This Duchess of Mine

by Eloisa James

  “I love carrying you,” Elijah said. “Have I told you how grateful I am that you stopped wearing all those panniers and petticoats?”

  “Yes,” she said, gasping a little because his hands were wandering.

  “And you are not plump. What you are is delicious, Jemma. Every time I see you, I want to make love to you.”

  “Oh, Elijah,” she whispered.

  “Last night at supper,” Elijah said, pausing for a moment and looking down into her eyes, “Marguerite was nattering away with one of Villiers’s boys, and you were talking to Rosalind about a new modiste. And I couldn’t concentrate on what Villiers was saying at all because I kept looking at you and thinking about how you taste, and how you smell, and how soft you feel…”

  He stopped talking, but only to give her a kiss.

  Historical Note

  To be absolutely frank, when Elijah first fainted in the House of Lords some years ago (in both my writing life and in Georgian time), I had no idea how to cure him. So I was fascinated to discover the work of Dr. William Withering (1741-1799). Withering discovered the drug digitalis, exactly as described in This Duchess of Mine, by tracking down a Gypsy remedy, isolating foxglove, and figuring out how to distill the active ingredient. The depiction of Dr. Withering as taking bold risks with the life of his poor patients is not true; the doctor dedicated much time to charitable medicine.

  One fascinating aside: Withering was one of the first victims of academic plagiarism. Erasmus Darwin (Charles Darwin’s grandfather) asked him for a second opinion on a patient with dropsy; shortly afterward Darwin submitted “An Account of the Successful Use of Foxglove in Some Dropsies and in Pulmonary Consumption” to the College of Physicians in London, noting Withering’s experiments only in a footnote. Withering was furious, and for good reason! But Darwin went on with his life, and while his discoveries were nothing akin to those of his grandson, he did invent an organ that could recite the Ten Commandments (one has to hope that he dwelt on the eighth).

  Unfortunately, the floating prison ships called the hulks also existed. In the Georgian period, these prisons were moored in the Thames, and as Elijah points out, the mortality rate aboard them was fearful. The riot I described is a figment of the imagination, although I borrowed details from the Gordon Riots that took place four years earlier and resulted in the burning of London’s notorious prison, the Clink, to the ground.

  And finally, I want to acknowledge that the most ratlike character in the book, the Duke of Villiers’s solicitor Templeton, is indeed named after a famous rat. The rat in Charlotte’s Web is greedy but I may have maligned his character here. After all, the original Templeton saves Charlotte’s children, albeit for a price, whereas Villiers’s Templeton does the opposite.

  Acknowledgments

  My books are like small children; they take a whole village to get them to a literate state. I want to offer my heartfelt thanks to my personal village: my editor, Carrie Feron; my agent, Kim Witherspoon; my website designers, Wax Creative; and last, but not least, my personal team: Kim Castillo, Franzeca Drouin, and Anne Connell. I am so grateful to each of you!

  I want to add a special thank you to Professor Lenny Cassuto, a brilliant chess player who has given me advice throughout the writing of this series. Dr. Cassuto designed Jemma and Elijah’s final game, and even played it out in his head (though not blindfolded).

  The village would wither, of course, without the cheerful support of my readers. One of the parts of being an author that I most enjoy is writing an “extra chapter” for each novel I publish, one that springs directly from my readers’ responses to my work.

  In the month or so after This Duchess of Mine publishes, please hop onto the Bulletin Board attached to my website (www.eloisajames.com) and vote for the chapter you wish I’d included in this novel! And if you’d like to read the “extra” chapters of earlier books, just look on the website under Readers’ Menu.

  About the Author

  Author of fifteen award-winning romances, ELOISA JAMES is a professor of English literature who lives with her family in New Jersey. All her books must have been written in her sleep, because her days are taken up by caring for two children with advanced degrees in whining, a demanding guinea pig, a smelly frog, and a tumbledown house. Letters from readers provide a great escape! Write Eloisa at eloisa@eloisajames.com or visit her website at www.eloisajames.com.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  By Eloisa James

  THIS DUCHESS OF MINE

  WHEN THE DUKE RETURNS

  DUCHESS BY NIGHT

  AN AFFAIR BEFORE CHRISTMAS

  DESPERATE DUCHESSES

  PLEASURE FOR PLEASURE

  THE TAMING OF THE DUKE

  KISS ME, ANNABEL

  MUCH ADO ABOUT YOU

  YOUR WICKED WAYS

  A WILD PURSUIT

  FOOL FOR LOVE

  DUCHESS IN LOVE

  Coming August 2009

  A DUKE OF HER OWN

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  THIS DUCHESS OF MINE. Copyright © 2009 by Eloisa James. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Adobe Digital Edition May 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-188022-3

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