This Duchess of Mine Read online

  Now he felt like tinder about to flare. The curve of Jemma’s lower lip, the faint scent of roses that clung to her skin…

  “You never used to like perfume,” he commented, climbing into the coach after her. He thought of sitting beside her, but even without large panniers, her skirts still filled most of the carriage seat.

  “I rarely wear scent. I did today only because when I’m naked, I feel more protected with perfume.”

  Her words seared Elijah’s body and he heard his own hoarse voice as if it were another man’s. “We’re going to be naked?”

  She smiled, the eternal smile of the Sphinx. Obviously, she had said all she intended. He spent the rest of the journey tormenting himself by imagining her soft and smooth, creamy white and delicate…

  “Don’t look at me like that!” she said crossly just as the carriage stopped.

  “I can’t look at you any other way,” he said to her back as she descended from the carriage.

  Elijah descended onto a cobblestone street in a part of London he didn’t recognize. It wasn’t even a part of London whose smell he recognized. He knew the smell of coal that hung around the Inns of Court, and the smell of cloth dyes down by the Thames. Hyde Park’s sooty poplars had no odor, and so the park smelled mostly of dust and sweaty horses. He knew when he was in Smithfield from the odor of dung that spread from it like a fetid gift. Limehouse, where the riots didn’t take place…Limehouse smelled like the sea and the cheerful poor, like baking bread and buckets of urine thrown into the street at night.

  But this street smelled like lilacs in a country garden. They were standing before a wall with a small door. An old wall, made of round stones and sand that looked old enough to date to the days of Henry IV, or even earlier than that.

  He looked at Jemma but she wasn’t going to tell him anything, obviously. So they stood there in the street and smelled lilacs drifting from somewhere, while a footman rang the bell hanging by the door.

  A little monk in a rough-woven white robe opened the door. That was interesting, and not what Elijah expected. He hadn’t thought clearly, but the question of nakedness jostled in his mind into a pleasant anticipation of sin, skin, pleasure…

  A witch’s brew of sensual experience that monks had no part of.

  “As you requested, Your Grace,” the man said, bowing. “The baths are ready.”

  Jemma stepped forward. “We are most grateful, Frater.” His grizzled head quickly disappeared back through the door.

  Elijah grabbed Jemma’s arm. “There are no monks in England,” he hissed. “I’m quite sure that Henry VIII did away with them.”

  She smiled. “That wasn’t a monk. He just looked like one.”

  “Then what is he?”

  She drew him forward. Inside the old walls there was a great muddy courtyard made of ill-kept pavement though which poked blades of grass and stunted weeds. Lilacs grew in a tangled mess against the wall, pale flowers opening in the first signs of spring. Wild garlic had sprung up around the lilac, adding a touch of pungency to the air.

  The door closed behind them. Across the courtyard, square-cut pillars rose to the level of a second floor. Most of the roof was still there, but to the right there was nothing but rubble. Ahead of them the “monk” vanished into the maze of pillars. For an old man, he was remarkably nimble.

  “Come on,” Jemma said, taking Elijah’s hand.

  “Where are we?” Something was nagging at Elijah’s memory but he couldn’t bring it to the surface. Swallows were diving and reeling in the open courtyard, flying around the standing pillars, under the roof, and out the other side.

  “A Roman balineum,” Jemma said.

  “Baths,” Elijah said, puzzling it out. “I thought they’d been torn down. Or fallen down, years ago.”

  “Just forgotten.”

  “What do we do next?”

  “The baths are this way.” She led him among the pillars, curved to the right, and a floor paved with half-cracked and dingy blue tiles appeared. There had been mosaics there once. A single blue eye stared up at Elijah from a fractured tile, the curve of a lion’s tail from another.

  Jemma descended broad shallow steps and the air turned hazy. She walked ahead of him through a warm mist that clung to her hair and turned her pelisse from a rich ruby to a dimmer mauve.

