This Duchess of Mine Read online

  “Very small ones,” she said, shrugging one shoulder. “Practically invisible.”

  “I am entirely in favor of luxury,” Corbin said, turning the rose in his fingers. “Especially the kind that doesn’t herald its worth.”

  “In truth, they were terribly expensive.”

  “And thus to be worn only by a woman who need not worry about finances. Though now I think of it, these roses should be worn by a woman deep in debt. Flaunting extravagance is the best way to assuage creditors’ anxieties.”

  “I suppose that they are rather extravagant.”

  “A duchess’s prerogative.” Corbin moved to the other costume. “But if with the one gown you flaunt your extravagance, what exactly do you wish to flaunt—and why—with this gown?” His voice was silky, but delivered its insult for all that.

  “It’s the very newest fashion,” Jemma said indignantly, coming to stand next to him. “A chemise gown. Queen Marie Antoinette has at least four, I assure you.”

  “Ah, but the lucky queen doesn’t live in England.” Corbin picked up the gown. It was made of a sweet flow of fabric in a pale peach, caught up here and there with bunches of pearls. Rather than being made of stiff satin, the cloth was as thin as a chemise—hence the name. It would barely skim her breasts, flowing down over her body like a delicate night garment.

  “Are we so stuffy in England?” she asked.

  “So cold,” Corbin said. “In both senses of the word. My darling duchess, you will cause the women to thrill with rage and cause the men to thrill with something else. But meanwhile you will freeze.”

  “Freeze?” Jemma stared down at the chemise gown.

  “There is nothing more unattractive than flesh dimpled with cold,” Corbin said flatly. “And the king’s fête takes place on his yacht. On the river. Unless you wish to spend the evening inside longing for a fireplace and a woolen shawl, you should wear the green gown. Which, by the way, is gorgeous.”

  “But—”

  “And not so desperate,” he continued.

  Jemma whipped around. “I am never desperate!”

  Corbin met her eyes in the glass. “Then why the desperation?” he asked gently.

  “I am not desperate. I am…”

  “Interested?” Corbin’s eyebrow rose, and his smile was so amused that she couldn’t help smiling back.

  “In my husband,” she told him impulsively.

  She surprised him. He dropped into his chair with something less than his usual insouciance. “Your husband? Your husband?”

  “No one else’s,” she said, adding, “I have never meddled with a married man.” It was a frail claim to virtue, but all she had.

  “I thought you had decided on Villiers,” Corbin said.

  “No.” She didn’t say that it was a near miss.

  “Your husband. I don’t even have the faintest idea what to advise you. I am shocked. Husbands are so—so—”

  “Uninteresting.”

  “Of course, Beaumont is all that is admirable.”

  Jemma sighed. “I know.” She picked up the chemise gown and held it against her body, looking in the glass.

  “Essential to the future of the country, from what I hear.”

  “Tedious.”

  “I didn’t say that! He holds deep moral beliefs, of course.”

  “He’s my opposite,” Jemma said dismally. She threw the chemise dress back on the bed.

  “How clever of you to recognize it,” Corbin said.

  “Life is so much more interesting when people understand how angels and devils differ. I hear His Grace is most sincere in the House. You can—” He hesitated.

  “—I believe you can trust everything he says.” He sounded horrified.

  “I know, I know,” Jemma said, sighing again. “He’s a veritable Puritan.”

  “We need good people,” Corbin said firmly. “It’s just a pity that they’re so—so—”

  “Good.”

  “I expect I feel so only because I myself am quite errant. I have never considered taking a seat in Parliament. Everyone—but everyone—wears those snail wigs. The ones with small crustaceans ranked around the ears like soldiers on parade.”

  “I can easily imagine you in Parliament,” Jemma said, moving behind her friend so she could meet his eyes in the mirror over her dressing table. “You’re certainly more clever than most of them. I’d much prefer to see you running the country.”

  He laughed at that. “I hope we are not friends due to some hopeless misconception about my character, Duchess.”

