Desperate Duchesses

by Eloisa James

  She turned away. One of her friends was hailing her from the side of the room, so she smilingly made her way over to sit among the young matrons, all of whom were her age and spent an inordinately large amount of time discussing their offspring. At least to Charlotte’s mind.

  But not tonight.

  “Did you see what she’s wearing?” Lady Hester Vesey asked immediately.

  “I haven’t seen her at all. She had left the receiving line and Beaumont was irritably doing the honors on his own.”

  “There she is,” Hester breathed. “Over to the right.”

  Charlotte took care not to appear to be staring. She straightened her wrap, and smiled at an acquaintance to the left, and then let her eyes drift in the other direction.

  The Duchess of Beaumont had dressed her hair very high in a mass of curls, marked by jeweled flowers. She was exquisitely gowned, so much so that Charlotte felt slightly faint with envy. Her gown was lemon-colored Italian silk, the petticoat puckered all over and sewn with roses.

  “Do you see who she’s talking to?” Hester whispered.

  “Ah,” Charlotte said, her eyes narrowing as the duchess laughed. “It’s Delacroix. I thought she had left him in Paris.”

  “He followed her.”

  “Did you hear that her brother has moved into Beaumont House with his child?”

  Charlotte’s eyes opened at that. “I’m amazed the duke would allow such an irregularity.”

  “It’s got everyone talking again about who the mother could be. Lady Piddleton claimed yesterday that she knew for a fact it was Mary Strachey’s child. But then there’s others who say his mistress took off for America and left him with the babe.”

  “America? That seems unlikely.”

  “Well, that’s what everyone says. I can’t imagine why he didn’t simply stow it in the country like any decent man would do.”

  “I’ve never seen him with Mary Strachey.”

  “That means nothing,” Hester said, with irrefutable logic. “Her acquaintances are legion, as it says in the Bible, or at least it says something like that. Your sister is looking very intimate with Muddle.”

  “Yes,” Charlotte said. “I’m hoping for a wedding in the family.”

  “Next we must turn to you,” Hester said comfortably. “It’s never too late!”

  Charlotte silently ground her teeth. “I live in hope.”

  “Well, that might be—”

  But whatever bit of wisdom Hester was going to offer was swept away as her husband bowed before her and bore her off onto the dance floor, ignoring her protests. “There’s a chess game brewing between Corbin and Villiers,” he told her. “I’m not missing that, so we’re having our dance now.”

  Charlotte sighed. There was nothing very appealing about the marriages she saw around her, but it was hard not to long for a spouse anyway. She sat still and tried to look as if she wasn’t alone. You’d think she’d be used to it. A few chords sounded…a polonaise was beginning.

  Suddenly a pair of polished shoes stopped before her. “If you please?” A gloved hand paused before her face…she looked up. It was the Duke of Beaumont.

  “Your Grace,” she said, rising and curtsying deeply.

  “Miss Charlotte. May I have the pleasure of this dance?”

  Her heart skipped a beat. Of course, he was a married man, but he was so dreadfully handsome. She rose and placed her hand in his. A moment later they were gravely pacing down the dance floor. Charlotte resisted looking about to see whether anyone had noticed she was dancing with the host.

  Instead she looked up at him. Of course, he was famously short-tempered, and it would be foolish of her to provoke him. But then he achieved such remarkable things in the House of Lords.

  She had two choices: they could engage in twenty minutes worth of silent dancing, or she could speak. He clearly considered his duty to end with the dance itself. “I read the description of your recent speech in the House of Lords, Your Grace.”

  He looked marginally more awake. “In the London Gazette? I’m afraid that the majority agreed with the opposition, more’s the pity.”

  “Are you quite certain that you are right about Mr. Fox’s intent to make the East India Company accountable to commissioners?”

  “Am I certain that it’s a blatant attempt to seize the Company’s wealth for themselves? In a word: Yes.” He didn’t look very pleased by her question anymore.

