When the Duke Returns Read online

  “Don’t,” Isidore said swiftly. “Don’t.”

  Jemma sat down on the bed. “Marriage is an enviable state,” she said. “You will enjoy it, the next time.”

  “I’ve thought so for years,” Isidore said.

  “How long will this annulment take?”

  “The solicitor says that since His Majesty himself has taken an interest, it should take only a month or so. He already met with the Archbishop of Canterbury, given the king’s request for prompt action. Lady Pewter annulled her marriage in a month once her husband started dressing in women’s clothing on the open street. The solicitor sent a note that he will like to visit tomorrow. I expect he has news on that front.”

  Jemma nodded. “Is Cosway aware that matters are moving so quickly?”

  It was all so humiliating. “I expect so.”

  “Then it’s over.”

  Isidore could feel her body drooping, like a plant without water. Which was foolish, foolish, foolish. “I feel like taking to my bed and never getting out,” she whispered.

  “I can understand that,” Jemma said.

  They sat in silence for a while.

  “It smells,” Jemma said, finally. “I don’t mean the water closets, Isidore. I mean your husband. There’s something off here.”

  “You know what I don’t understand?” Isidore said. “He said that he loved me. He said that.”

  “You never told me that before!”

  “I didn’t believe him.”

  “You should have believed him,” Jemma said. “Men never say that sort of thing unless they mean it. They have rigid defenses prohibiting displays of emotion.” She was smiling. “He is just being a fool.”

  “He’s not a fool,” Isidore said.

  “He doesn’t know what he wants. Well, I expect he knows just what he wants, but he’s afraid to reach out and take it.”

  “Simeon is not afraid of anything,” Isidore said, almost sadly.

  “He’s afraid of you.”

  Isidore snorted.

  “He’s afraid of you because his mother is an old cow who is telling all of England that he’s crazy. And his father was even worse, with all his mistresses, and irresponsibilities.”

  “That has nothing to do with me.”

  “Then why didn’t he come back, all those years, when his mother was writing him letters describing the paragon waiting for him at home?” Jemma pounced.

  “Because he was looking for the source of the Nile,” Isidore offered.

  “Nonsense! Years passed. He could have nipped back here, snatched you up and taken you back to die of a Nile fever. He could have come back here, annulled the marriage, and returned to paddle around the river some more. He never came back.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Isidore said, thinking that Jemma could be awfully dictatorial at times.

  “I think that he’s afraid to own you. To own anything.”

  “He doesn’t own me,” Isidore said, with dignity. “I am a human being, not a heifer.”

  Jemma waved her hand. “Think like a man, Isidore. Think like a man! I expect he never really wanted the paragon. You saved him from the tiresomeness of perfection.”

  “I’m too much,” Isidore said glumly.

  “I think you may have been just a wee bit overbearing,” Jemma said. “Men like to conquer, you know.”

  “It’s so stupid,” Isidore said, feeling tears prick her eyes. “If I understand you, you’re saying that he’s throwing me away like yesterday’s tart simply because he finds me too overbearing. I—I—” She meant to say that she deserved better, but she forgot the sentence and floundered into tears instead.

  “He needs to take charge. That’s why he tried to redo the wedding. That’s why he hasn’t come to London, because it would mean following your whistle. He’s no lap dog.”

  “No,” Isidore said, sniffing.

  Jemma was smiling. “We have to make him understand what he might lose.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When I found that my husband had a mistress, I packed up my bags and fled.”

  Isidore narrowed her eyes. “I’d kill him first and then flee.”

  “That’s always an option, of course,” Jemma said.

  “But with the wisdom of hindsight, I think I should have just given Elijah a taste of his own medicine.”

  “You should have taken a mistress? Or a—what would the word be?”

  “A lover. I have decided in the years since that perhaps had I flaunted a lover before Elijah in the early days of our marriage he might have cared.”