  “We are friends because you are funny,” Jemma said. “And because you tell me the truth if my stockings are at odds with my slippers. And because you gossip cruelly about everyone and pretend to me that you will never do so behind my back.”

  “It’s not a pretense. I can have room for only one woman in my heart at a moment,” he said, “and you are she.”

  Jemma bent and kissed his cheek. “We are admirably suited.” She sat back down next to him.

  “Except you are so serious this evening,” Corbin pointed out. “So passionate.”

  “Are we allowed to be serious only about stockings?” she asked.

  He thought about that longer than she thought necessary. “I am quite serious about scandal,” he offered.

  “But never about passion itself?”

  He wrinkled his nose but his eyes were sympathetic. “Thank God, infatuation has never forced me into seriousness. A beautiful woman should never be serious, Duchess.”

  “Why not?”

  “It implies that there is something you cannot have. And we who are not as beautiful prefer to believe that you have everything you wish for in life. That is the essence of beauty, after all.”

  “I feel myself growing plainer every moment,” Jemma said. “Perhaps it is the curse of age.”

  “Age and passion!” Corbin looked faintly nauseated.

  “I shall have to ask your maid for a drink of brandy if you continue in this vein.”

  “So I should not wear the chemise gown,” Jemma said.

  “Absolutely not. In fact, given what you have just told me, the green silk may be a trifle too revealing in the bosom.”

  “For a husband?”

  “For your husband,” Corbin said. “The duke is…” He paused delicately. “Well, were Beaumont a woman, his skirts would be long and his neckline high.”

  Jemma thought about that and shook her head. “I can’t transform into a Puritan wife in order to please Elijah. He’ll have to take me as I am.”

  Corbin paused. “If you don’t mind the question, exactly what sort of taking do you have in mind?”

  “We need an heir,” Jemma said.

  “Of course. But that need not, in itself, involve passion on your part, and surely no anxiety. Though you might wish to put a bottle of brandy on the night table and take a surreptitious swig now and then.”

  “I want more than that.”

  “Thus the quest for passion?” Corbin asked.

  “I’m a fool.”

  “You’re not the first, but you set yourself such a difficult task, Duchess.”

  “You’d better call me Jemma,” she said, rather grimly. “You’re the only one who knows.”

  “I won’t advertise it and you shouldn’t either. So what you need is lessons in making a husband feel passion for his wife.”

  It seemed impossible, put so bluntly. “I’ll wear the green dress.”

  “Seductive clothing will never work, not—”

  “Not for Beaumont.” She picked up a rosy ribbon and started wrapping it around one finger.

  “If you wear the chemise dress, you’ll likely just make him angry. Or embarrassed. After all, such flamboyant clothing is designed to make a man hunger for what he cannot have, and what he cannot imagine. But a husband…”

  “Precisely.”

  “You’ll have to surprise him,” Corbin said. “Show him a side of you that he’s never seen.”

&
nbsp; “I don’t have any sides,” Jemma said despairingly. “I play chess; he knows that. We play together occasionally.”

  Corbin groaned. “Like an old married couple?”

  “In the library,” she confirmed. “While discussing the news of the day.” But there was a look in Corbin’s eye, a smile. “What?” she asked.

  “You have something that he’s never seen.”

  “What?”

  “You are a woman with a past, Jemma. And better than that, you have a reputation.”

  She knitted her brow. “He doesn’t like my past. And he never liked my wilder parties. Some years ago he paid me a visit in Paris over Twelfth Night. You should have seen his face when I informed him that all the gentlemen were to come to my ball dressed as satyrs! He refused, of course. Every Frenchman wore a satyr’s tail, but Beaumont was in a frock coat, precisely as if it were not a masquerade at all.”

  “Naturally. And I’ve never heard a breath of scandal attached to the duke.”

  “He had a mistress, but no one considers that scandalous,” she said, dropping the ribbon in a tangled heap back on her dressing table.

  “Because it isn’t. Mistresses are commonplace. And for a man of Beaumont’s character, the presence of such a woman in his life must have been shaming after a time.”