  “I mention it because I was greatly struck by the wording of the actual bill. I am in sympathy with your wish to force an election, but should not companies be accountable? Someone must look over their shoulders, Your Grace.”

  “The Whigs look over the Company’s shoulders only to seize its wealth.”

  “How hard it is to tell the difference between an anti-corruption measure and greed,” Charlotte said. “It did occur to me—” She stopped.

  “What occurred to you?” He looked interested, bending down slightly, and Charlotte’s heart thumped again. “Curses, we’re going to the end of the measure,” he said. “Don’t forget your thought.”

  A moment later they were reunited. Charlotte looked at him over their raised hands. “You understand that I have only read the accounts in the Gazette.”

  “They have been fairly accurate, which is unusual.”

  “I thought that perhaps you might emphasize the question of treason in your next speech,” she said. “As I understand it, you are trying to drum up support against Fox. But if I were you, I would swing this particular discussion to support for the King, rather than antagonism against the Secretary of State. Fox is so very popular.”

  His eyes narrowed. “I suppose I could. But Fox is the problem and he absolutely must be removed.”

  “Tell the House of Lords that anyone who votes for the bill would be regarded as the King’s enemy. Don’t even mention Fox.”

  For a moment he lost his step in the measure and then recovered. “Miss Charlotte, I’m grateful indeed that I asked for this dance.”

  Charlotte’s heart sped up again. He drew her to the side of the room. “Did you have a chance to read the debate published in the Gazette between Lord Temple and Fox?”

  Roberta knew that she should be in the ballroom. She knew that all she had to do was walk down that last flight of stairs and she would enter the buzz and hum that was drifting through the house. She had been dressed for at least forty minutes.

  The problem was that her dress was all wrong. She stared at herself in the mirror again. “You will be a perfect jeune fille,” Jemma had told her that morning. “We’ll dress you very simply, some rosebuds here and there, a strand of pearls.”

  “I don’t want to be a jeune fille,” Roberta had protested.

  But Jemma had been firm. “I realize that you are a Reeve at heart. But your first appearance in the ton must be as an exquisite bud of young innocence. Later you can show your true colors. After you’re married.”

  Roberta sighed. She had dreamed of going to a ball. But it was difficult to pretend to be docile and modest. She tried casting down her eyes again. No one could be innocent who had lived with her father for long. She felt like a fool. A wolf in lamb’s clothing.

  Just then the door burst open. “There you are,” Jemma cried. “You look adorable!”

  Roberta looked back in the mirror. Her hair had been carefully curled and powdered by the lady’s maid assigned to her. She was wearing pearls, and there were sprigs of apple blossom in her hair. Her panniers were large enough to be elegant, but not large enough that she would have trouble dancing in them. And she had just a faint shading of pink to her lips and her cheeks. She simpered at herself.

  The only thing she really liked were her slippers: they were exquisite, and pink.

  That and the little patch high on her cheekbone.

  “You don’t like the way you’re dressed, do you?” Jemma asked, appearing at her shoulder.

  “Oh I do!” Roberta said hastily. “It would be most ungracious of me
to dislike it, and I promise that I love it. I’ve never looked so wonderful in my life! In fact,” she said in a burst of honesty, “this is the first time I’ve ever worn powder.”

  “Itchy, isn’t it? I avoid it whenever I can,” Jemma said sympathetically, “but one’s hair simply must be powdered on occasion.”

  “Truly, I am so grateful, Jemma.”

  Jemma narrowed her eyes as she stared at the mirror. “What do you wish you were wearing?”

  Roberta knew the proper answer to that. “Exactly what I am wearing! Shall we go downstairs now?”

  But Jemma was smiling. “Fancy yourself a séductrice, do you?”

  Roberta caught another glimpse of the pretty shepherdess in the mirror. “I’m not sure,” she said.

  “But you’d like to find out?”

  “I don’t think that Villiers will be interested by maidenly docility,” Roberta confessed. “He’s not the type to court young girls, is he?”

  Jemma laughed. “Absolutely not.”