  Then they came out into the bath. It was very large, filled with clear water from which rose tendrils of steam. The room had walls of varying heights on three sides, and was sheltered on the fourth by a great bank of overgrown lilacs. There was no sign of the small monk. Without hesitation, Jemma walked around the bath and stood on the other side. He began to follow her, but she shook her head.

  “It’s divided into men’s and women’s baths, don’t you see?” She pointed down into the clear water. The tiles on the bath’s floor were intact, and clearly divided in two. He could see there must have once been a separating wall, but it had either disintegrated or been torn down.

  The men’s side, where he stood, depicted a battle scene, a confusion of rearing horses and spears. The women’s side, where Jemma stood, depicted women bent over spindles, listening to a harp player.

  Jemma smiled at him and took off her pelisse, dropping it on a bench. Underneath, she was wearing a much simpler garment than usual, one that laced in front. She began unlacing it as Elijah tried to pull himself together.

  “We’re—We’re bathing.”

  She inclined her head, raising one finger. “Separately. As befits a holy place.”

  He looked around. “Holy?”

  “Dedicated to Apollo. The Roman god of medicine.”

  “How on earth do you know of this place, Jemma?” He was astounded. He wouldn’t in a million years have pictured his sophisticated, urbane wife frequenting a run-down ruin of a bath house. Under the water, brilliantly colored tiles glinted like fish scales sliding against each other. The spring air was just cold enough that steam drifted between them occasionally, like a transparent curtain.

  “How is it heated? When did you first come here? Who was that man? And—where is he now?”

  “He’s down below, tending the fires,” she said.

  And the questions failed in his throat because she had finished unlacing and, with a simple gesture, slipped off her gown. She was wearing neither a corset nor panniers. Her petticoats must have been part of her gown, because now she wore only a chemise, and Elijah could see the lines of her hips, round and lush, the slender curve of her waist, the beguiling weight of her breasts.

  “Jemma,” he said hoarsely.

  She raised her arms and began pulling pins from her hair. It fell around her shoulders and below, the shining sleek color of old gold. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life. She would have made Apollo cry with desire.

  Lust slammed into him along with an urgent, male, possessive claim. She was his, damn it. She was his wife, and he hadn’t had her, hadn’t been with her, hadn’t taken her—

  He tossed off his wig. He wrenched off his coat and threw it on the bench behind him, pulling his shirt over his head—

  Caught sight of her fascinated eyes through his lifted arms. He stayed there for a moment, arms crossed over his head, one hand holding his shirt.

  “I truly have to stay on my side of the baths?” he asked. Elijah looked down at himself. Taking vigorous exercise at the boxing salon made him feel better after long nights of useless talk. So he supposed that his chest was more muscled than those of many gentlemen.

  And…it seemed she liked that. Jemma’s mouth was a perfect ruby circle. He bent over, slowly, and pulled off his boots.

  “I should take everything off?”

  She nodded.

  “Everything?”

  She cleared her throat. Damn, but he was enjoying this. “Everything,” she said firmly.

  “But you haven’t.”

  She looked down at herself as if she’d forgotten that her body existed. “I thought I’d wear my chemise,” sh
e said, and then looked at him again.

  “Then I suppose I could wear my breeches.”

  He unbuttoned the top button of his waistband, watched her eyes. There were some wonderful things about having been married so long. One was that neither of them was a virgin.

  “You’ve changed!” she blurted out.

  He unbuttoned another button, lazily. “How so?”

  She sketched a shape in the air. “I know the shape of your body. I know you, Elijah. I could—for years I could feel the shape of your shoulder, and your hip, in my fingertips.

  His desire cooled for a moment, iced by regret. “God, I’m—”

  But she overrode him. “But now you’re so much—so much larger. Your shoulders…your height. You must be—”

  The stab of guilt in his heart was gone and he was laughing, laughing at the surprise in her voice, at the potent thread of desire in her eyes, at the way she was staring at him.