  Jemma raised an eyebrow.

  “They’re paid,” Corbin said. “Paid to play out the fantasies every man has in the back of his mind.”

  “Fantasies!” Jemma cried, revolted. “He had a regular appointment with her, in his chambers at the Inns of Court, at lunchtime yet. How could that possibly stem from fantasy?”

  “That’s just business,” Corbin said. “He likely made the arrangement before marriage, and simply forgot to change it. How old was the duke when he inherited the title?”

  “Oh, quite young,” Jemma said. “Haven’t you ever heard of the late duke’s death? I’m afraid it was quite a scandal at the time.”

  “Of course! He died in flagrante delicto with—was it four women?”

  “Two,” Jemma said. “Only two. But I gather that The Palace of Salomé catered to rather specialized tastes, and it was the duke’s favorite establishment.”

  “No wonder your husband made his mistress part of his public life,” Corbin said. “Where better to prove that his tastes were not deviant than in his own office?”

  Jemma’s mouth fell open. “Elijah said he loved her,” she added in a smallish voice.

  “If you challenged him on the subject, he may have said that from rage. But it is very difficult to love someone whom one pays for the most intimate of pleasures. The money kills joy.”

  “You are rather terrifying,” Jemma said, eyeing him.

  “I try,” Corbin said smugly. “Do you see what I am suggesting?”

  “No.”

  “If you wish to rouse passion in a husband of so many years, I think you will have to show him the side of yourself that you have flaunted only in Paris.”

  “The chemise dress?” Jemma said, pleating her brow.

  “No. That’s boldly sexual. For Beaumont, you will have to be imaginative. Playful. Joyful. All the things that never, ever happen in the halls of the House of Lords, and certainly have never happened with his mistress. You need to be spontaneous, naughty, and fun.”

  “I can’t imagine Elijah—”

  “Having fun?” Corbin folded his hands. “Neither can I, Duchess. Neither can I. Therein lies your challenge. Oh, and I think he needs to choose you.”

  “Do you mean that I should encourage Villiers?” She wrinkled her nose.

  “Perhaps. But I also mean that someone should flirt with the duke, someone as powerful and beautiful as you.”

  “You cannot be suggesting that I encourage another woman to court my husband!”

  He shrugged. “No woman in London would dare do so unless you make it clear that you are uninterested, and frankly, indifference will only serve your cause. No man wants the woman who lies prostrate at his feet.” Corbin’s eyes drifted down to his feet, as if seeing feminine hands curled pleadingly around his ankles.

  “I would never plead,” Jemma stated.

  “I am merely suggesting that you do not inform the world of your newfound passion. Let the duke come to you. Win your attentions from another man, if possible. Beaumont married at a young age, and for obvious reasons he never indulged in any sort of exuberant naughtiness.”

  “He did have a young woman pursuing him last year,” Jemma pointed out. “Don’t you remember Miss Tatlock?”

  “The one you called Miss Fetlock? She of the long nose and abrasive intelligence? Please, Jemma. A true rival would have to be someone of your stature in beauty, wit, and status.”

  “His mistress’s name was Sarah Cobbett,” Jemma said.

  “That speaks for itself, doesn’t it? The poor man has experienced nothing but well-meaning intimacies with a woman graced by the name Cobbett. I am moved near to tears at the thought of it.”

  “Are you certain this is necessary, Corbin?”

  “Absolutely. The man has never had women vie for his hand before. He will love it, if only because you are one of the two.”

  Jemma thought he might be right. “What makes you so wise?” she inquired.

  “I take my pleasure in watching others,” he said as a shadow passed over his eyes. “Some of us, like yourself, my dear duchess, fling themselves into the midst of life. Others, myself included, spend their time watching.”

  “I knew it,” Jemma said. “You should be taking up a seat in Parliament and manipulating all the poor people like myself who never take the time to develop wisdom.”

