This Duchess of Mine

by Eloisa James

  Of course, when she returned from Paris, she ordered all paintings removed without thinking about it twice.

  “Your Grace,” Jemma said respectfully a moment later, dropping into a curtsy. As she raised her head, she realized that the dowager had hardly changed. She was still tall, and although she leaned on a cane, it gave her no air of weakness. In fact, the cane seemed more like Villiers’s sword stick: an affectation that could serve as a weapon.

  She had Elijah’s beauty, with sharp angles and sweeping lines. But on her the angles looked enraged, and what was calmness in his face was irritation in hers.

  “Jemma,” her mother-in-law said. “I am grateful that you returned from Paris.”

  That was an auspicious start.

  “We must sit,” she continued. “My hip is quite troublesome these days.”

  “I am so sorry to hear that,” Jemma said, seating herself opposite the dowager. “Did Elijah write you?”

  “No.”

  “But you know.” There was something in the dowager’s face, a version of the same dread that she was feeling.

  “I knew the moment I heard that he fainted in Lords. You don’t appear to be with child.”

  “I fear not,” Jemma replied, wincing inwardly.

  “That is, there is a chance that I am with child, but I don’t know yet.”

  “I suppose Elijah’s foolish second cousin will inherit after all. The man pads everything, you know, from his thighs to his chest. But he is, at least, a discreet creature. A foolish lust for admiration is better than the alternative.”

  “Of course,” Jemma said, not at all sure what she was agreeing with.

  They sat for a moment in silence. “I came to ask you something,” the dowager said, her fingers twisting the diamond cornucopia she wore on her bosom. Her fingers were swollen with rheumatism, and Jemma felt a pulse of sorrow. She remembered her mother-in-law sweeping through the house like a whirlwind, her voice as stinging as smoke in the eyes. Back then the dowager had few wrinkles and her fingers were strong.

  “Of course,” Jemma said again. The dowager fixed her eyes on Jemma’s face, and they were so identical to Elijah’s, like a dark flame, that Jemma added, “Anything you wish.”

  “I wish,” the dowager said heavily, “no, I insist that you cease all marital relations and maintain separate chambers.” Her face was at once both mournful and belligerent.

  Jemma swallowed a gasp. “I—”

  “My husband was known as Bawdy Beaumont,” the duchess said. “Were you aware of that?”

  Jemma nodded.

  “He died in the very act, wearing a frilly lace chemise and tied to a bed,” the duchess said. There was no particular rage in her voice as she recounted the facts. “He was attended by several women wearing leather who were engaged in spanking him. I gather he took pleasure in something children strive to avoid, which says a great deal about his character.”

  Jemma murmured something. Her mind was racing, wondering if she should assure the dowager that Elijah showed no interest in wearing a chemise.

  But the dowager was continuing. “He was always a greedy man. One nightwalker wasn’t enough; he had to have three or four. We did our best to keep the details a secret. I paid hundreds of pounds to the procuress in charge of The Palace of Salomé.”

  She raised her eyes to Jemma. “I waited a year, and then I had her arrested. She was stripped and marched through London for prostitution, left in the stocks for a day, and then sent to Bridewell. She died a few months later.” There was unmistakable satisfaction in her voice.

  “Elijah has no interest in such practices,” Jemma said, hurrying into speech before her mother-in-law could say anything else.

  “I brought him up to be virtuous,” his mother said.

  “But it didn’t take.”

  “It didn’t?” Jemma said, dumbfounded. There wasn’t a person in England who wouldn’t say that the Duke of Beaumont was virtuous. And they didn’t even know about the Cacky Street Glassworks.

  The dowager duchess looked unblinking at her. “I know why you left for Paris. My son inherited his father’s deviant tendencies. It was good of you to return, and attempt to produce an heir. If I hadn’t already had a son, I would have left the country as well.”

