A shadow crossed his eyes. “How is the duke?”
“Fine. Though he confessed that he has six illegitimate children.”
Elijah’s hand froze, a piece of steak halfway to his mouth.
“Six,” Jemma repeated. “What’s more, he did not actually father Lady Caroline Killigrew’s child. Do you remember all the fuss when he refused to marry her?”
Elijah nodded.
“It was astonishingly generous of him to allow that story to circulate. He said that he felt it was the gentlemanly thing to do.”
“Not an impulse he feels on a daily basis,” Elijah said dryly.
“Only Villiers would be so careless of his reputation that he allowed himself to be besmirched by a young lady he hardly knew.”
“It is the privilege of the uncaring.” There was a bit of a snap in his tone.
“He’s a great deal more sanctimonious than he allows. I believe that he finds a reputation for immorality useful.”
“He makes being on the side of the sinners look extremely attractive,” Elijah admitted, pulling off a cover and putting a helping of plaice on his plate.
“Whereas you make being on the side of the saints look very exhausting,” Jemma replied, seizing the opening.
He looked at her over the table. “I know what you’re going to say.”
“Then I shan’t ask it, because there’s nothing worse than a nagging wife, saying the things that one knows already.”
His smile made her heart beat suddenly faster. “I quite look forward to being nagged by you.”
“You mustn’t give me encouragement of this sort,” Jemma said, striving for a flirtatious tone. “We’ve lived apart so long that you’ve forgotten what a shrew I can be.”
“You were never a shrew,” he said, his voice low. They stared at each other a moment. “You didn’t even scream at me after walking into my office when I was—with my mistress.”
“I didn’t?” In all honesty, Jemma couldn’t remember anything but Sarah Cobbett’s yellow hair, hanging over the edge of Elijah’s large desk.
“You just looked at me, your face white. You dropped the picnic hamper you held, and you fled.”
Jemma gave him a little smile. “Don’t think I’d be as silent again. If I ever encountered such a scene now, I would bring the walls down around your ears.” But she said it knowing perfectly well that Elijah would never do such a thing again. That he’d changed, and she’d changed, and no woman stood between them.
“The look on your face was like a dagger,” Elijah said.
“Surely, you—”
“I’m not exaggerating. I’d seen that look before.”
“You had?”
He waved his fork at the walls. “You’ve taken down all the evidence.”
Jemma blinked at the walls. She’d had them repaneled and painted a dark crimson while they were in the country for Christmas. “They were oak,” she said confusedly. “I would hardly call that evidence of a crime, though they were rather old-fashioned.”
“A large and detailed picture of Judith and Holofernes used to hang directly before my father’s desk,” Elijah said, returning to his plate. “It was a particularly vivid tableau in which Judith waved Holofernes’s severed head with a distinct air of glee. I think my mother liked to believe that it would force my father to notice her rage, but I doubt she succeeded. He was not an observant man.”
“Your mother was angry about your father’s mistress?” Jemma asked cautiously.
“Something of that nature.”
The conversation was not going where Jemma had planned. The former duke’s dubious intimacies were interesting, but not relevant.
“In truth, I had a horrid day,” she said abruptly.
Elijah immediately put down his fork. “I am very sorry if the state of my health caused you any distress.”
“Distress?” For a moment she couldn’t continue; it felt as if her throat were closed to words. “I was quite unkind in the morning to a woman who is an acquaintance, if not precisely a friend. And I topped that piece of goodwill by goading Villiers into taking his illegitimate children under his own roof.”
“He can’t do that,” Elijah said, frowning. “Even his rank won’t inoculate him from becoming a pariah. What were you thinking, Jemma?”
“I wasn’t thinking.” She raised her chin, willing herself not to cry. “I was so angry at you for leaving this morning without even a note, that I behaved—” Despite herself, her voice wavered. She swallowed and continued. “I behaved like the worst sort of person, determined to win in both encounters no matter the damage I caused.”