  “Why?” Isidore bit her lip. “It doesn’t seem logical, Jemma, though I wish it were true. If the only concern your husband had was to do with his heir, I really don’t see how three years one way or the other would change things.”

  “I know much more about men than I did. I was his, when we lived together in London and were first married. Three years later, he’d practically forgotten about me. Men do that. If you allow Simeon to return to Abyssinia and start rootling around looking for another river basin, he’ll forget you.”

  Isidore felt tears welling up in her eyes.

  “And you don’t want that,” Jemma said gently.

  “It’s so awful!” Isidore said, drawing a ragged breath. “I—I—”

  “I fell in love with Elijah, who didn’t show any interest in returning the favor. It took me forever to get over it.”

  “I’m afraid I never will,” Isidore said shakily. “It’s the most ridiculous thing in the world. It’s just that I love the way he’s taken on the house, and doesn’t even blame his rather hateful mother, or his father, who was a positive criminal! I know he didn’t like the way I dashed into things, but I thought…”

  “I expect he’s madly in love with you,” Jemma said consolingly. “Who could not be?”

  “I just can’t let him return to Africa,” Isidore said. “And I don’t want to marry anyone else!”

  “Then you won’t,” Jemma said. Against all reason, she was smiling. “We’ll arrange it so that he comes to his senses. Do you know that when people are knocked silly by a blow, sometimes a second injury puts them back into a sane mind? That’s what we’ll do.”

  “I don’t want Simeon hit on the head,” Isidore said, alarmed.

  “We won’t hit him,” Jemma said. “We’ll just do something to throw him out of his complacent frame of mind.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not a question of what,” Jemma said, smiling. “It’s a question of whom.”

  “Then?”

  “Villiers.”

  Chapter Forty

  Revels House

  March 26, 1784

  Early in the morning

  The Duke of Villiers paused before entering the house. If the truth be told, he was remarkably fastidious. Sometimes he embarrassed himself by his dislike of bodily functions. Other men seemed to love sweating and generally rolling around in their own muck. He did not, and a sewer was perfectly emblematic of the sort of bodily process he would prefer to be invisible and certainly inoffensive.

  But the butler was waiting, so Villiers climbed the stairs with a sigh. How he had become such a slave to his acquaintances, he didn’t know. Though he had the idea that Elijah would correct him and say, slave to his friends. One cautious sniff within the hallway, and Villiers felt more cheerful.

  He turned from handing his cloak to the butler. “I heard tales that Revels House had been conquered by a terrible odor,” he told the butler.

  The man beamed. “No longer, Your Grace. If I might show you into the Yellow Salon, the duke will join you shortly, I’m sure.”

  Villiers no sooner entered the salon than he stopped short, staring at the rug stretched at his feet. It blazed up at him, an extraordinary dancing pattern of cherry red and deep crimson that covered the entire floor. Stags bounded in incredible detail around the border. “My God,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “There
are only two or three such in the world, as I understand it,” the butler told him. “His Grace bought it from a Mongolian king. It is knotted in wool and silk, with gold and silver threads.”

  Villiers had an enormous estate, but he thought he might be treading on something of comparable value. It made him feel almost queasy to walk on it.

  Cosway stamped right over the carpet when he entered. “I’m sorry to have written you that letter,” he said without further greeting. “I’ve called a halt to my marriage ceremony.” He looked tired. Disheveled, but not nearly as extraordinarily odd as his mother’s letters had promised.

  “So what got you into breeches?” Villiers asked, skirting the question of marriage. “According to various reports, you were shocking the countryside in your trousers.”

  Cosway shrugged. “It wasn’t worth the amount of anxiety it seemed to cause my acquaintances. Not to mention my household.”

  “No powder,” Villiers observed. “But breeches, and a decent waistcoat. We’ll make a duke of you yet.”

  Cosway smiled faintly. “I even have a valet.”

  “Can you be ready to leave for London in an hour?”

  “What?”

