t,” Villiers said, all evidence to the contrary.

  Elijah squinted at the windows. It couldn’t be later than seven or eight. Jemma had promised to take him with her at two o’clock.

  “Stop smiling in that nauseating fashion,” Villiers barked. “You make me feel ill. I’ll wait for you downstairs. We have an appointment in forty minutes, so make your toilette a brief one.”

  “Appointment?” But he was talking to an already-closed door, so he swung his legs from the bed.

  Vickery was nervously pulling clothes from the wardrobe. “Will you wear the velvet today, Your Grace?”

  The coat was black, like most of Elijah’s clothing. “I need an appointment with my tailor,” he said. “I no longer wish to look so funereal.”

  “Yes, of course, Your Grace.” He drew out stockings, boots, a shirt.

  “You don’t appear as nervous when I am in a hurry to go somewhere,” Elijah observed, pulling on smalls.

  Vickery actually shivered. “His Grace the Duke of Villiers is so proper, so rigid in his dressing and clothing!”

  Elijah waited.

  “Perfect in every way,” Vickery added, his voice hushed. “And his valet…everyone knows Mr. Finchley is the best in London.” He sounded as if the man were an alchemist who could turn lead into gold.

  “Is Villiers so difficult to dress, then?” Elijah pulled pantaloons over his stockings.

  “Everything—but everything!—must be perfect,” Vickery said. “He has been known to tie his neck cloth fourteen, fifteen times. A fresh cloth each time, you understand. And everything next to his skin is the finest linen. Once he threw a pair of smalls out the window because they were inadequately ironed.”

  “Bloody absurd,” Elijah murmured. “Do you iron my smalls, Vickery?”

  His valet looked offended. “I iron only your neck cloths, Your Grace. I cannot trust anyone else with those. A laundry maid irons your intimates, of course.”

  “We have a maid just for ironing?”

  “Several,” his valet said, kneeling to help him slip on his boots. “Her Grace, naturally, has some three personal maids, as well as a laundry maid who works only with her garments.”

  “Half of London,” Elijah marveled, “toiling away simply to keep two people adequately dressed.”

  Vickery was holding his wig. Elijah looked at it with distaste. “The Duke of Villiers never wears a wig,” he pointed out.

  “Never. His Grace sets his own fashion.” Vickery’s voice was reverent.

  Elijah sighed. He wore his hair extremely short to accommodate a wig, and he had to admit that after so many years, he hardly noticed it anymore. He popped it on his head and accepted a walking stick.

  “We have no time to break your fast,” Villiers told him, when Elijah joined him downstairs.

  “Just where are we going?” Elijah asked, taking his hat from Fowle.

  But Villiers waited until they were in the carriage. “I’ve made an appointment with the best man for hearts,” he said, rapping on the door to signal his coachman to take off.

  For a moment Elijah thought confusedly about breakfast meats, then the penny dropped. “My heart?”

  “You’re obviously not bothering to deal with these unpleasantries yourself,” Villiers remarked. “I find myself constrained to play the role of nursemaid. And it doesn’t suit my personality.”

  “Presumptuous of you,” Elijah observed, keeping his temper.

  “A truly presumptuous friend would tell your wife,” Villiers said. His voice was so oiled and cold that he could have been speaking to his worst enemy.

  “She knows.”

  “Ah. That explains a great deal about the last few days.”

  “Your interference is quite unnecessary,” Elijah said.

  “You shouldn’t have saved my life, as my valet believes you to have done. Then we’d both be rid of each other.”

  “You are charming in the morning.”

  “This is not morning,” Villiers retorted. “This is the tail end of the night.”

  “You haven’t been to bed?” Elijah peered at him. Villiers appeared immaculately groomed. His hair was tied back in its usual velvet ribbon, and there wasn’t a crease on his neck cloth.

  A small smile played around Villiers’s mouth. “I was entertaining a lady.”

  “Not the marquise?”

  “Louise was in no state to be entertained by anyone.”

  “Louise?” Elijah repeated, at a loss for a moment.

  “The Marquise de Perthuis,” Villiers said, sighing.

  “I don’t need to see a doctor, for hearts or otherwise,” Elijah said flatly.

  “Did you faint yesterday?”

  “Not for three days,” Elijah replied. “Perhaps it will all go away.”

  “And pigs will fly, etcetera,” Villiers said with a wave of his hand. “People have accused you of many things, but never of cowardice.”

  Elijah digested that. “There’s no point.”

  “It may well be that he’ll tell you that you have a rare fainting illness, and cure it on the spot.”

  Elijah snorted. “My father died of a defective heart, and mine is going the same direction.”

  Villiers’s face grew so forbidding that Elijah didn’t continue. “In that case,” he said coolly, “you will do your wife the favor of tidying up your affairs. Perhaps we could have your coffin measured this afternoon, since you are so determined to die in the near future.”

  “My affairs are in order,” Elijah said icily.

  “Have you updated your will?” Villiers paused, then added deliberately, “In the event that you have no heir, of course.”

