Desperate Duchesses

Page 45

“From the House?”
“No! That is, not unless the person was a particular friend of yours.”
“A friend,” Beaumont said, almost as if he were testing the word on his tongue.
“Speaking of friends, or rather former friends,” Jemma said, watching him, “I shall invite Villiers, as he is courting Lady Roberta.”
Beaumont shrugged. His smile had a touch of wryness. “A prevarication? My distinct impression is that he is courting my wife, if the word can be used so.”
“Most gentlemen are courting three or four people at the same time. Courting is merely an activity, like eating.”
“Except that the dish in question is you,” he said. But he sounded weary, not really interested, and certainly not jealous.
“So we have the marquess and Mrs. Grope—”
“Mrs. Grope”?
Jemma smiled at his bark of laughter. “Didn’t Fowle mention her name? Roberta is not entirely certain that Mr. Grope ever existed. At any rate, we have eight of us, including Roberta, Damon and Villiers. It would be best if we added two.”
“I met someone interesting at your ball,” Beaumont said. “Miss Charlotte Tatlock.”
Jemma frowned. “One of the daughters of Sir Patrick Tatlock? I have only the slimmest acquaintance with them.”
“She seemed remarkably intelligent,” he said, pushing himself up from the table.
“Are there other persons whom you would like to see at the table? Caro shall make arrangements for me, Beaumont, but I assure you that I shall curb her imagination. She can play the pianoforte for us afterwards.”
He shook his head. “The devil with my reputation. If Pitt can’t see that I’m hardly in the debauched company of the Prince of Wales and his friends, then he can bar me his company.”
“He’s no fool.”
“I go to meet him now,” he said with a rueful smile, made his leg and departed.
Jemma went to her little writing desk. It was frustrating to realize that she was so far out of the current of English society that she didn’t know instantly who would be so overcome by curiosity as to be unable to resist the idea of dining in company with Mrs. Grope. In the end, she invited Corbin. He would never chatter about the event, even if she placed him next to Mrs. Grope.
Her husband moved his chess pieces as if there were no other move than the one he had just thought of; Villiers was far more deliberative. Beaumont calculated in a heartbeat; Villiers brooded. As a player, he was very similar to her. He clearly spent a good deal of the day thinking of dazzling possibilities. He was a swashbuckling player, and she was something of the same. Elijah was some other kind of player: taut, deliberate, incredibly fast.
Brigitte brought in the Duke of Villiers’s card. “But I must tell you, my lady, that Joseph accompanies his master. He just told me that he asked, but he thinks no one in the household knows of the affair with Lady Caroline, even the duke’s valet. His Grace, the Duke of Villiers, plays it very quiet to the chest, he says.”
“Close to the chest,” Jemma said absentmindedly. It made sense from what she knew of Villiers. He would never amiably discuss his affaires with a valet. “The écharpe cloak is yours, Brigitte. I do hope that your acquaintance with Joseph has not been too tedious.”
Brigitte dimpled. “He has still to take me to these gardens. I am finding that red hair is perhaps not such a grave defect.”
Villiers appeared wearing an extraordinary cloak embroidered in peacock feathers. Jemma eyed it and said nothing. He was flaunting something…what? His costume seemed almost a slap in the face to those who felt men should dress more soberly than did women.
She took a pawn with her queen; he moved a knight to Queen’s Bishop Three; they both settled back in their chairs.
“How was your morning?” she asked.
“Terrifyingly out of the mundane.”
She looked up. “Oh?”
“I pensioned my mistress.”
Jemma thought about that for a moment and decided that he wouldn’t mind a frank question. “How much does it cost to do such a thing?”
“It’s a matter of balancing economics and affection,” he said. “I am fond of her, and more to the point, she lived in a house of mine for three years.”
“Was she distraught?”
“Not at all. It was all amicable, which told me that I should have done it a year ago.”
“I think it must be tiresome to be a man, when it comes to these matters,” Jemma said. “After all, in the last three years you have had, one must presume, some little interludes with gentlewomen of the ton, and at the same time, your mistress was waiting for you.”
“I’m not so old yet that you need question my prowess.”
She smiled faintly at that. “’Tis the emotions that would tire me.”
“Sometimes it does feel a bit complicated. Sophia is a courtesan to be reckoned with, you see. She games, she kisses, she has many demands.”
Jemma toyed with a chess piece. “And thus you gave her up?”
“Oh no, I gave her up because I plan to marry.” Villiers watched her closely to see whether she would show signs of jealousy.
She surprised him again, smiling at him with true appreciation in her eyes. “Then you did just the right thing.”
He gaped at her. “Yes?”
“I feel that a gentleman should no longer pay for women’s company once he takes a wife,” she said. “I find the practice distasteful at the best of times, but dishonorable once vows are said.”
He swallowed his astonishment. “Rather old-fashioned of you, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Actually, I think it is the future,” she said. “The Hellfire Club, with all their fêtes and nymphs…they’re dying, though they don’t see it yet. France was the same. The Queen herself, Marie Antoinette, is turning to settled domesticity, I promise you.”
“So your husband’s party will bring with them sober behavior and settled mores? Wives who play at dairy maids rather than flamboyant courtesans?”
She laughed. “My husband and his set are as likely to have mistresses as men of other parties. They simply do not flaunt their affections, at least not as much as does Fox.”
“Fox’s Elizabeth is a remarkable creature.”
“I met her in Paris and was most impressed.”
“So I thought I would join the settled ones by marrying your ward,” he said, watching her through his eyelashes.
Her smile was disappointingly genuine. In fact, Villiers was aware of an interior whisper suggesting that his revenge didn’t appear particularly effective. Jemma didn’t seem to give a damn whether he married or no.
“You could not make a better choice. Roberta is remarkably beautiful, as you know, but she is also intelligent and witty. The only possible defect is that she doesn’t play chess.” Jemma made a funny face.
“Ah, but I have you for that,” he said, touching one of her delicate fingers. It had come to him in the middle of the night that what he really wanted from this was not, in truth, the match itself. It was she. He wanted her, that deep intelligence, and the way she sparked into sudden laughter, the pure elegance of the way she moved and spoke.