  He undid the fourth and last button. “Aren’t you curious about the rest of me?”

  “You may undress,” she said regally. A wave of steam rose from the pool and turned her into a nymph, glimmering in her white chemise.

  He waited until the air was clear, until she could see every movement of his hands. Then he pulled off his stockings and turned his back.

  She made a little muffled sound, and he turned around again, hands still on his breeches. “Did you say something?”

  “No…” She was laughing too, but the laughter rode on a wrenching wave of desire. He turned his back again. “Yes! Don’t do that!”

  This time he turned with his pantaloons wrenched down just a bit. He knew the front was tented. And he knew that when it came to male equipment, his was larger than most.

  “How long were we together, all those years ago?” he asked her.

  She dragged her gaze from his front. “Two weeks? Three?” One shoulder rose.

  “I think it was more. A month, perhaps.”

  “I’m sure there’s one part of your body that hasn’t changed,” she said, one corner of her mouth quirking up in a wicked smile.

  But he felt as if he had. As if the very sight of her turned him mad with lust. And he’d never been mad with lust. Not for his young wife whom he hardly knew. Not for Sarah Cobbett, his unimaginative, if reliable, mistress.

  “Don’t stop now,” Jemma called, and there was something in that throaty call that shook loose a different Elijah than the man he knew.

  He let his eyes range over her, linger on her breasts. Then he hitched down his pantaloons again, pulling his smalls with them. He knew she was watching, so he put his hand down his front and gave himself a slow caress.

  He heard a gasp of laughter from the other side of the pool and met the eyes of his wife, felt that roaring, purring rage of lust through his body again. He had waited a long time to feel that, and perhaps its strength was ten times greater for the wait. He kicked off his pantaloons and stood there, letting her see what his side of the marriage brought her. Wondering, if the truth be told, about those famed affaires she had had while living in Paris. Two, he had heard, or perhaps three.

  He thought, at the time, that it was her revenge, and her right. He had destroyed her dignity and her faith. She had the right to do the same. But she’d chosen puny fellows to have affaires with, men who would never challenge her on any front.

  Jemma pulled her gaze away without saying anything and began testing the water with her foot, one slender toe poking into the warm water.

  “Not in your chemise, I would hope?”

  She didn’t listen, of course. Jemma was unlikely ever to listen if the advice went against what she wanted to do. He waited while she walked down the steps into the bath, enjoying the curve of her hips, the pink glow of her skin, the way he could dimly see cloth clinging to her legs as she went deeper.

  To his disappointment, she sat down on a middle step, the water swirling around her waist. The tips of her hair, thrown back over her shoulders, trailed in the water.

  He moved down his flight of stairs. The water was as warm as a baby’s bath. It was unfortunate that in his state of lust even the gentle lap of the water drove him into more of a fever.

  “Jemma,” he said hoarsely.

  “Yes?” She was leaning back against the steps now. Her white shift was turning transparent as the wavelets touched it. He could see her long slender legs sprawled on the steps, slightly askew. It was enough to make his blood pound in his chest.

  Now the water was lapping at her breasts.

  “So I stay on my side of the pool, and you stay on yours,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “But I came here to know you better.”

  She opened her eyes, and the look in them should have been outlawed, just for the better good of all mankind. “We can talk,” she suggested.

  “Jesus,” he muttered.

  “You go ahead,” she said.

  “What?” He felt drugged, as if the air was disappearing from the pool.

  “Teach me something about yourself,” she said. Her voice was soft but her gaze scorched him, lingering, admiring.

  “Jesus,” he said. But his hand moved toward himself.

  Fascinated, she lost her position for a moment and slid deeper into the water, just enough so her breasts were submerged. She pulled herself out, but the cloth had turned transparent, painted onto her body.

  Elijah didn’t want to be touching himself. He wanted to be touching her. He couldn’t stop looking under the water, at the shadow between her long graceful legs. His hands slid down his body.