  Elijah felt his heart, stupid defective instrument that it was, give a great thump.

  Villiers continued, ruthless to the end. “Who is to put your affairs in order if you die intestate? Not I.”

  Elijah’s only reply was unprintable but heartfelt.

  “The same to you,” Villiers said serenely, and then they kept silence until they reached the doctor’s offices.

  Dr. Chalus was large-headed and bald. His wig sat on top of a stack of books; more books cluttered the floor and all the chairs. His offices were hung with blood-purple curtains, as if he didn’t see enough of the color during the day, and they smelled distinctly of cabbage.

  Villiers strolled in and after one pained glance focused on the doctor’s shiny pate.

  “Do sit down,” the doctor said, not bothering to look up. His servant paled, moved closer and repeated shrilly:

  “The Duke of Villiers and the Duke of Beaumont. Two dukes are here to consult with you.”

  Dr. Chalus hummed, deep in his throat, and finally looked up. His eyes were bloodshot and tired, a
nd for the first time, Elijah felt a bit of hope. The doctor looked like a man working as hard to cure hearts as he himself was to cure the ills of English governance.

  “Your Graces,” he said, looking singularly unimpressed by their presence in his office. “What can I do for you?”

  By fifteen minutes later, though, it was clear that Chalus was having no more luck solving heart problems than Elijah had had in the House of Lords. “Your heart is beating irregularly,” he said. “I can hear it clearly. At the moment it is quite fast.”

  “What can you do for it?” Elijah asked, already knowing the answer. The doctor’s eyes were far too sympathetic for his liking.

  “I have had small successes here and there,” he told them. “I am working on a medicine that will force urination when a patient has dropsy. I believe the swelling we call dropsy indicates the heart is about to give out. But your ankles are quite normal.”

  Elijah nodded.

  “From the sound of your heart, you may have a spasmodic defect, something wrong on the right side. Which is unusual: generally one hears problems with the left side. That may explain…”

  Dr. Chalus’s voice died away and he looked as if he were listening to an argument only he could hear.

  Villiers cleared his throat.

  The doctor shook himself. “Your heartbeat is tumultuous, but you are perplexingly free of some of the symptoms I would expect. Perhaps a structural defect on the right side would explain why you are not suffering from dropsy. I would love to know…”

  “How could you determine it?” Elijah asked.

  Chalus shook his head. “I can’t.”

  “Then how do you gain your knowledge?”

  “Through autopsy of the dead,” the doctor said, backing away to his desk. “And for the most part, those patients who are wealthy enough to realize that they should see me are not inclined to allow me to examine their bodies after death.”

  Elijah nodded. He had no such inclination himself.

  “You have no idea how frustrating the study of medicine can be. The only bodies I am able to examine are those of criminals. And when a man has been hanged, it is readily obvious why and how he died. That is not helpful in the study of hearts. You’d be surprised,” he said, turning to include Villiers in the conversation, “how infrequently criminals suffer from dropsy.”

  “I can imagine,” Villiers said.

  “There is nothing that can be done,” Elijah stated. He felt a remote airiness in his head, though it was nothing he hadn’t surmised himself.

  Dr. Chalus was sympathetic enough. “I don’t have anything to offer you that isn’t, frankly, a palliative. I am currently having some success by inducing my patients to inhale a vapor infused with fungi, or mushrooms. But as I say, I am trying to find a cure for dropsy, and you show no signs of that.”

  “Surely you are not the only physician studying hearts?” Villiers said briskly. “Who are your colleagues? Who else is experimenting with such medicines?”

  “Darwin, of course,” Chalus said. “Erasmus Darwin. But frankly, I consider him a fool, and his recent publications have been rather weak. There’s a fellow that we’re considering admitting to the Royal Society. He’s had some luck, I believe…” He went over to his desk and began rummaging about the great sheaves of paper.

  Elijah wasn’t even listening. Villiers was right. He had to prepare his estate. He should summon his solicitor tonight.

  “How much time do I have?” he asked abruptly.

  The doctor paused. “You present an unusual case, Your Grace.”

  “Surely you can give me some sort of estimation.”

  “You are fainting, you said, for short periods of time. Immediately upon vigorous exercise?”

  Elijah shook his head.

  “He was in a fistfight at Vauxhall last night and seemed in the pink of health afterwards,” Villiers said. “But I found him unconscious, sitting in a chair one afternoon.”

  “I was tired,” Elijah said. “Tired. If I’m very, very tired, and I sit down…”

  “You’re rather lucky,” Dr. Chalus said. “Most patients can’t tolerate vigorous exercise and you seem to be the opposite. How often does this occur?”

  “I have these episodes perhaps once a week. More so if I am deeply exhausted.”

  “I recommend avoiding exhaustion, though I’m sure that has occurred to you as well.”

  “And?”

  “Perhaps you have a month, perhaps a year. I apologize, Your Grace, but I can no more name the day of your death than I can entice a chicken to sing.”

