When the Duke Returns Read online

  He left through the ballroom door and headed for the Dower House. He would merely request that his wife consult with him before making large decisions to do with the house. Of course, he would remain civil. He would avoid anything akin to an argument.

  Those predictions might have come true, if Simeon hadn’t been so angry. “The problem,” he said painstakingly, “is that you never think before you act.”

  “Yes, I do!”

  “You sent away all our furniture, never thinking where my mother would eat her nightly meal. You bought bolts of cloth from the village thief and paid him a small fortune to deliver them. You anointed a bad-tempered smith as the mayor. You nearly instigated a robbery and assault on my mother because you couldn’t wait five minutes for me to finish my letter.”

  “That’s not—”

  “You are irresponsible and heedless in your actions toward others,” he said steadily. “You are used to getting your way in all things—”

  “So are you!”

  “Be that as it may, you have constantly forced my hand.” She looked a bit white, and more than a bit angry, he noticed dispassionately. “I dislike having a wife who has no respect for my opinions.”

  “That is a different matter,” she said, cutting across his voice like a knife across butter. “You may disparage me for acting as you see it, without foresight. It may be simply that I think faster than you do. After all, my bolts of cloth managed to salvage relations with the village. My anointing of a mayor assuaged a man who hated your father due to the deaths of his wife and baby.”

  Simeon narrowed his eyes.

  “There’s no medical help in this village,” she said. “I’m sure I need not detail the reasons for the village’s impoverishment. The smith drove to the next town to beg for help from the surgeon; by the time he returned, his pregnant wife was dead. You may think that my methods are unorthodox, but they are effective.”

  “I want to make those decisions,” Simeon said stubbornly.

  “And your wife has what role in your life?” Her face was now utterly white, and Simeon knew that he was seeing Isidore at her most furious.

  His wife had always been an illusory, shadowy creature, the docile sweetheart whom his mother had created in letters, the lass who sat in the corner of the room weaving lace as delicate as moonbeams. That maiden wouldn’t want to make decisions. She chose to sit in the corner of the room and be as fascinating as dirt.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted.

  “I do. You want your wife to be nothing more than a child who listens without question to your every word. In fact, I think it would be better if your wife didn’t even speak your language. I can’t imagine why you didn’t marry some foreign lady you encountered in Abyssinia, perhaps the princess you told me about.”

  He felt his face freeze, just for a second, but Isidore was smarter than any woman he’d met, smarter by far than the princess, for all that lady’s ability with languages. She actually laughed. “You did! You thought about marrying a woman who didn’t even speak your language. That’s just perfect. She could sit in the corner translating poems, while you rampaged about making all sorts of asinine decisions. Luckily she would never question you because she wouldn’t even understand what you were doing!”

  “What makes you think that I make asinine decisions?” he enquired.

  There was a moment’s silence.

  “Have I put you in harm’s way?” he said mildly. “Taken the furniture out from underneath you?”

  “You’re trying to make me into some sort of silenced African princess, and you’re asking me if I think you make asinine decisions?”

  Well, that was clear. Simeon thought he’d heard enough. His jaw tightened, but before he could say a word, she took a deep breath. “This marriage will never work. Never.”

  He opened his mouth again, but—

  “I thought if I could help you, that you would grow to like having me as a partner,” she said. “What a fool I was! It matters to me to be with a man who respects my opinions, who actually wants to be with me, who—”

  Simeon met her eyes. “I do like you, Isidore.”

  “You know, I really wish I believed you. Alternatively, I wish that it didn’t matter to me. But it does. Somewhere in these last ten years we spent apart when we should have been married, I kept thinking about whether I’d like you, but I never considered you not liking me, who I am. I suppose it was vanity.”

  “I do like you,” he said.

  She went on without even hearing him. “It’s probably my fault. Maybe I would have been more docile when I was sixteen. But it’s too late now. I can’t stop being a person just because you want a wife who doesn’t speak English.” She whipped around. “What stopped your marriage to the princess?”

  “I was promised to you.”

  “Correction,” she said scathingly, “you were married to me. But that’s all right. As the solicitor so obligingly told us, we can have this marriage dissolved.”

  “No, we can’t. We’ve consummated it.”

  “I am not pregnant,” she said, through clenched teeth. “Not pregnant.”

  He almost asked how she knew and the words died in his throat. “Oh.”

  “No one need ever know that I foolishly—impulsively as you would no doubt characterize it—took off my clothes before you, inspiring an ill-advised intimacy. My next husband will be understanding, I’m sure.”

  “Your next—”

  Her eyes met his. “You don’t want to be married to me, Simeon.”

  “I—”

  He was destined never to finish a sentence around her. Her eyes were as fierce as those of a trapped animal. “I don’t want to have to earn love by giving up my ability to make decisions that determine how I live.”

  What could he say to that?

  Her lip curled. “There’s a woman out there for you. I would say that youth should be a prerequisite for you. Perhaps your mother can find you someone, rather than making up stories about me. I’ll leave tomorrow morning.”

  “What?”

  “In London, I’ll inform the solicitor that we’re going ahead with the annulment, on whatever grounds he feels will be the most timely.”

