Zounds, their expressions were priceless.
Jemmah dimpled and lifted a shoulder, whispering back, “I rather enjoyed the results.”
Jules did laugh then, a mirth-filled explosion from his middle, which drew the attention of two lads chasing a pug with a ball in its mouth.
God, he loved her unique perspective on things.
But so much for the romantic proposal he’d intended within the arched arbor facing yonder pond. Inside his coat pocket an emerald-cut, rare blue diamond, a shade darker than Jemmah’s eyes, lay nestled in its ivory velvet box.
He’d arranged a picnic luncheon complete with champagne in the quaint retreat. Damn his eyes, he’d even hired musicians to play in the background and a boatman to make sure the pond’s many swans paddled by in a timely fashion.
His precious Jem warranted such regal treatment.
“You can’t marry the duke, Jemmah.” The elder Miss Dament pointed a shaky finger at her sister, her voice wavering every bit as much as the wobbly digit extended toward her sister. “You must have Mama’s consent. And, she’ll never give it. Never.”
“Then I’ll wait until I’m of age. Or we’ll elope.” Jemmah’s quiet, confident reply sent her sister into high dudgeon.
Face puckered and turning the most spectacular shade of puce, Miss Adelinda fisted her hands and growled. Actually growled, before giving them her back and stomping across the green.
Perkins followed, but not before daring one last lewd appraisal of Jemmah.
He’d bamboozled Adelinda, the imprudent chit.
The club Perkins owned was nothing more than a low-end gaming hell and whorehouse. If the girl had taken up with the likes of him, she was thoroughly ruined. If she wasn’t careful, she’d be spreading her legs for his paying customers.
Jules couldn’t even buy her respectability now, which only made his case for winning Jemmah stronger. Mrs. Dament couldn’t count on her eldest daughter making a suitable match and directing funds her mother’s way.
He could, however, pay them a substantial sum to retire to the country.
Permanently.
If they agreed to never bother Jemmah again.
Yes, that was just what he’d do. As soon as he returned home. Mrs. Dament would have no choice but to agree now.
“Elope? Preposterous,” blustered Uncle Darius, finally finding his tongue, while Uncle Leopold waggled his head up and down like a marionette on a string.
“Utterly absurd. What would people say?” Leopold managed at last.
“Then I suggest you put your support behind Miss Dament and me, Uncles. And convince Mother to do the same. For I shall have no other, and all attempts to dissuade me will be met with swift recourse. Do I make myself clear?”
They nodded, albeit grudgingly. And then, mumbling something about needing to count cigars or some such rot, they departed, their tawny heads bent near. Every few steps, they tossed a befuddled and disgruntled glance at Jules.
He didn’t give a fig whether they approved or not.
He smiled down into Jemmah’s upturned, amazingly composed face. Lambasted thrice in ten minutes and here she stood, the epitome of grace and poise, beaming with love for him—for him!
His heart had chosen well.
Statue still, her countenance pale as the scalloped lace edging her fashionable spencer, Miss Milbourne peered around.
Blinking slowly, as if someone had whacked her upon the head with her frilly parasol, she murmured, “Excuse me. I see an acquaintance I must speak with.”
Head held high, she spun about and glided toward the pond, where nothing but a few ducks napped in the sun.
Taken to chatting with ducks, had she?
“Ho, what have we here?” Sutcliffe gave them a jaunty wave from across the green, and ambled their way accompanied by Pennington. Brow furrowed, he turned and watched Miss Milbourne’s progress.
Jules shook his head and rolled his eyes toward the greenery overhead.
“My God. Did someone extend invitations unbeknownst to me?”
“Invitations? Is there a special occasion I’m unaware of?” Sutcliffe’s attention veered to the departing uncles, Miss Milbourne, and lastly Jules. His grin threatened to split his face in two upon greeting Jemmah.
“Miss Dament.” He bent into an exaggerated courtier’s bow. “May I say how delighted I am to see you taking the air with Dandridge?”
“As am I.” Pennington clasped a hand to his waist and bent low, too.
