When the Duke Returns

Page 66

Her lip curled. “I don’t. You’re right. I want to admire my husband.”
He ignored that. She had the tongue of an Italian fishwife, but her eyes were saying something else. “You’re singing,” he said suddenly.
The note broke off.
“You love me.”
“I don’t.”
“You do. You love me.” The certainty of it was in his heart.
When she finally spoke, her voice was gentle. “You probably thought that the princess loved you too, didn’t you, Simeon?”
He blinked at her, having forgotten what princess they were talking about.
“Some men are just like that,” she said, almost to herself, her voice lilting as if she were singing, a sad little song in a minor key. “They think everyone loves them.”
“And sometimes a woman thinks that no one could love her,” he said, catching her again as she was about to slip through the door.
“I haven’t allowed any men to know me,” she said. “Except you.”
“I love you.” He said it, and knew it was true.
But she didn’t act as if she heard. “I’ll be in London,” she said. “I’ll ask the solicitor to write you directly, Simeon.” Then she brushed off his hand as if he were no more than a passerby and left the room.
He stood there for a long time, thinking about a little girl who had just lost her parents and sang instead of weeping. And a grown woman who didn’t believe he loved her, and sang while she spoke. But never wept.
She would understand once she got to London. She would see what they had together.
As for Isidore, she retired into the Dower House’s bedchamber and indulged in an angry fit of tears. Why did Simeon have to have those dusky brown eyes, which were too damn beautiful for a man? Somehow it was even more of an affront that he had decided to dress like an English gentleman that morning. It made it harder to think about him as an object of ridicule, a man who trotted around the countryside dressed in short trousers, talking about the Middle Way.
It made it harder to scorn him, when he bowed with such easy and impersonal formality, held her gloved hand for just the right amount of time, as if he’d never told her to throw away her gloves.
He was in control again. Hatred of that fueled Isidore all the way to London the next day, all the way to Jemma’s house.
Where she discovered a houseful of servants, but no Jemma.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Gore House, Kensington
London, seat of the Duke of Beaumont
March 8, 1784
Isidore spent the two days before Jemma returned unsuccessfully attempting not to think about her marriage. Or, to be more exact, the lack thereof.
“Simeon doesn’t like me,” she told Jemma, once she finally came home. “Well, he may be right. That is, he likes things to be calm and ordered. And I’m afraid I don’t take directions—”
“Take directions?” Jemma said, sounding rather stunned. “What sort of directions? And what do you mean, he doesn’t like you?”
“He wishes I were someone else,” Isidore said, looking about for her handkerchief. “You see, he had the idea that his wife would be sweet and docile.”
Jemma snorted.
“His mother wrote him bundles of letters describing me as some sort of virtuous seamstress, even though I had left her household years before.”
“Lies are never helpful in a marriage,” Jemma observed.
“I suppose not,” Isidore said, wiping away a tear. “But it wasn’t my lie. At any rate, I’ve been a terrible shock to him. I make decisions quite quickly, you know, and I don’t always think beforehand.”
“You are darling, if impulsive,” Jemma said.
“That’s a nice way to put it. I think Simeon’s assessment is more harsh.”
“He’s a fool,” Jemma said, interrupting. “But darling, you’re going to have to forgive him for that sort of foolishness. It’s endemic in the gender.”
Isidore pressed her lips together. “I wouldn’t mind, but—”
“He hurt your feelings,” Jemma said.
Tears fell on Isidore’s hand. “I’ve been so stupidly foolish, Jemma, and I think I fell in love with him. But he doesn’t even like me, I mean, the kind of person I am. And I just can’t take that. I feel so hurt.”
Jemma wound an arm around her. “Quite rightly, darling. I like you and love you too, and so does every sane person in Europe.”
“Every time I want to—you know—I feel as if I’m having to seduce him. You can’t imagine what that’s like, Jemma. It’s so humiliating!” Her voice trailed into a sob.
“You mean he doesn’t approach you?”
“No. The fi-first time was because I took off my clothing in front of him.”
Jemma laughed.
“And that was your fault! You told me that men don’t—well—I can’t remember, anyway, you were absolutely right. I took off my clothes, and he couldn’t resist me but then he wasn’t happy about it afterwards.”
“He wasn’t? Are you sure?”
“Well, he was, but then he wasn’t. The second time, his brother was staying in the Dower House, so I asked Simeon to go for a walk with me.”
“And you took off your clothing again?” Jemma sounded fascinated.
“No, but I made it quite clear…I mean, I had to ask him to go for a walk!”
Jemma was tapping her lips with one finger. “Very unusual.”
“He didn’t really ever want to make love to me, but I forced his hand. And now he says that I’m impulsive and I don’t obey him. I really think he’d be happier with someone far more docile,” Isidore said. “He would. And he doesn’t—”
“Don’t tell me again that he doesn’t like you,” Jemma said hastily. “I don’t believe it for a moment. It sounds to me as if he lost his temper.”
“Oh no, Simeon never loses his temper.”
“Never?”
“Not even when workmen attacked his mother and myself. He didn’t show a bit of passion. He was absolutely calm, and he simply knocked out two of them and kicked down the third and—”
“He did?”
Isidore twisted her handkerchief. “And then he said it was all my fault because I hadn’t waited for him.”
“How very unpleasant. It sounds to me as if the duke needs to lose his temper, so that he descends from his sanctimonious heights.”
“Oh, he never will,” Isidore said dispiritedly. “Why, I expect that I could kiss another man directly in front of him, and he would just watch me in that unemotional way he has.”
“I’d like to see that,” Jemma said. And then, thoughtfully: “I truly would.”
“What?”
“See you kiss another man in front of your husband—that same husband who thinks that bedding is all a matter of the body and not the heart.”
“He’d probably just turn away. And that would—” Isidore sniffed.
But Jemma’s eyes were shining. “It will be good for you too. I think you’re letting that husband of yours get away with far too much. He’s making you feel small, and less than your wonderful self. He needs a lesson.”