Desperate Duchesses (23 page)

“Must you?” she asked. “Vil iers never wears one.”

“He is hardly decent; he doesn’t even powder his hair. Vil iers is no one.” He said it wearily, but truly. Vil iers didn’t have the ear of the King, nor even the ear of Fox, Pitt’s great rival. He was no one.

“And you?” his wife said. Her fingers began to gently knead his scalp, touching him here and there. Her touch had the cool blessedness of water.

He leaned his head into her hands, a gesture of weakness and yet…She was his wife. What mattered weakness before her? She didn’t love him, nor he her, but there was a bond there, between husband and wife, that was different from any other bond.

“Perhaps,” she said, sounding uncharacteristical y uncertain, “you ought to reduce your appointments, Beaumont. You don’t appear wel .”

For a moment he just enjoyed the feeling of her slender fingers working through his hair, taking away the tightness of his scalp. And then her words filtered through to his brain.

“Appointments!” He swore and leapt from the chair. A moment later he snatched his wig and threw it on his head, helter-skelter. Made a leg to his lady, filing away a thought about how very beautiful she was for some other moment, and rushed from the room.

Jemma was left, staring down at the chess table.

Day three of the Villiers/Beaumont chess matches

R
oberta felt as if she’d falen through a hole in the wal and ended up in Miggery’s Traveling Circus. Events swirled around her in which she played no part. She had envisioned a grand seduction campaign. She had planned to bribe Vil iers’s footmen and to trap him into marriage. She had schemed to use a substitute wedding certificate. But, in the end, what was necessary?

Quote a bit from
The Rape of Lucrece
, wear a gown that was a trifle too smal and suddenly…

Suddenly what? The Duke of Vil iers had declared his intention to court her, in front of her papa, but what did that mean?

The question had kept her awake. Could it have just been an unscrupulous jest on his part? But a package was delivered the next morning. It was a soft bundle of pale blue velvet tied in ribbon, about the size of an expensive bible. When she untied it, a card fel to the floor. She snatched it up and found spiky black letters that were indubitably no one’s but Vil iers’s.

I have no Familiarity with Courtship. Pray do not abuse your Power, Fair One. I find this trifle Reminds me of
you.

A special volume of Shakespeare’s poetry, she thought. There was more blue velvet. And when that fel open…Not Shakespeare. It was a portrait. It showed a young country girl wearing a simple dress and holding a smal cage.

“Oh, how lovely!” Jemma cried, when Roberta showed it to her a few minutes later. “It’s painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, of course. How exquisite.”

“Why do you suppose she is holding a mouse trap?” Roberta asked.

“Is that what it is?” Jemma peered closer and something indefinable crossed her face. Could it be longing—or—or jealousy? Roberta’s heart thumped. She wanted Vil iers; she wanted her friendship with Jemma almost as much.

But Jemma was gay in her answer. “Darling, it’s a mousetrap because—wel —you do know the old adage about marriage, don’t you?”

Roberta frowned. “A trap?”

“The parson’s mousetrap.” Jemma’s laughter sounded clear and true, and not at al tainted by jealousy.

Roberta didn’t like the portrait quite as much as she had a moment before.

“Pure Vil iers,” Jemma was saying. “An exquisite, hideously expensive gift…any other man would have sent you a ruby.

His present has a hidden jest.”

“It’s not as if he’s thumbing his nose at me?” Roberta asked.

“Oh no. He’s sharing the joke, don’t you see? Marriage is madness, you know. He’s making a joke of it, because one can hardly do otherwise.”

One couldn’t? Somehow…Roberta could see it otherwise. Though that was foolish beyond al measure, given that she was the same woman who planned to cold-bloodedly trick Vil iers into marriage. And now that he was walking into the trap, and laughing at its boundaries, she felt uncomfortable?

“We’l have a dinner party,” Jemma was saying. “He’l spring the question, of course, and it wil be most amusing.”

“Wil he?”

“Of course he wil .” Jemma peered at her. “You do realize how much a painting by Reynolds costs, don’t you?”

Roberta looked again at the odd, cunning expression in the girl’s eyes, the shadow cast by the mousetrap onto the soft muslin of the girl’s dress and the cat’s bright eyes. “You don’t think he guessed that I planned to set a trap for him?”

Jemma shrugged. “Who cares? Would you credit his earnestness if he had sent you a necklace of rubies?”

Roberta nodded.