Jemmah canted her head, and eyes sparkling, offered them a bright smile. “Thank you, your graces. You’re exuberance is... refreshing.”
“Is there any special reason you’re visiting the pleasure gardens today?” One hand on his hip, Sutcliffe, as subtle as a nubby toad on a pastry, attempted a nonchalant expression.
“I intended to propose, if you must know, you two interfering tabbies. But they,” Jules jabbed his thumb in the direction of his uncles’ and Miss Milbourne’s departing figures, “ruined the occasion.”
“By Jove, that’s the best news I’ve heard in ages!” Pennington pumped Jules hand while Sutcliffe bent over Jemmah’s. “Not that they ruined the occasion, but that you’ve at last declared yourself.”
“I wish you the greatest happiness, Miss Dament,” Sutcliffe said. “Now, we’ll take our leave and let our friend be about this most important business.”
Rubbing his thumb across the back of Jemmah’s hand, Jules remained silent as the pair strode away. Everything he’d planned to make the day romantic and memorable had been quashed.
“Jules?”
He met Jemmah’s slightly disconcerted eyes. “Yes, my dear?”
“Why is everyone staring in our direction?”
Jules raised his head and took a casual glance around.
She was right, though several people hastily looked away, finding either the sky or the ground profoundly fascinating.
Damn, the news of his intentions had travelled faster than the wind in sails, thanks to Jemmah’s bitter sister.
Hmm, perhaps not a bad thing at all. With a few dozen witnesses...
He withdrew the ring box from his pocket.
“Jules?” This time Jemmah’s voice went all soft and melty, as did her eyes. “Here?”
“Indeed.”
Raising the lid, he folded to one knee.
His valet would scold him soundly for getting grass stains on his pantaloons. But this was right in its simple, unpretentiousness.
Just like his precious Jemmah.
With the sun shining upon them, bees busy gathering nectar, a frog or two croaking in the ponds’ underbrush, while various birds called to one another, he would ask her to be his duchess.
“Jemmah, you are the jewel I’ve carried in my heart since I was a wee lad of ten. No one else makes me smile like you do. You consume my thoughts, and I cannot imagine any greater joy than spending the rest of my life with you.” He smiled into her shining eyes. “Will you marry me?”
Jemmah squatted and extended her left hand.
Leave it to her to do something wholly unexpected.
“I shall, Jules. I’ve loved you for so long, I don’t remember what life was before I did.” She gave a little self-conscious laugh, as he slipped the ring on her finger.
“As a little girl, I imagined myself a princess, wearing a sapphire and diamond tiara, and locked in a tower. And you were the handsome prince who rescued me. On a white steed, of course, and carried me off to his castle to live happily ever after.”
“Well, the duchy has a castle, and I believe several tiaras too. I own a white horse or two as well,” he said assisting her upright. “And I shall strive every day to make you happy.”
“I need nothing but to be with you to be deliriously so.”
Then, in typical Jemmah fashion, she levered onto her toes, and kissed him.
On the mouth.
In public.
And it was perfect.
Chalchester Castle, Essex, E
ngland
July 1810
“Darling, Teodora giggled again.”
Grinning in her excitement, Jemmah, holding her three-month-old daughter, gingerly picked her way between the smooth stones to Chalchester Lake’s edge. The afternoon sun’s rays reflected off the water as if a thousand brilliant diamonds had been cast across its surface.
She’d believed she couldn’t be happier when she married Jules just over a year ago; after Mama had finally agreed to the match, because Adelinda found herself scandalously pregnant.
But Jemmah had been wrong.
Each day as Jules’s wife brought her a new measure of joy and contentment she’d only dreamed of.
Oh, there’d been worries in the beginning, but not between her and Jules.
He’d kept his word and settled Mama and Adelinda in a charming cottage in Sussex, with a generous monthly allowance. But after Adelinda lost her babe and ran off with a traveling performer, Mama had fallen gravely ill, dying shortly thereafter.
