Desperate Duchesses

by Eloisa James

  “I’m not going to kill you,” he said, panting, circling, watching the earl’s hands.

  “I’m not going to kill you, either,” the earl said. He didn’t appear to be even breathing quickly, which was galling. “I might have, but you apologized.”

  They circled again.

  “I can’t have Roberta think that her apology was for naught,” the earl said. “The right shoulder should do it.”

  Villiers narrowed his eyes, but he didn’t even see the envelopment coming. It came from above, and sang through the air with a melody like death, twisted, flicked at the last second, slid home with a terrible scrape by the bone.

  Villiers’s rapier dropped to the ground.

  Gryffyn withdrew his blade; it was glossy with blood. Villiers bent over, breathing heavily.

  Gryffyn shouted, “We could use the surgeon here!”

  Villiers heard feet, and realizing for the first time how close the circle of spectators had come, straightened. Blood was running down his right arm and oddly, it felt cold rather than warm. “I regret any impunity to your lady’s honor,” he said, resorting to the antiquated language used by their grandparents.

  “I am at your service,” Gryffyn replied.

  The surgeon was upon them, offering Villiers a bottle of brandy and ripping off his shirt. Gryffyn was off, running—he was actually running—toward the Duke of Beaumont’s carriage.

  Villiers upended the bottle for a moment with his left arm, and watched him go with disbelief. God forbid that he should ever become so tied to a woman. Or she to him. He shuddered at the thought.

  The idea of a woman kneeling to ask for his life…

  It was beyond distasteful.

  Disgusting, really.

  He upended the bottle again.

  Chapter 40

  They returned for breakfast to find the house full of gentlemen shouting congratulations to Damon, ladies sighing over the injury to the Duke of Villiers, servants running hither and fro with glasses and plates.

  No one would know from the Duchess of Beaumont’s smiling face that she had been white with terror but an hour earlier. No one would know from her husband’s imperturbable calm that he too had found himself pacing the floor, unable to concentrate on the business of the realm.

  She was standing with Viscount St. Albans, discussing the likelihood that Villiers would develop an infection. “A good half of the cases,” St. Albans reported. “But he had the best surgeon available and the man drenched the wound in brandy. I saw to that myself. No use shirking on brandy when a man’s life is at stake.”

  Her husband touched her on the shoulder. “I thought we might play our piece,” Beaumont said.

  To Elijah’s eyes his wife didn’t look quite right. Her lips were rather pale. She took his arm, which she never did.

  He watched her as they settled before the board. “Let’s just sit for a moment,” he suggested. “Does Villiers have a deep wound, then?”

  She visibly shuddered. “I can’t abide talk of these things. I believe not. Damon is enormously skilled and apparently he knew precisely where he wanted to place the blade. Villiers should experience no lasting effect.”

  Elijah watched her stare at the board and knew that for the first time he was seeing his wife when she could not concentrate on chess. He moved and said, “Check.” She reached out her hand. “Wait,” he said. She was going to move her king’s rook, which would give him checkmate.

  She looked up at him. “Let’s just rest for a moment. I am frightfully tired,” he said.

  She frowned a little, and her hand fell back to her lap. “I do think you ought to work less, Beaumont.”

  “You call me Elijah sometimes,” he said, hardly able to believe his own ears.

  Her eyebrows shot up, so apparently she was just as surprised. “Elijah,” she said.

  “How will you play your game with Villiers now?”

  She swallowed. “I suppose you know that I won the first game in our match yesterday.” She bit her lip. “If I know Villiers he will be chaffing horribly at confinement to the bed. St. Albans told me that the surgeon ordered him to spend a fortnight in his chambers.”

  Elijah’s heart sank. Though why it mattered, he couldn’t say.

  Obviously Villiers may have lost his match but he had won something else.

  “I suppose you’ll have to go to him,” he said, his voice as cool and controlled as ever.

  She shot him a quick glance and fell to frowning over the board again. Her hand came out and she moved the rook.

  “Checkmate,” he said, in response.

  Jemma stared at the board as if she’d never lost before.

  Beaumont had the odd feeling that they were experiencing the same thing at the same time.

  It was a good thing that Roberta no longer feared making a spectacle of herself, because she could not stop clinging to Damon. Her father grabbed her arm at one point. “Mrs. Grope has decided to return to the theater!” he said, not looking half as miserable as one might expect.

  “The theater?” Roberta said, startled into paying attention. “As an actress? Really?”

  “As a hair dresser. Apparently the manager of Drury Lane was so impressed by her London Bridge effect that he’s invited her to dress wigs for all the performances of the coming season. I shall handsomely endow her, of course. But it means, my dear, that Mrs. Grope will no longer be part of our lives.”

