There was only one thought in his mind, beating through his body with the force of a tidal wave. The minute they entered the house, he would carry her up the stairs. The hell with any servants who might be watching. He would take her straight into his bedchamber.
Finally, after years, he was taking his wife. She was his again. His—
“We hardly know each other,” Jemma whispered. She was seated on his lap, her head tucked into the curve of his shoulder.
“I do know you. Your name is Jemma, and you are my wife.” And soon I mean to know you in another fashion, he added silently.
“We separated for nine years,” she said, looking up at him. “We bungled our marriage before. I don’t want to rush into this. It’s important.”
He bent his head and nipped her lip. “I promise you that I never rush.”
She gurgled with laughter at that, and then fell silent again when he took her mouth with all the urgency in his heart. Time was finally on his side, had finally brought them together. It felt more important than life, even than death—
She interrupted that thought. “I’ve decided that we need to spend more time together. Almost as if we were courting, if that makes sense.” He couldn’t tell her…No. He wouldn’t tell her.
“I’ll woo you,” he said, snatching up her fingers for a kiss. A horrifying thought crossed his mind. “Jemma, you’re not suggesting that we shouldn’t sleep together tonight, are you?” Every muscle in his body froze at the thought.
“No.” She said it clearly, meeting his eyes. For all her sophistication, his Jemma was not the sort to banter when the subject was most important.
“Ah.” He nuzzled her cheek, letting his voice fall to a seductive timbre. “Where will you be sleeping?”
But two could play at that game. She turned her face, caught his lips, breathed into the secret silence of his mouth. “With you.” And then, again, even quieter: “With you.”
Her eyes had turned a smoky blue, a color he would gladly look at every day of his life.
His heart stopped for a moment, kept going.
“But I shall woo you, Elijah.”
“Women don’t woo,” he said, not really listening. He was trying to ignore the beating of his heart, as syncopated as the raindrops just beginning to fall on the roof of the carriage.
Her smile sent a flare of heat up his spine. “I have never paid much attention to that sort of rule. I do not need to be wooed, Elijah.”
“And I do?”
She nodded. “You do. Could you perhaps take some time for yourself in the next few weeks? Persuade Pitt and the rest of them that the country will survive without your help?”
“I’m won,” he said. His voice sounded dark and low.
“Consider me wooed and won, Jemma. Please.”
She was laughing against his mouth, pulling away. “Not yet.”
“I don’t have a mistress, Jemma. There’s no one to win me from, I promise you.”
“It’s not that. Though I am glad to hear—”
“Not since you discovered us on my desk,” he said, coming out with the somber truth of it. “And no one else either.”
Her eyes grew round.
“You see, I decided it was you—or no one.” She seemed too stunned to speak. He bit back a smile. “Couldn’t we consider me won?”
She cupped his face in her hands. “I’m wooing you because I want it to be different than it was nine years ago. Because you and I, Elijah, we will be together until we’re old and gray.”
It was one of the great acts of courage in his life to smile at her. “And how does the Duchess of Beaumont woo, when she puts her mind to it?”
“That remains to be seen,” Jemma said. “I used to enjoy receiving poetry, but somehow I can’t see myself breaking into verse. Perhaps we’ll start with chess. We have a game left to play in our match. Don’t you remember?”
The carriage was swinging around the corner. They would be home in a moment. Blood thrummed through his body with a dark promise of pleasure.
He forced himself to sound light rather than desperate, laughing rather than lustful. “How could I not? You owe me a last game. I seem to remember that there were a few rules attached to that game.”
“We’re to play blindfolded,” she said. He could hear the faintest tremor of desire in her voice, just the promise of huskiness. But he meant to make her cry aloud with pleasure, grip his shoulders, beg for more.
“Blindfolded and in bed,” he said slowly, tracing a pattern on her knee. He felt as if his fingers burned through her skirts, as if he caressed the pale perfection of her thigh instead of just rumpling her gown. “An unusual style of wooing, Jemma. But I like it.”