The rancor and bitterness she’d harbored for so long, combined with a broken heart killed her, the doctor said.
On her death bed, Mama had pleaded for Jemmah’s forgiveness, and she’d given it. She refused to harbor malice, for eventually, it would corrupt her soul as it had Mama’s and Adelinda’s.
Jemmah had no idea where her sister was now, but truly hoped she’d found even a small degree of the peace and joy Jemmah had.
Her bonnet’s lavender ribbons stirring in the faint breeze, and the gravel crunching beneath her half-boots, she made her way to her husband.
Jules, standing knee deep in the gently-flowing current, and holding a fishing line, glanced behind him.
Teodora cooed and waved her little fists.
“She’s a happy darling. Like her mother.”
“Like her father too, although you do your best to convince people otherwise.”
“Well, how else can I maintain my dour reputation?”
He chuckled as he stepped from the river, and after laying his pole beside the blanket spread upon the shore, extended his arms.
Jemmah laid Teodora within his sturdy, secure embrace.
The baby promptly smiled at her father, her almond-shaped eyes the same unusual topaz as his, and seized his forefinger in her tiny grasp.
She yawned and blinked sleepily.
Jules adjusted the infant then draped his other arm across Jemmah’s shoulders. “We are happy, aren’t we?”
Blissfully so.
Her head resting against his brawny shoulder, Jemmah nodded. “I’m so glad we decided to live here after marrying, rather than in London. I never realized how much I didn’t like the hubbub. I enjoy visiting once in a while, especially since Aunt Theo won’t venture to the country, but honestly, I never want to live in the city again.”
“Did you really love me all that time we were apart?” Jules gazed down at her with such adoration, her heart stuttered a bit. “When you never spoke to me or even saw me?”
Jemmah poked his rib. “I’ve told you so dozens of times. I think it puffs your head to think so.”
“It puffs other things too.” He looked meaningfully at the bulge in his trousers.
“Well, husband, I believe I might have just the cure for what ails you.” Jemmah took their sleeping daughter from him and once she’d tucked Teodora into her basket beneath a tree, extended her hand. Asleep in the shade, their daughter would be safe. Besides, they were but a few steps away. “There’s a lovely little grove yonder.”
“Duchess, do you mean to have your way with me in broad daylight?”
The seductive twinkle in Jules’s eyes and tugging at his delicious mouth told her he liked the notion every bit as much as she.
Following an animal trail through the grass, she arched him an invitation over her shoulder as she began to disrobe.
“I do, indeed, Your Grace.”
Colchester, Essex England
Late June 1809
Twilight’s gloom lengthened the shadows in the old cemetery as Theadosia—humming Robin Adair, a Scottish love song certain to vex her father—wended her way through the grave markers and the occasional gangly rose bush or shrubbery in need of pruning.
Having lived at the rectory her entire life, she found the graveyard neither frightening nor eerie. Those lying in eternal rest included a brother who’d died in infancy, several townspeople she’d known, and even a few gentry and nobles for whom Father had performed funerals. As children, she and her sisters and brother had frolicked amongst the stones and statuary, playing hide and seek and other games.
Situated on the east side of All Saints Church to catch the rising sun each morning, the churchyard provided a convenient, often-used shortcut to the parsonage’s back entrance.
“Why?”
A deep, anguished whisper drifted across the expanse.
Though she didn’t believe in ghosts and despite her velvet spencer, an icy prickle zipped down her spine, causing the hairs on her arms to stand at attention.
Lifting her robin’s egg blue chintz gown with one hand, she paused and glanced around but saw nothing out of the ordinary. A plump, greyish-brown rabbit, enjoying a snack before finding its way home for the evening, watched her with wary, black-button eyes. After another moment of studying the familiar landscape, Theadosia continued on her way.
She must’ve imagined the voice.
The wind had whipped up in the last few minutes. Sometimes, the two ancient oaks acting as sentinels at the cemetery entrance groaned in such a way that the swaying branches sounded as if they were moaning in protest.