  “Is there a need to be so hasty?” Simeon said, feeling peculiarly sick.

  “Yes. I’m twenty-three,” Isidore said. “Most brides are sixteen, Simeon. Sixteen. I’m twenty-three. You’ll forgive me if I make haste.”

  He grabbed her arm. “You must be insane.”

  “Undoubtedly,” she snapped. “Why I didn’t annul this marriage years ago is beyond my understanding.”

  “You are mine.”

  “Don’t try to act as if I’m a desert princess you can scream at.” Isidore jerked her arm out of his hand.

  “You and I—”

  “There is no you and I.”

  “You didn’t think so last night.”

  “Neither one of us knew anything about bedding until recently,” she said, rolling her eyes. “It’s nice that we learned to be together and share reasonable pleasure, but let’s not pretend that it was unique, shall we? Likely the next time will be even better.”

  Next time? Next time? There was a howl in Simeon’s soul that would terrify Isidore if she knew. He felt his teeth baring, like some sort of wild animal. She had no bloody idea what they shared. None.

  “I don’t understand why you’re so quick to leave,” he said. “I think you don’t like the way you feel about me.”

  Her lip curled. “I don’t. You’re right. I want to admire my husband.”

  He ignored that. She had the tongue of an Italian fishwife, but her eyes were saying something else. “You’re singing,” he said suddenly.

  The note broke off.

  “You love me.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You do. You love me.” The certainty of it was in his heart.

  When she finally spoke, her voice was gentle. “You probably thought that the princess loved you too, didn
’t you, Simeon?”

  He blinked at her, having forgotten what princess they were talking about.

  “Some men are just like that,” she said, almost to herself, her voice lilting as if she were singing, a sad little song in a minor key. “They think everyone loves them.”

  “And sometimes a woman thinks that no one could love her,” he said, catching her again as she was about to slip through the door.

  “I haven’t allowed any men to know me,” she said. “Except you.”

  “I love you.” He said it, and knew it was true.

  But she didn’t act as if she heard. “I’ll be in London,” she said. “I’ll ask the solicitor to write you directly, Simeon.” Then she brushed off his hand as if he were no more than a passerby and left the room.

  He stood there for a long time, thinking about a little girl who had just lost her parents and sang instead of weeping. And a grown woman who didn’t believe he loved her, and sang while she spoke. But never wept.

  She would understand once she got to London. She would see what they had together.

  As for Isidore, she retired into the Dower House’s bedchamber and indulged in an angry fit of tears. Why did Simeon have to have those dusky brown eyes, which were too damn beautiful for a man? Somehow it was even more of an affront that he had decided to dress like an English gentleman that morning. It made it harder to think about him as an object of ridicule, a man who trotted around the countryside dressed in short trousers, talking about the Middle Way.

  It made it harder to scorn him, when he bowed with such easy and impersonal formality, held her gloved hand for just the right amount of time, as if he’d never told her to throw away her gloves.

  He was in control again. Hatred of that fueled Isidore all the way to London the next day, all the way to Jemma’s house.

  Where she discovered a houseful of servants, but no Jemma.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Gore House, Kensington

  London, seat of the Duke of Beaumont

  March 8, 1784

  Isidore spent the two days before Jemma returned unsuccessfully attempting not to think about her marriage. Or, to be more exact, the lack thereof.

  “Simeon doesn’t like me,” she told Jemma, once she finally came home. “Well, he may be right. That is, he likes things to be calm and ordered. And I’m afraid I don’t take directions—”

  “Take directions?” Jemma said, sounding rather stunned. “What sort of directions? And what do you mean, he doesn’t like you?”

  “He wishes I were someone else,” Isidore said, looking about for her handkerchief. “You see, he had the idea that his wife would be sweet and docile.”

  Jemma snorted.

  “His mother wrote him bundles of letters describing me as some sort of virtuous seamstress, even though I had left her household years before.”

  “Lies are never helpful in a marriage,” Jemma observed.

  “I suppose not,” Isidore said, wiping away a tear. “But it wasn’t my lie. At any rate, I’ve been a terrible shock to him. I make decisions quite quickly, you know, and I don’t always think beforehand.”

  “You are darling, if impulsive,” Jemma said.

  “That’s a nice way to put it. I think Simeon’s assessment is more harsh.”

  “He’s a fool,” Jemma said, interrupting. “But darling, you’re going to have to forgive him for that sort of foolishness. It’s endemic in the gender.”

  Isidore pressed her lips together. “I wouldn’t mind, but—”

  “He hurt your feelings,” Jemma said.

  Tears fell on Isidore’s hand. “I’ve been so stupidly foolish, Jemma, and I think I fell in love with him. But he doesn’t even like me, I mean, the kind of person I am. And I just can’t take that. I feel so hurt.”

  Jemma wound an arm around her. “Quite rightly, darling. I like you and love you too, and so does every sane person in Europe.”

  “Every time I want to—you know—I feel as if I’m having to seduce him. You can’t imagine what that’s like, Jemma. It’s so humiliating!” Her voice trailed into a sob.

  “You mean he doesn’t approach you?”