“This is better than a necklace. Even the frame is superb. Now who shal I invite to the dinner party? It has to be just the right mix to present the proper frame for Vil iers’s demise.”

“Demise”
?

“It wil seem so to the
ton
,” Jemma said. “Believe me. Ladies have set their caps at him for the past ten years, and you merely smiled at him and he surrendered. You, my dear, are about to become the toast of London.”

“Even given my father’s presence?” Roberta said faintly.

“Of course,” Jemma said. “And Mrs. Grope. Do you know, Roberta, I’m not sure that Mrs. Grope entirely shares your papa’s enthusiasm for her future career as a notorious courtesan?”

“It is my belief that she would like to marry him,” Roberta said. “I don’t think he understands that, though.”

“Men never see things,” Jemma said with a sigh. “Their marriage would cause a terrible scandal.”

“Because of her loss of character?”

“Wel , yes,” Jemma said. “Look at Elizabeth Armistead, Fox’s mistress. He openly professes his affection, and I’m quite certain that he’l marry her at some point. The bets in White’s have been running in her favor these four years. Even so, she is not received at or invited to most events.”

“Ah.”

“The
ton
is a brutal barometer of acceptability, I assure you. I shal have to invite some respectable women to dinner, but I must speak to Beaumont first.”

“About the dinner?”

Jemma seemed to have rethought whatever it was she was about to say, because she changed the subject entirely. “A far more crucial problem,” she said, “is which mantuamaker should receive your patronage.”

Roberta thought grateful y of the rol of banknotes her papa had given her. It made everything so much easier; she didn’t feel like a horrid pauper, dressing in Jemma’s clothing.

“I would suggest that we use a Frenchwoman,” Jemma said. “It’s not that I am inherently prejudiced against my countrywomen. Wel …perhaps I am.”

Roberta burst out laughing, and in the ensuing delightful conversation, she quite forgot about the question of who was to be invited to the dinner party. “I should like a bal oon hat. Do you know them, Jemma?”

Jemma nodded. “In Paris they are cal ed
lunardi
. I’m not sure whether it wil suit you, dearest. Al those feathers…so much trimming!”

“I saw one in the park yesterday made of rose-colored French gauze with a wide brim,” Roberta said. “A young lady was wearing it quite low on one side, and high on the other.”

“Ah,” Jemma said. “That does sound interesting. The one I have is al Italian tiffany pinned in loose puckers around the brim. I liked it very much, but then the wire poked out of the brim and stuck me in the ear one day and I never wore it again.”

“Of course, the brim is wired,” Roberta said. “How clever!”

“We’l address the dinner party later,” Jemma said. “I think we should go to Bond Street this very moment.”

Jemma didn’t think about the dinner party again until her husband appeared to play his part of the game with her. He moved as quickly as ever, knight to Queen’s Bishop Three, but Jemma was aware of a slight feeling of unease. She took her time. Final y she moved a knight to King’s Bishop Three.

“Interesting,” Elijah said, giving her move a lightning quick glance. She was learning a great deal about her husband from their game. He seemed to grasp the connotations of her moves in two seconds. In truth, the power of his mind was astonishing.

“I thought to give a dinner party this week,” she said, sitting back. He looked less tired today, although there was a deep-down exhaustion in his eyes that she found rather worrying.

“We haven’t had people to sup here since you left for Paris,” he said. He appeared to have forgotten about the offensive presence of Mrs. Grope. “Fowle wil be ecstatic.”

“I thought we could come up with a guest list between the two of us,” Jemma said, “excluding anyone who would make an issue of not attending due to the marquess’s companion. Harriet wil lend us consequence and she won’t make a fuss. Who would you like to invite?”

“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 shal invite Vil iers, 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 real y 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 Vil iers. It would be best if we added two.”

“I met someone interesting at your bal ,” 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 intel igent,” he said, pushing himself up from the table.

“Are there other persons whom you would like to see at the table? Caro shal make arrangements for me, Beaumont, but I assure you that I shal 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; Vil iers was far more deliberative. Beaumont calculated in a heartbeat; Vil iers 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 Vil iers’s card. “But I must tel 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 Vil iers, plays it very quiet to the chest, he says.”

“Close to the chest,” Jemma said absentmindedly. It made sense from what she knew of Vil iers. 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 stil to take me to these gardens. I am finding that red hair is perhaps not such a grave defect.”

Vil iers 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 al . It was al 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 al , 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.” Vil iers 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?”