  Damon looked as if he might be about to walk into another room, and Roberta didn’t want to let him out of her sight. He paused to talk to Lord Corbin, so she turned back to her father.

  “But Papa, what of the mermaid?”

  “What of her?” he said, looking a bit sly and a bit happy.

  “Will she return home with you?”

  “Absolutely not!” he roared. “She’s a decent young woman, daughter of a vicar in Somerset, not to mention a gifted poet.” He started rocking back and forth on his heels. “Do you know, Roberta, that she began as the versifying mermaid at only ten years of age?”

  “How old is she now?” Roberta asked, half listening.

  “I believe she is around thirty, and…”

  She couldn’t let Damon out of her sight, not when her heart was still pounding with fright. So she dropped a kiss on her papa’s cheek and slipped away. Finally Damon swept her off to the yellow sitting room and offered to play her at dollymop dominoes if she would let him go to the privy.

  So she did.

  But by the time he came back, she was crying again, and she couldn’t stop, even when he kissed away her tears, and laughed at her, and finally tickled her.

  “It’s just that I might have lost you,” she said, hiccupping.

  “Never,” he said, cupping her face in his hands.

  “You might have died!”

  “I can’t tell you never when it comes to death. But when I die, Roberta, I swear it to God that unless it’s an accident I shall do it in my own bed, with you by my side. In other words, I wouldn’t put myself in harm’s way, not when I have you and Teddy and”—He smiled at her and there was something so tender in his eyes that she hiccupped again—“we might have a babe in a few months too, Roberta. Have you thought of that?”

  She dismissed that thought as fit for another day. “How could you possibly know you would beat Villiers? It was all so sudden, and violent.”

  “Had you never seen a sword fight before?”

  She shook her head. “I’m certain he almost stabbed you straight to the heart several times.”

  Damon actually laughed. “Sword fighting is tiresomely predictable, Roberta, and Villiers had no chance of injuring me. Truly. If he had really wished to kill me, he would have chosen pistols, because that changes the whole nature of the meeting. I knew that Villiers was an excellent swordsman. I also knew that I was better.”

  “How could you know that you were better?” she cried. “You haven’t met him before; Roberta told me so!”

  “Oh ye of little faith
,” he said, gathering her close. “I practice several times a week with Galliano, that’s why. He’s the best fencing master in London.”

  “It’s not that I don’t have faith in you,” she said, her voice muffled against his chest. “But—”

  He held her away, just enough so that she could see his eyes. “I knew I would win because I love you.”

  “What?”

  “Because I love you.”

  “You—You wouldn’t lose to Villiers because—because—”

  He was grinning at her like the fool he was. “Because I love you too much to lose.”

  “You—You!” she cried and flew at him, but whether it was to hit him for his male foolishness or what, she never knew because he kissed her so hard that the idea flew straight out of her head.

  “What about you?” he asked, sometime later, when she was clinging to his shoulders.

  A crooked smile played on the corner of her mouth. “Will I win a duel fought for your honor?”

  “No.”

  “Are you asking whether I love you?”

  He didn’t say anything. It was, Roberta realized, the very first time that she’d seen a shadow of anxiety in that huge, confident man, so easy with his smiles, so unassuming about his skills. So she relished it.

  For a short time.

  “Of course I love you,” she whispered, cupping his face in her hands. “And I always will.”

  “Even if I take to poetry and start writing poems to your toe?”

  “Yes.”

  “If I fall on my knees in the street and beg you to take me back to bed?”

  She was starting to smile, but: “Yes.”

  “I am on my knees, Roberta. I am begging.”

  A passing footman heard laughter from the sitting room and shook his head.

  Beaumont House had certainly changed since the duchess came back from Paris. Used to be the place was respectable. But now…wait till Fowle heard what that French piece named Mademoiselle Caro was thinking of doing for the duchess’s next ball. Every one of them nekked ladies would have peacock feathers at their behinds, that’s what he heard.

  With a sigh he pulled the sitting room door shut so that no one would accidentally see something they shouldn’t.

  Epilogue

  When the Villiers/Beaumont chess matches

  were fading in memory

  “I think,” Roberta said, “you might have let me win that one.”

  Who do you think you are, His Majesty himself?”

  “It was very nice of you to allow the prince to win last night,” she conceded.

  Her husband pushed away the chess set that lay between them on the bed. “You know how to play now. Perhaps we can try something else. I’m very fond of dominoes.”

  “You find it tedious partnering me?” She dimpled at him.

  “Nothing with you is tedious, except perhaps chess.” He dropped a kiss on her ear. “There are so many more interesting things to do.”

  “Such as?” she murmured, falling back onto the cushions.

  He took her invitation in a second, rolling on top of her and propping himself up on his elbows. “Such as kissing you,” he said, suiting action to words.