  “So what good is it to wear this clothing? It’s not going to work with him,” she said desperately. “And I don’t care about the rest!”

  “You need to fool the ton before you take on Villiers,” Jemma said. “They are invariably sheep-like and once they get a fixed idea in their head, it’s hard to move it. If you act in an innocent and demure manner tonight, that is how they will see you. All talk of your father’s companions will die quickly. Then—and only then—will you receive invitations to the parties where you will find Villiers. He’s downstairs, you know.”

  “He is?” Roberta felt a wave of dizziness that spread from her toes to her hair line.

  “Succeed tonight and tomorrow morning invitations will shower on your head. Villiers will be at most of them.”

  Roberta snatched her gloves. “I am ready.”

  Jemma smiled. “Be docile.”

  Roberta simpered at her.

  “Very good,” Jemma said. “Innocent?”

  Roberta cocked her head to one side and gave her a brainless smile.

  “Not quite that innocent,” Jemma said. “You are obviously quite accomplished at prevarication, though how you learned it while penned up in a house with a poet, I don’t know.”

  “There are many opportunities to prevaricate when one lives with a poet,” Roberta said. She walked down the stairs by herself, as the width of Jemma’s skirts did not allow her to walk beside anyone. “It would not always have been advisable to inform my father of my true opinion of a given poem, for example.”

  “Fibbing is an extremely useful sport,” Jemma said. And as if to prove it, she paused just inside the ballroom door and introduced Roberta to a group of matrons as a close relative, whom she’d known for years. Then she leaned closer and Roberta caught the word “heiress.”

  One of the mothers produced her son, a lanky boy, out of thin air and introduced the two of them. Roberta obediently simpered at Lord Rollins and set off into the dance.

  By an hour later, she felt fairly confident that all of London thought she was an innocent, albeit rich, maiden from the country.

  “Which you are,” Jemma said in passing. “Remember the eleven peach trees.”

  “I don’t need peach trees,” Roberta said. “I’m sure that Villiers has his own orchard.”

  “A woman should always have an auxiliary target, a man in the wings, as it were.”

  But Roberta had no man in the wings. Villiers was everything she wanted in a husband. She glimpsed him briefly, across the room, and her feeling of rightness was almost overwhelming. He was resplendent in a coat extravagantly embroidered with poppies, a cloth that might seem feminine on another man. But his dark, coiled features turned the delicacy to a jest.

  She was no fool. Villiers wasn’t going to be attracted by simpering innocence and powdered curls. If she meant to marry him, she would have to play a very tricky game indeed.

  Chapter 10

  Jemma had to acknowledge that if her husband was beautiful, the Duke of Villiers wasn’t. His face was long, with narrow cheeks and black eyebrows. He had a rakish look, like a buccaneer of Queen Elizabeth’s time. He wore a patch high on his cheek, and his lips were the same deep red as the poppies on his coat. It made her consider lip color—was that possible? Yet his hair was just pulled back carelessly from his forehead, unpowdered, no wig.

  Beaumont and Villiers were as dissimilar as night and day. Jemma surveyed Villiers from across the ballroom floor for an hour or so without approaching him. He didn’t dance; he prowled. Elijah danced. She saw him doing his duty with every unattached woman in the room. The only woman in whom Villiers showed interest was Lady Nevill. Jemma didn’t know her, other than by reputation, but she had to admit she was delicious, with her satiny smile and sleepy eyes.

  Jemma bided her time. The whole business of avenging Benjamin’s suicide had taken on its own pleasurable edge, giving her a flare of excitement. Would she seduce? Or would she merely beat him at chess? Or both? She danced near Villiers, and he didn’t look at her.

  Then, quite suddenly, those heavy-lidded eyes lifted and the shock of it went down her spine. The glitter in his eyes was that of a chess player, the same light she’d seen in Philidor’s eyes, but only when he watched her queen take his pawns.

  She whirled away into the steps of the dance, and found her corset felt unexpectedly tight around her ribs. She looked one more time, and he was murmuring in the ear of Lady Nevill. He wasn’t nearly as handsome as Beaumont, but he had an irresistibly wicked look that her straitlaced husband could never achieve.