  “No. The fi-first time was because I took off my clothing in front of him.”

  Jemma laughed.

  “And that was your fault! You told me that men don’t—well—I can’t remember, anyway, you were absolutely right. I took off my clothes, and he couldn’t resist me but then he wasn’t happy about it afterwards.”

  “He wasn’t? Are you sure?”

  “Well, he was, but then he wasn’t. The second time, his brother was staying in the Dower House, so I asked Simeon to go for a walk with me.”

  “And you took off your clothing again?” Jemma sounded fascinated.

  “No, but I made it quite clear…I mean, I had to ask him to go for a walk!”

  Jemma was tapping her lips with one finger. “Very unusual.”

  “He didn’t really ever want to make love to me, but I forced his hand. And now he says that I’m impulsive and I don’t obey him. I really think he’d be happier with someone far more docile,” Isidore said. “He would. And he doesn’t—”

  “Don’t tell me again that he doesn’t like you,” Jemma said hastily. “I don’t believe it for a moment. It sounds to me as if he lost his temper.”

  “Oh no, Simeon never loses his temper.”

  “Never?”

  “Not even when workmen attacked his mother and myself. He didn’t show a bit of passion. He was absolutely calm, and he simply knocked out two of them and kicked down the third and—”

  “He did?”

  Isidore twisted her handkerchief. “And then he said it was all my fault because I hadn’t waited for him.”

  “How very unpleasant. It sounds to me as if the duke needs to lose his temper, so that he descends from his sanctimonious heights.”

  “Oh, he never will,” Isidore said dispiritedly. “Why, I expect that I could kiss another man directly in front of him, and he would just watch me in that unemotional way he has.”

  “I’d like to see that,” Jemma said. And then, thoughtfully: “I truly would.”

  “What?”

  “See you kiss another man in front of your husband—that same husband who thinks that bedding is all a matter of the body and not the heart.”

  “He’d probably just turn away. And that would—” Isidore sniffed.

  But Jemma’s eyes were shining. “It will be good for you too. I think you’re letting that husband of yours get away with far too much. He’s making you feel small, and less than your wonderful self. He needs a lesson.”

  Isidore raised her eyes. “You think—”

  “I think,” Jemma said firmly. “It’ll be a matter of one beckoning glance and you’ll have all the gentlemen you want on their knees before you.”

  Isidore sniffed again. “Then why isn’t my own husband that way, Jemma? I’ve tried kissing him, and putting my arms around him like the most frightful hussy, and he just pushes me away.”

  “I don’t know,” Jemma admitted. “I’ve never encountered anyone precisely like your husband, Isidore.”

  “I suppose I should be glad he’s unique.”

  “It would be much easier if he weren’t,” Jemma pointed out. “I prefer the lapdog model of husband myself.”

  Isidore managed to smile at her. “The kind of husband you have, you mean?”

  “I didn’t say I had one of them. Just that they were enormously appealing.” Jemma’s smile was a rueful acknowledgment that her husband, Elijah, had never come at her whistle.

  “Lady Farthingward is having a ridotto tonight,” Jemma said. “You can bask in adoration.”

  “But Simeon won’t be here to see me get kissed. He bid me goodbye, in the politest of fashions. It’s been two days and he hasn’t come to London.”

  “Perhaps not tonight,” Jemma said. “But soon. It won’t take him long to think through your final conversation, Isidore. He’
ll be here.”

  Simeon didn’t come to London that night. Nor the night after, nor the night after.

  A whole week had passed.

  Fine, Isidore told herself. It was fine. She wanted a man who would care about her. Simeon said he loved her, but she started to doubt her memory. Had he said he loved her? Was it a fevered creation of her brain?

  Probably. Because if he loved her, he wouldn’t have let her go. He would lie awake the way she did, thinking about the way he smiled, or the way his brow furrowed when looking at one of his father’s absurd letters. He would wake damp with sweat, the sheets twisted around his legs, having dreamt that she was caressing him.

  She longed with an ache that seemed not in the heart but in the bones, for something she couldn’t have.

  For a husband.

  For wasn’t that what she always wanted from him? To be a husband. To come back from Africa, bed her, love her, acknowledge her.

  After another week she set her jaw and started looking at men in earnest. There were men, lots of them. All of England seemed to know that her marriage was to be annulled, thanks to the dowager duchess’s vivid descriptions of her son’s brain fever. Isidore hardened her heart against worrying about what Simeon thought about his mother’s betrayal.

  He had made his own bed, as the dowager had said. He must lie in it. Alone. Of course, he was likely happy, practicing the Middle Way, organizing the household…

  Another week passed. He was never coming. Jemma finally admitted that she must have been wrong.

  “It’s not his fault,” Isidore said helplessly. The nights of lying awake had clarified things. “He really can’t help being a person who hates disorder. I think it must be because he sensed what his father was like, even as a boy.”

  “How could he not, given the stench of the sewer?” Jemma said. She had taken a sharp dislike to the entire family. “His mother is extremely common, given those letters she is writing.” The dowager had not been sparing in her description of Simeon’s fighting skills. “His father was a complete rotter and cracked to boot. And he is—”