  “It’s customary for a man to have a mistress,” Jemma said desperately, hardly able to believe that she was defending Elijah, after all her years of resenting that same mistress. “Your son has no interest in the more…exotic practices that the former duke enjoyed.”

  The dowager curled her lip. “I don’t care about a mistress any more than you would have. But he couldn’t keep the woman discreet, as other men do. He brought the woman into public. His own offices.” She straightened her back and said calmly, “Revolting. I gather that my husband also enjoyed being watched on occasion.”

  “Elijah wasn’t being watched!” Jemma gasped. “He was only trying to prove that his tastes weren’t as deviant as those of his father. He was very young, Your Grace. By engaging his mistress to meet him in his chambers, he proved to all those who knew that he enjoyed normal intimacies. There was nothing deviant about it.”

  The smallest noise made her lift her eyes. Elijah was standing in the open doorway. His face looked terrifyingly calm.

  “All I’m asking is that you refrain from marital intimacies,” the dowager said, her voice tired and irritated. “If Algernon Tobier inherits the Beaumont dukedom because the current duke drops on the floor of the House of Lords, it will be unremarkable. But if a second Beaumont dies in bed with a woman, even if that woman is his wife, we will never live down the reputation. The Bawdy Beaumonts will go down in history.”

  “I’m afraid that you cannot choose the hour of your son’s passing,” Jemma said, her voice shaking, so shocked that she actually forgot Elijah was listening.

  “If Elijah dies in my bed, in a pleasurable moment, that is something I would welcome.”

  “You are a fool,” the dowager said heavily. “We duchesses live on, you know. My husband took his dissolute, frivolous self to the grave, but he left me to live through the titters and the veiled comments. He left his son to weather the debacle. He made me a laughingstock, and my son will do the same to you.”

  “We needn’t worry about a son since we have no children,” Jemma said. She was so caught by inarticulate anger that she couldn’t continue.

  Finally Elijah stepped into the room. He bent down and kissed the hand his mother held out to him. “I suppose you’ve heard our subject,” she said, her voice calm. But her fingers were twisting on the diamonds she wore on her chest.

  “I see my responsibilities to the line rather differently than you do, Mother,” he said, seating himself next to Jemma. “My wife and I shall continue to attempt to create an heir.”

  “I beg to differ,” his mother said.

  But she couldn’t keep her face as fierce and still now that her son was sitting opposite her. Jemma saw that and her anger fled.

  “Elijah’s heart is stronger than his father’s was,” Jemma told his mother, speaking to the grief, and not to what the woman was saying. “And we’ve heard of a doctor in Birmingham who is having excellent results with a new medicine he’s developed. We’re—”

  Elijah put his hand over hers and she stopped. “I shall be very sorry if I leave you ashamed of me in any way,” he said to his mother.

  The dowager’s fingers were clenched over her diamond. “I can’t stay here. I cannot. I shall depart for Aberdeen immediately.”

  “You can’t mean that,” Jemma said. “At least spend the night.”

  The dowager’s eyes skated to hers. “You will inform me when—”

  “I’ll take care of him,” Jemma said gently, standing up and pulling Elijah to his feet as well.

  The dowager stood, looking up at her son as if from the bottom of a well. “You were a beautiful baby.”

  Elijah held out his hand and she clung to it. “And you have a beautiful smile,” she
said. “You have always had a beautiful smile.”

  Jemma felt hot tears pressing in her eyes.

  Elijah smiled his beautiful smile, as if his mother hadn’t just said he was deviant, and bent to kiss her cheek. “I may well live for years, Mother.”

  His mother’s eyes met Jemma’s, and they both knew the truth. His mother closed her eyes for a long moment, her fingers tight on those diamonds.

  “I shall stay for luncheon,” she announced, hunching a bit over her cane. “Then I shall begin my journey.”

  They talked of nothing over the meal. The dowager was clumsy, her swollen fingers causing her to drop her fork repeatedly and knock a glass of wine to the table. But Jemma, watching, thought that it was a heavy heart that made her so awkward.