  “But what,” she said, “if I told you a surprise? Would that interest you?”

  “Can there be any surprises, after hearing that your father married a mermaid?”

  “After a proper courtship,” she reminded him.

  “Yes, but once you’ve brought a fish into the family, there’s no saying what will come next. Is it about Teddy? Because I think he’s turning into a fish as well. His nursemaid told me that he was in the river for hours yesterday.”

  “What about a baby?” she whispered.

  He froze for a second and then practically levitated off her body. “Did I injure you?” he gasped.

  She sat up, laughing. “Damon?”

  He came back to the bed and sat beside her, spreading his huge hands on her belly, his face a mixture of tenderness and love. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your belly is as flat as ever.”

  She started giggling. “Babies take a long time, Damon. Talk to me about flat bellies in a few months!”

  He bent down and kissed her tummy without saying a word.

  “Damon?” And then, when he still didn’t say anything, “Darling?”

  Finally he lifted his head. His eyes were filled with tears. “But—you never cry,” she said, foolishly.

  “I’m happy. You make me so happy.”

  She wound her arms around him and pulled him back on top of her. “Happiness makes you teary?”

  He smiled at that. “I’ve always won things fairly easy, Roberta.”

  She nodded. “Chess matches, fencing matches—”

  “Money.”

  “Lucky you.”

  “Until you came along, and told me you were in love with Villiers, and you wanted to marry him. And that you didn’t want to marry me. And then he asked you to marry him, and for the first time in my life it felt as if something important was slipping away from me and I might lose.

  “Even then I didn’t understand that you are the only important thing.” The tears stood unashamedly in his eyes.

  “Oh silly one,” she whispered. “You have me, remember? I love you. I’m your wife.”

  “I’m not playing chess anymore because there are no games that matter next to you, Roberta.”

  She kissed him into silence.

  A while later the Earl and Countess of Gryffyn lay curled together like two spoons, sleeping the kind of slumber that only happens in the afternoon, after the sweetest of marital intimacies.

  But in the countess’s tummy a little baby was awake. She turned a few acrobatic circles and practiced swimming, an activity enjoyed by babies, mermaids and big brothers. Then she flung out her arms in a huge dramatic gesture. And finally, her tiny mouth quirked into something that would resemble a smile, except babies that small can’t smile. She resembled her papa most of all…which meant that joy would walk beside her all the days of her life.

  Especially when she fell in love.

  A Note About Chess,

  Politics and Duchesses

  One of the benefits of being a professor of Shakespeare is that one never ceases to be surprised by one’s ignorance. I have forgotten the name of the graduate student who handed in a short paper on chess in The Tempest, but I owe him or her a great favor. When Miranda and Ferdinand are “discovered” playing chess, what was depicted was one of the few activities that a gentleman and a lady could engage in together in private. In fact, many such games took place by the sides of beds. Going back to the early Middle Ages, one can find pictures of troubadours playing games of strategy and skill with their ladies. The Georgian period was a tremendously exciting time for chess, as depicted here. New pieces were being introduced, and Philidor himself visited from Paris to play exhibition games at Parsloe’s.

  In the mysterious way of friendships, during some dinner party, some time, I carelessly mentioned the chess scene in The Tempest to my friend and fellow Fordham professor, Lenny Cassuto. It turned out that he is on the verge of being ranked a chess master. What he told me about the game of chess was so fascinating that our conversation and the many that followed led directly to this book.

  For those of you who love Shakespeare references, there are bits here from Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, The Rape of Lucrece and Hamlet—some marked and some unmarked. There are also traces of John Donne here and there. If you’d like to track down every reference, come onto my Bulletin Board and share your findings or ask for clues!

  I am also indebted to The Wind in the Willows. Reading this wonderful old book aloud to my daughter inspired my descriptions of the River Fleet. Ratty wrote a version of the marquess’s song, “Up tails, all!”

  And finally, if you happen to be a chess aficionado, the matches played by Jemma, Elijah and Villiers are all master matches. Though I wasn’t able to d
epict every move, if you’d like to know more about the matches themselves, please come to my website (www.eloisajames.com) and check out the Inside Take for Desperate Duchesses.

  Acknowledgments

  With profound thanks to my research assistant, Franzeca Drouin, who labored far beyond the call of duty on this book. Without her perspicuity, enormous knowledge, and excellent research skills, it would be a flimsy shadow of itself. Further thanks to the large circle of researchers whom she consulted about various issues ranging from the French language to signet rings.

  In addition, my assistant, Kim Castillo, made my life much easier with her organizational skills. Thank you both! Finally…a quick thanks to the wonderful readers who frequent my Bulletin Board. I can’t wait to see what you think of my Desperate Duchesses!

  About the Author

  Author of twelve 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.

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