  “In an hour,” Villiers said agreeably. “You might want to tell your valet to begin packing.”

  Cosway’s smile grew. “No.”

  “Tonight the king holds a party on board the royal yacht, the Peregrine, which has been moored in the Thames, just outside the Tower of London.”

  “Fascinating,” Cosway said. “I hope you enjoy yourself.”

  Villiers dropped into a chair, taking a moment to deliberately rearrange himself. Then he said, as casually as possible: “The king has interested himself personally in the dissolution of your marriage on the grounds of your insanity, and has ordered the matter expedited both in Parliament and with the church. The duchess—that would be, your duchess—has been invited tonight. It is my distinct impression that the king will personally grant her a dissolution of her marriage.”

  It was a blow. Villiers could see that. Then Cosway’s jaw set and his back straightened.

  “I can’t stop her,” he said. “She deserves to choose her own husband.”

  “She’s already being courted by every fortune hunter on three continents.”

  “Yes, I expect that is the case.” Cosway sat down and crossed his legs as if they were discussing tomorrow’s weather.

  Another man might have believed Cosway’s uncaring voice. But somehow Villiers had learned to recognize the signs of anguish, even buried deep in a man’s eyes.

  “Ah well,” he said. “I just thought I’d let you know. I must say, I’m glad to hear that you’re so uninterested.”

  “Why is that?”

  There was just a shade of suspicion in Cosway’s tone, but Villiers was too good an actor to start laughing. “Well, I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned it to you, but I have a number of illegitimate children,” he said.

  Cosway’s eyebrows flew up. “Do you find that inconvenient?”

  “I haven’t,” Villiers said feelingly, “but I am beginning to. You see, I have decided to gather these children into my own household.”

  “And the number is?” Cosway asked.

  “Six.” Villiers sighed. “I can hardly believe it myself. The sins of youth become the burden of old age.”

  “You’re hardly old,” Cosway objected. “What are you, thirty? I suppose you could sprout a full dozen if you put your mind to it.”

  “Thirty-four,” Villiers said. “And my soul is much older, I assure you. At any rate, six illegitimate children do pose something of a problem for my matrimonial prospects, as you can imagine.”

  Cosway snorted. “You won’t be—” He broke off.

  Villiers watched with satisfaction as the truth dawned.

  “I need to find them a mother,” he pointed out. “Women of my own rank are unlikely to take me, under the circumstances. But a divorced woman? And Isidore is very delectable.” He said it gently, but apparently not gently enough.

  He could have sworn that Cosway didn’t even move, but the next moment there was a strong hand around his throat. “She is no mother for your misbegotten brats,” Cosway snarled. The tight thread of rage in his voice would have made Villiers smile, but he had a suspicion he might die for it. “She’s mine.” He threw Villiers backwards. The chair nearly tilted and went over, but held.

  Villiers delicately felt his throat. Jemma would owe him for this one. Friendship was one thing; physical assault was not as appealing. He coughed. Cosway didn’t seem to be impressed, so he coughed again, harder.

  Cosway was still standing over him, staring. “Damn it,” he said, turning and throwing himself down into a chair. “You lied to me. Bastard.”

  “In what way?” Villiers asked cautiously.

  “You don’t intend to marry Isidore, do you?”

  “Not if it drives you to assail me, no.”

  Cosway’s face was as foul as any pirate captain Villiers had had the good luck not to meet. “I’d probably rip your guts out at the altar.”

  “Charming,” Villiers said. “What happened to all that Middle Way business that you regaled me with when we were on board ship together? Aren’t you a calm pebble on the shores of eternity any more?”

  “I met Isidore,” Cosway said through clenched teeth.

  “Women,” Villiers sighed. He got up and rang the bell.

  The butler appeared immediately. “May I bring some refreshments?”

  “A wet cloth for my throat,” Villiers said. “And tell the duke’s valet that we’re leaving for London within the hour. We’ll be on the royal yacht tonight and the valet needs to pack accordingly.”