  “Can we come back here whenever we please?” he asked.

  She seemed so fascinated by his hands that it took her a moment to respond. Then she lifted her eyes to his, and he nearly grinned to see that they’d turned smoky. His polished, sophisticated duchess was gone, leaving a woman whose cheeks were stained rosy and her eyes dark with desire, rather than by cosmetic art.

  She cleared her throat. “Did you ask something?”

  “I was just saying that we could return in the future,” he said. There was something in her dazed expression that made joy pump through his body with the same urgency as lust. It occurred to him that however those Frenchmen had wooed his duchess, they hadn’t woken her to her own sensuality. He would wake her.

  “Of course,” she said. “It’s just a matter of sending a footman over the day before to request the baths to be heated. The caretakers support themselves, you know, so they’re always glad of visitors.”

  “How on earth did you find this place?” he asked conversationally. He spread his legs, enjoying the way his muscles flexed. He was built like a bull, much to his valet’s disapproval, inasmuch as it made his pantaloons strain over his thighs in an inelegant manner. Jemma didn’t seem to mind.

  “My mother enjoyed the baths,” she commented, rather absently.

  Elijah ran a hand up the inside of his thigh. His manhood jerked, desperate to be touched, desperate for more than a touch, if the truth be told. “This doesn’t seem like a maternal sort of place,” he said.

  “Umm,” Jemma said.

  “Why did your mother bring you here?”

  “It’s an old custom,” she said, obviously struggling to come up with the right words.

  He ran his hand over his own length, threw back his head with the pleasure of it.

  “When a young girl reaches womanhood…”

  “She comes here?” Elijah’s hand tightened involuntarily at the idea of Jemma as a mere wisp of a girl. Shy, slender—

  Jemma had never been shy. He revised that. A rebel of a girl…

  She was still talking about old customs, and Apollo’s baths. “What were you like at that age?” he asked her.

  “Romantic. I believed in fairies, and magic healing springs.”

  “Is this a magic pool?”

  She shook her head. “One finds a magic spring in the depths of a dark wood, only after toiling for miles over hills and catching one�
�s hair on brambles.”

  “Is that experience talking?” he said lazily.

  “My nanny was a great one for fairy tales. Aren’t you going to continue?”

  “Continue what?”

  She waved her hand toward his thighs.

  His hand slid back to his shaft. “Would you like to watch?”

  “I never have,” she said. “Seen anything of that nature.”

  “But you have pleasured yourself?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Absolutely,” he whispered, and cleared his throat.

  “Without question.”

  She smiled.

  “Will you demonstrate?” he asked.

  She seemed to turn even pinker. “No. Not—”

  “Not?”

  “Not today.”

  But he felt as decadent as a Roman god. “That old monk won’t show up, will he?”

  She shook her head. “He would never come near the women’s baths. We’ll leave without seeing him again.”

  Elijah’s hand tightened on himself. “I’m thinking about you,” he said, hearing his voice fall into a deeper register. He kept his eyes on hers and let words slip from his throat…earthy, sexy words that a respected statesman like himself would never utter. Sentences, fragments, that dropped into a little groan, about suckling her breasts, spreading her legs, where he would kiss her…what she would taste like…

  She looked boneless, lying back in the warm water, staring at him. He went on, using his gift for language to describe exactly how he would spread her legs, open her for his gaze and his mouth.

  “But you never kissed me like that!” she blurted out.

  Somehow he had closed his eyes, lost in the pleasure, and opened them to find that she was sitting up, eyes narrowed. He stilled his hand, though it nearly killed him to do so. “I’ve never kissed any woman in that fashion,” he said bluntly. “I was too young and stupid, when we were first married, and I had no inclination with Sarah. My relations with her did not include her pleasure.” The sourness of that was in the back of his throat. “Not that she was uncomfortable,” he added.