  That night, Elijah came to her room. She held out her arms, and he came over to her, warm and hard, his hand sliding up beneath her nightdress. “We should talk,” he murmured. But his hands were already setting her aflame.

  Jemma realized that in truth, she’d been waiting all day for this. In bed with her, Elijah’s heart beat strong and true. She didn’t have to worry.

  “Later,” she said, her hands sliding lower on his body.

  “But—”

  “I want to taste you,” she said. And then his eyes were like dark flames, like his mother’s, but she pushed that thought away and kissed her way down his chest. Her fear was gone, blissfully gone, because she could feel the blood pounding through his body.

  He said something, scrambled and inarticulate, but he arched toward her and she laughed and opened her lips.

  He was hers, and he was alive, and that was good enough for the moment.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  April 3

  Jemma kept Elijah in bed most of the next day. In the early afternoon, they found themselves lying on their backs, panting, the sheets twisted around their legs.

  “I need a bath,” Jemma said groggily. She felt drained and happy. She had one hand on Elijah’s chest, and his heart was beating strong and true. “It’s as if we repaired a clock,” she said, changing the subject.

  He had his arms thrown over his head and was smiling up at the tapestry hanging over the bed. “My heart can beat normally when it remembers to do so.”

  “We’ll make love every day,” Jemma ordered.

  “Twice a day. Morning and night so that your heart remembers the correct pattern.”

  Elijah laughed. “If you tell your friends that plan, every man in the kingdom will be pretending to faint.” He rolled to his side, propping his head on one hand. “I heard what you said to my mother.”

  She tried to pull her mind back from that hot, happy place. “Hmm.”

  “I didn’t think that you guessed why Sarah Cobbett came to my chambers.”

  Jemma raised her head. “So that was the reason? I used to think that it was just a question of saving time.”

  “I couldn’t get anyone to believe that I wasn’t sneaking off to The Palace of Salomé in the evenings. God, I was sick of being called Bawdy Beaumont. There was always scorn to it, just under the surface. I knew they were making jokes about spankings behind my back.”

  Jemma wound her fingers into his.

  “I didn’t even really want a mistress. Oh, I wanted to bed someone…at that age, all you see are women, and each one is succulent, and delicious in her own way.”

  “You thought every woman you saw was ‘succulent’?” Jemma asked, utterly fascinated.

  “They had breasts,” he said, as if that was all the explanation anyone could wish for. “And other parts.”

  She giggled, imagining Elijah walking down the street peering at women’s breasts. It seemed so unlike him.

  “But I didn’t have time. I was so determined to mend my father’s damage, to change the reputation attached to my name.”

  “Your mother shouldn’t have told you,” she said, sorrowing for the eight-year-old boy who was told those details far too early.

  “She is obsessed with the reputation of the Beaumonts, as you heard. And, of course, it was much harder for her. She knew he had mistresses, but she had no idea about the storm of scandal that would break over her head when he died.”

  “It was bad luck that he died at that moment,” Jemma said.

  “I used to think about it a lot as a boy, puzzling over it. Why the woman’s chemise? Why the spanking? Finally I grew old enough to realize that eccentricities of an intimate sort can’t be puzzled out and explained. It gave me a passion for logical facts,” he added.

  “I’m sorry. It sounds like a terrible burden.”

  “So I found Sarah Cobbett,” he said, staring up at the tapestry. “At first I thought it was enough to have a mistress, but then I realized that no one cared what I did when I wasn’t in my chambers or in the House. They just assumed I was wearing lacy gowns and begging my mistress to spank me. So one day I told her to come to my chambers instead.”

  Jemma ran circles over his chest with a finger. She didn’t like thinking of Elijah with another woman. But she could hardly be jealous of Sarah, under the circumstances. And Elijah’s heart still beat smoothly under her palm.