  “Damn it,” Cosway said behind him.

  “You’re just rediscovering your manhood,” Villiers said soothingly. “All that pebble business wasn’t good for you. The question is, how are you going to win her back without getting yourself thrown in the Tower for murder?”

  “She said she wants to pick her husband,” Cosway said. “She wants to be wooed. Flowers. Poetry.”

  “Jewels,” Villiers said. “Skip the flowers; they just die. Do you have any jewelry?”

  “Tiger rubies. I just had them transferred from Hoare’s bank.”

  “Excellent.”

  “But Isidore is not really interested in that sort of thing,” Cosway said, slumping back in his chair.

  “What is she looking for?”

  “A lapdog,” Cosway said. “Someone who will allow her to make all the decisions and believe everything she says.”

  “She’ll adjust,” Villiers said, getting up and wandering over to examine the wall paneling. “You have some lovely frieze work here, Cosway. Was this original to the room?”

  “No. Isidore brought someone in, but she left before seeing what he did.”

  Villiers turned around. “Here’s my advice, for what it’s worth. There’s been nothing romantic about your marriage.”

  “What marriage?”

  “Exactly. She went off to London to have it annulled and you didn’t even bother to follow.”

  “I’m not a damned dog to follow at her heels!”

  “Exactly,” Villiers said. “You’re more of a pirate.”

  Cosway narrowed his eyes. “A—”

  “A man who slashes his way to his lady’s side,” Villiers said, almost dreamily. “Beating all the odds, including causing grave bodily harm to those highest in the realm (for which he could be hung, mind you), he makes his way to his chosen bride and slings her over his shoulder, heading for the freedom of the open—”

  “I have it,” Cosway said, cutting him off. “I suppose you write melodramas on the sly?”

  “Do you think I ought to?” Villiers said, widening his eyes. “I’m so pleased you think I have talent.”

  “God,” Cosway said. “If I didn’t know you were one of the best fencers in Europe, I’d wonder about your manhood, Villiers.”

  Villie
rs shook down the lace at his wrists. “I’ve only lost one duel. And that was to a man in love.”

  “Ah.”

  “So you see,” he continued gently, “I have a great respect for the condition. I would put myself in danger from such a man only under the strongest persuasion.”

  He could see Cosway thinking, accepting it, learning to live with it. He even smiled, a moment later. “So who forced you to come here?”

  “Jemma, Duchess of Beaumont,” Villiers said. “Now we must leave. It will take me at least three hours to prepare for the king’s festivities tonight.” He eyed Cosway. “Depending on the skill of your valet, it should take you at least four.”

  Chapter Forty-one

  The Peregrine

  Yacht to His Royal Highness, George III

  March 26, 1784

  Isidore knew it was a silent, defiant gesture. Her solicitor assured her that the king himself intended to speak to her that very evening about the dissolution of her marriage; she chose to wear the dress in which she first met her husband. She had a strong feeling that the majority of men on the royal yacht would not react to her presence by querying whether her taste ran to the unorthodox.

  “Lord,” Jemma said, coming up behind her. “You look astonishing, Isidore.”

  “It’s something of a debutante ball for me,” Isidore said, smiling at her in the mirror. “I intend to impress all available men with my attributes.”

  “No debutante could wear that gown,” Jemma said, “given your meager bodice and less-than-meager curves. The design is so beautiful: I love the blue watered silk petticoat underneath the silver. Gorgeous! Especially with the diamonds sewn all over it…You look like a fairy.”

  “I think of fairies as small green creatures with transparent wings,” Isidore said dubiously.

  “A fairy queen,” Jemma amended. “One look at you and mortals lose their wits, forever wandering in the depths of the forest.”

  “You are rather odd, Jemma, do you know that?”

  “I accept that about myself. And I’m not the one with diamonds pasted everywhere from her bottom to her heels.”