  He went back to scrabbling among his papers. “Ah, here it is. William Withering. He trained in Scotland, though I believe he lives in Birmingham. He published a very interesting study of fungi; the Witheringia solanacea was given his name as a result.”

  “And?” Villiers prompted.

  “In more recent months he’s had some remarkable results giving a reduction of Digitalis purpurea to heart patients. I have that piece here somewhere. Aha! You may keep that,” he said, handing the papers to Villiers.

  “As a member of the Royal Society, I can easily obtain another copy.”

  He turned to Elijah, who was putting his coat back on. “I should be very remiss,” Chalus began, and stopped.

  Villiers raised his head. Elijah nodded at the doctor and spoke for him. “You wish to tell me that I might not have a month. I might die on your very doorstep.”

  “Death is an unwelcome visitor,” the doctor said.

  “We might any of us be struck down by a wayward coach in the street outside.”

  “True,” Elijah said. “True.” His lips felt numb. It was one thing to know of his father’s fate and to surmise the same of himself. It was another to hear it so bluntly stated.

  Villiers was bowing, so Elijah did the same. They walked out onto an ordinary street, in the ordinary sunshine.

  “I’ll send a coach to Birmingham,” Villiers announced.

  Elijah hesitated, and said nothing. There were some advantages to having known a man since you were both boys. There was no stopping Villiers once he took that tone.

  “I have to write Jemma a letter,” Elijah said suddenly.

  “I promised that I wouldn’t leave the house without a personal note.” He smiled rather crookedly.

  “This qualifies,” Villiers observed.

  “I’ll write the letter when I get home and put it in the desk in the library, bottom left drawer, the locked one. Will you give it to her?”

  The word sounded as if it came from behind clenched teeth, but: “Yes.”

  “I need at least a week,” Elijah said. “God, but we haven’t slept together yet, Leopold. And I want it to be joyful. I couldn’t bear if she was afraid I would topple over, a corpse from the very act.”

  “You are far more fit than your father was. He was quite robust, if you remember.”

  “Plump,” Elijah corrected.

  “I expect that made exercise more of a danger.” Villiers leaned his head back against the velvet seat and closed his eyes.

  “You finally look tired,” Elijah observed.

  “You could always do as I do,” Villiers said with his coldly amused smile.

  “And that is?”

  “I see no point in sleeping if my partner is willing and energetic.”

  “She must be very energetic,” Elijah said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Her name is Marguerite. She is a widow still in the throes of mourning her elderly husband, or so her family thinks. They expect her to pray at his grave at least two hours a day.”

  “Goodness.”

  “She tells me that the graveside is much more bearable after one of my visits,” Villiers said.

  “Be careful. She’ll want to marry you.”

  “Nay.”

  “They all want you,” Elijah said, amused. “The great Duke of Villiers…one of the richest men in the kingdom, and one of the most successful at evading the parson’s noose. You pose a
challenge, Leopold, and that is the most dangerous of all positions to be in.”

  Villiers shrugged.

  “You don’t mourn your fiancée, do you?” Elijah asked. “The one who ran off with Jemma’s brother?”

  “I want what you have.”

  There was the stark truth of it, in the open between them. “I know,” Elijah said heavily.

  “Not Jemma,” Villiers stated. “But a woman of her intelligence and beauty, who looks at me the way she looks at you. If I had what you have, even for one day, I believe I might die happy.”

  “Christ,” Elijah said. “I—”

  “Then don’t let your jealousy make you into a fool.” Villiers’s voice grated.

  “Christ,” Elijah said again.

  They didn’t say anything else until the carriage drew up before Beaumont House. Then Leopold opened his heavy lidded eyes and met Elijah’s. “You asked me once to keep wooing Jemma so that I could be there when you died. I would ask you to release me from that promise. I love her. But not in the way you supposed.”

  His words were sure and steady, and fell on Elijah’s soul like a healing balm. “Have you forgiven me, then?”

  “For which of your multitudinous sins?” Villiers asked, the sardonic bite back in his voice.

  “For stealing your Bess those years ago…for turning my back on you.”

  “Oh no,” Villiers said. “I’ll mourn the loss of my barmaid until death.”

  Elijah blinked.

  “You always were a fool,” Villiers murmured, closing his eyes again.

  “Be careful,” Elijah warned.

  “Or what?”

  “I’ll leave you a note as well.” He laughed aloud at Villiers’s revolted expression.

  Chapter Sixteen

  That afternoon

  “Where are we going?” Elijah asked, handing his wife into the carriage. It couldn’t be a fashionable destination because as far as he could tell, Jemma was wearing small side panniers if any, and she certainly wore no wig.

  She must have forgiven him for the tempest of the previous night because she smiled teasingly. “It’s a secret. I’ve already instructed Muffet as to our destination.”

  For the last nine years he had punished himself for having no wife—or rather for having a wife in France. He had ignored the pleasantries of women who sought his company, avoided the eyes of women who sought money…satisfied himself alone, in his room. Infrequently and unhappily.