  She’d never given much thought as to why Elijah was tupping his mistress on his desk all those years ago. It was simply the event that tore their marriage asunder, broke her heart and drove her to Paris.

  But of course most men did set up their mistresses in houses in the suburbs. They didn’t make appointments for them in their offices, appointments that every man working in Elijah’s parliamentary chambers must have known about.

  Brigitte entered with a silver tray and Champagne glasses.

  “Thank goodness,” Corbin sighed, accepting his glass. “All this deep thought is making me quite thirsty.”

  “I’ve decided on the green,” Jemma told Brigitte, standing up so her maid could tie on her panniers.

  “Two patches,” Corbin said decisively. “A kissing patch near your mouth, and another below your eye.”

  The watered silk fell over her panniers with the gentle swish. The bodice plumped her breasts and pushed them forward. She raised an eyebrow to Corbin.

  “Perfect,” he said. “Delectable yet legal. And since you do not clash with my coat, I shall allow myself to stand next to you on occasion.”

  Jemma smiled at the glass. There was a small tendril of joy in her heart. “Crimson lip color tonight, Brigitte,” she said.

  “Naughty,” Corbin observed.

  An hour or so later, that is precisely how she looked. Her curls were powdered and adorned with green roses that glinted mysteriously from their emerald depths. Her eyes laughed above a small patch that drew attention to her crimson mouth. She looked naughty—not overtly available, not scandalous, but mischievous.

  “You’re perfect,” Corbin said, rising to his feet.

  “And you’re a miracle!” Jemma cried, giving him a kiss.

  Corbin’s smile was smug. “I have always found it best to create my own entertainments,” he remarked. “This evening should be truly interesting, Duchess.”

  Chapter Two

  The Right Hon. William Pitt’s country home

  Cambridge

  March 26, 1784

  The Duke of Beaumont had been trying to extricate himself from the Prime Minister’s house for the better part of an hour. A group of men, among the most powerful in the kingdom, had spent the last fortnight discussing strategies and laws, ways to thwart Fox’s schemes and defeat his proposals, the case for
and against every conceivable argument that a man could voice.

  Elijah had spent the weeks fighting long hours for the causes he believed just, such as the ongoing effort to halt England’s slave trade. He’d won some battles and lost others; it was the nature of politics to weigh inevitable failure against possible gains.

  “I will convey your concern to His Majesty,” he said now, bowing before the Prime Minister, the Right Honorable William Pitt. “Tactfully, of course. I agree that it is perilous to hold a royal fete in such proximity to the hulks.”

  “Tell him that those floating monstrosities were never meant to be prisons,” Lord Stibblestich put in. He was a florid man with eyes that glinted from the little caves shaped by his plump cheeks. His body was no more than brawny; his face was bloated in comparison. Even his nose appeared engorged in contrast to his shoulders.

  Elijah bit his tongue rather than indulge the impulse to snap at Stibblestich. His Majesty was fully aware that the decommissioned warships anchored in the Thames were never meant to be used as prisons. The hulks were aging warships, as tired and broken down as the English navy.

  But the presence of hundreds of criminals housed on those ships was a problem that His Majesty was not yet pleased to face. And in truth, Elijah knew it was the Parliament that should be finding a solution.

  “There was an attempted prison break just last week,” Stibblestich added shrilly, apparently under the illusion that he was saying something original.

  “My butler informs me that your valet is recovering from his stomach ailment,” Pitt said to Elijah, ignoring Stibblestich. “I will send him to London as soon as he is able to travel.”

  “I apologize for the inconvenience,” Elijah said. “I know that Vickery is also grateful for your forbearance.” He bowed again and turned to go. His carriage would go straight to the king’s yacht, the Peregrine. Where…

  Where he was due to meet his wife. Jemma.

  Tired though he was, exhausted by a fortnight of late nights spent arguing, trying to get his own party to understand the unethical side of their deliberations, he couldn’t wait to be aboard. Tucked into the corner of the carriage, he fell asleep, waking only when the wheels started jolting over London’s cobblestones.