Perhaps Jessica’s chickens had made an odd noise, Theadosia reassured herself as the wind lashed her skirts around her ankles. Situated on the other side of the parish where the vegetable and flower gardens were, the chickens often made odd sounding cackles and clucks.
The empty basket that had held the chicken soup and bread she’d delivered to the sick Ulrich family this afternoon banged against her thigh as she resumed her humming, even daring to sing a line from the song since she’d inspected the area and her parents weren’t present to chastise her.
“Yet him I lov'd so well—”
“Why’d you do it?”
The same tormented baritone rasped through the burial ground once more.
That, by Jehoshaphat, she had not imagined.
She stopped again and turned in a slow circle, trying to peer around the greeneries and headstones. Many were large and ornate, and she couldn’t see past the nearby stone markers.
“I jus’ want to know why.”
The rabbit froze for a second before darting into the hedgerow.
A shiver tiptoed across Theadosia’s shoulders, and she swallowed against a flicker of fear.
Come now, Theadosia Josephine Clarice Brentwood. You are made of sterner stuff.
Besides, ghosts didn’t slur their words. At least, she didn’t think so.
Gathering her resolve, she pulled herself to her full five-feet-nine inches and called, “Who’s there?”
She squinted into the dusk. The voice had come from the graveyard’s far side. The side reserved for aristocrats and nobles.
Another wind gust whistled through the dogwoods and flowering cherry trees bordering the cemetery’s north side and tugged at the brim of her new straw bonnet. She held it tightly to keep it in place.
Once more, a mumbled phrase—or perhaps a sob this time—followed on the tails of the crisp breeze.
What distraught soul had ventured into the graveyard at this hour?
Visitors usually came ’round in the morning or afternoon. On occasion, they even picnicked amongst those who’d gone before them. Superstitions and unwarranted fears usually kept mourners away as darkness descended, however.
Whoever the person was, they were in distress for certain, and Theadosia’s compassionate nature demanded she offer to help. Slipping the basket over her forearm, she strode in the direction she thought she’d heard the voice co
ming from. As she rounded a weeping angel tombstone, so old and discolored the writing could scarce be read anymore, she skidded to a halt.
A man—a very startlingly attractive man—lay amongst the dead.
Rather, surrounded by a low, pointed iron fence, he lounged atop what must be his greatcoat, his back against a six-foot marble marker. Even in death, the dukes and duchesses of Sutcliffe, as well as their immediate kin, kept themselves separated from the commoners—those they deemed beneath their illustrious blue-blooded touch.
That was what the locals claimed, in any event.
She’d never found the Sutcliffes uppity or unfriendly. A mite stuffy and formal, for certain, as nobility often were, but never unkind. Not that she’d spent a great deal of time in any of their company.
Preposterously long legs crossed at the ankles and his raven hair disheveled as if he been running his fingers through it, the gentleman took a lengthy swig from a green bottle.
Whisky.
Father would kick up a fierce dust if he found out.
The tanned column of the man’s throat, a startling contrast to the snowfall of a neckcloth beneath his chin, worked as he swallowed again.
Something had him overwrought.
As he lowered his arm, she widened her eyes.
He’s home!
Theadosia’s heartbeat stuttered a trifle as she raked her gaze over Victor, the Duke of Sutcliffe. Though she hadn’t seen him in three and one-half years, she easily recognized his grace.
A wave of sympathy swept her.
She also knew what tormented him.
His father’s suicide.
’Twas his father’s grave he sat upon.
Eyes closed, his sable lashes fans against his sculpted cheekbones, the duke lifted the bottle once more.
“You didn’t even leave a note telling us why.”
Theadosia wasn’t supposed to know the reason the seventh duke had hanged himself. Such things were never discussed except behind closed doors. Her Father, the rector of All Saint’s Church, frowned upon gossip or tattle of any sort.
What she thought surely must be a tear leaked from the corner of his grace’s eye. His obvious grief tore at her soft heart.
Seductive Scoundrels Series Books 1-3: A Regency Romance Page 9