  “It was terribly awkward,” he said, turning his head so he could see her. “The desk was uncomfortable. She wasn’t pleased, but what could she do? After a while she got used to it and so did I.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Oh, yes. After a month or so, everyone knew. They all slapped me on the back and said they thought it was a marvelous idea. Everything calmed down. But I was cautious, and I still had Sarah come to my chambers twice a week.”

  “When we married,” Jemma said, wondering if she should even voice it, “why didn’t you let Sarah go?”

  “I didn’t think of her in those terms. That is, I didn’t think of the two of you in the same way. You were charming and luscious and soft under the covers. I know we weren’t terribly good together, but I thought about you a great deal.”

  “You did?”

  He grinned at that. “If you remember, we made love every night. I found you horribly distracting. I would be trying to listen to a speech in the House, and I would start thinking about how soft your mouth was, or about the curve of your bottom, and I would lose track of the argument entirely.”

  “We had made love that very morning,” Jemma said. “That was what hurt the most. You turned from me, as if I were nothing more than an hors d’oeuvre, and then you took her.” Despite her best effort, a thread of pain ran through her voice.

  Elijah groaned. “I can’t say anything to make you feel better about it. I remember feeling sated by you. I didn’t want to bed her. But at that age, if a woman lies in front of you with her legs spread, you can manage it, even if you are tired. How could I have explained to Sarah if I didn’t continue? There she was, and it had become part of my responsibilities in the House. If that makes sense.”

  In a male sort of way, it did. After all, she and Elijah had hardly known each other when they married; the marital contracts had been signed by their fathers years before. She had been in love with him, but he had no reason to feel the same emotion for her.

  Suddenly he rolled over on her, and she felt him against her leg, urgent and hard again. “You are the most succulent of all.”

  “I am?” But his hand was on her breast, a rough caress, and he didn’t answer in words.

  That morning they had spent hours making love. He had kissed her shoulder blades and the backs of her knees. He had kissed her eyebrows and the tips of her toes. Now he took her fast and hard, without preliminaries.

  Jemma kept her eyes open, and watching his face, loving him, felt again like a young bride in love with her husband.

  “I love you so much,” she whispered. The heat was building in her legs, starting to cloud her mind and pull her into some other place, a place without fear.

  Elijah cradled her face in his hands and said something hoarse that she couldn’t hear, but she knew what it was because their love
was there between them. It hardly needed to be said.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  April 4

  Fowle entered the study and bowed before Jemma. “The Duke of Villiers regrets to tell you that his carriage has returned from Birmingham empty; the doctor has apparently moved to London but did not leave a forwarding address.”

  “I might also add that Mr. Twiddy and his two daughters arrived this morning, and I dispatched them to the country estate, as you had instructed.”

  Elijah nodded. “Thank you, Fowle.”

  Jemma heard the news with no more reaction than a tightening around her eyes. He wrapped his arms around her and tried to warm her up. “We never expected the doctor to come to anything,” he said, wishing she’d never heard of him.

  “I want to read his article,” she said, stepping out of the circle of his arms.

  “Villiers has it; I’ll—”

  She turned. “I’ll fetch it.”

  “Wait! You can’t—”

  She was gone. Elijah gritted his teeth for a moment and returned to his work. He was cataloguing the estate: going through it item by item. If Jemma wasn’t with child when his heart gave out, then his hairless, brainless second cousin would inherit. He needed everything to be as clear as possible.

  An hour later, he was writing a letter, instructing his cousin in clear language about how to oversee crop rotation, when Jemma burst through the door.

  “I have the piece. The doctor’s name is William Withering. I’m going to hire a Bow Street Runner to find him.”

  He looked up. “A runner?”

  “Why not? I’ve already sent Fowle to fetch one. Withering’s work is rather interesting, Elijah,” she said, sitting in a chair opposite him and waving the sheets in the air. “Withering extracted a medicine from a flower. If you take an overly large dose, it acts like a poison. But in small amounts, it seems to cause an irregular heart to change its pattern and…” Her voice died out.

  Elijah laid down his pen. “He extracts this poison from a flower?”