  Roberta danced by, smiling beatifically at a young squire. He looked besotted, as well he might. Roberta raised a cynical eyebrow over his shoulder.

  At that same moment, Jemma realized something. Her revenge wouldn’t run parallel to Roberta’s pursuit of Villiers. It would be an integral part of it. She, Jemma, would wrap up the man whom all London had tried to tame—and deliver him to Roberta as part of Harriet’s revenge.

  Marriage laid the ground for a hundred—nay, a thousand—petty humiliations of the type that Harriet longed to visit on Villiers.

  It was the ultimate revenge.

  Suddenly Villiers was in front of her, eyebrow raised. “A black bandit knight at your service.”

  “Not a king?”

  He took out a cheroot. “Let’s go outside, shall we?” And without waiting for her response, he walked straight outside onto the balcony. He shook back his deep lace cuffs and lit the cheroot from a torch on the balcony. The light flickered against his face. His skin was startling clear and white against the black hair, sleekly pulled back from his face. No, he wasn’t handsome.

  And yet he wasn’t the sort of man who would find himself in a friendly cuffing match with the lads down at the pub either. He was altogether more refined and intelligent. No wonder he was the best player in England.

  Every instinct told her that he would be a powerful partner. For a moment she couldn’t distinguish between the wish to play him and to have him. A challenge—and what a challenge! Villiers was famous for drifting from woman to woman with limpid disinterest. If Roberta was to marry him, she would have to take the law into her own hands, or rather use the law on her side, because he would never propose due to love.

  The truth was that he was in love…with chess. A man bound to the chessboard has little left over, as poor Harriet had found to her distress.

  Villiers stood silently, drawing on his cheroot and watching her. Jemma said nothing. She disliked opening conversations. It was such an immediate way to give away one’s strategy. Women, she found, were generally too eager to rush into flirtation.

  Instead, she turned and looked over the gardens. The great elms were putting out new leaves that looked almost blue because of swathes of bluebells planted beneath them.

  “Black King by a smothered mate,” came a drawling voice behind her.

  “An old but pretty trick,” she said, turning around. She was conscious of a slight feel
ing of disappointment. Did he really need to test her knowledge?

  “Do you know,” he said softly, watching her unblinkingly over the glowing end of his cheroot, “that I often walk into Parsloe’s and find there is no one worth playing?”

  She shrugged. What was his point? She rarely had a partner at her own level other than Philidor.

  “You’ll forgive me, then, for seeming brash in my enthusiasm.”

  “Benjamin, the Duke of Berrow, used to play a fine game,” she said, testing him.

  His whole face changed. His cheekbones hollowed and his eyes looked haunted. “He was a good match. Better five years ago…”

  “Has your skill fallen, as did his?”

  “I was best when I was twenty,” he said, taking a long draw on his cheroot. “And you?”

  “I am best now,” she said. It was the truth; she met his eyes and knew that he understood it.

  “What did Philidor make of you? I heard little of a female chess player in France though”—he paused—“I heard much of you.”

  “You’ll find, if you travel to Paris to play him—and you should—that he is ranked among my lovers. We played almost every day, in my bedchamber, at a table beside my bed.”

  “I take it he had no interest in that bed,” Villiers said. His eyes were dark, too dark to read.

  “Of course not,” she said tranquilly. “We would play a game, or sometimes make a match last by playing only one move a day.”

  “That must have been a remarkable pleasure.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Who do you play otherwise?”

  “Generally, I play myself.”

  “All by yourself?” he asked, and suddenly she was unsure whether he was talking of chess or bedroom matters.

  “Life is so much less complicated by oneself,” she said, sighing.

  “I wouldn’t know,” he said. The smoke drifted past his eyes. “I find partners at Parsloe’s or White’s. I would prefer to play with strangers—or those with less skill—than find myself holding my own pawn in the safety of my bedchamber.”