This Duchess of Mine(31)

Jemma angrily dashed a tear away. “You just scorned such intimacies!”

“I am not made to be a courtier.”

What could she say? That she’d been fool enough to think that he was falling in love with her?

She leaned her head back against the cool dark window behind her. It wasn’t Elijah’s fault that his honor came before his wife. She should admire him for it. God knows, the world admired his nobility.

She opened her eyes again and looked at her beautiful, honorable husband. That same stupid, foolish man who thought to pass her over to Villiers like a package that might spoil if left in the rain.

“I am sorry to have caused you distress,” he said. She could tell he meant it.

“Distress.” She had to swallow. “Yes, well, I suppose that goes along with a dying husband.” The words fell harshly from her lips, and he flinched.

“It needn’t be like this between us,” he said, his hands sliding from her shoulders to her hands. “I thought we were…”

“We were what?” she inquired.

He didn’t reply. His eyes were the dark blue of a midnight sky, too beautiful for a man.

“You seem to consider me an appendage of the estate,” she said, charging recklessly, miserably, on. “A cow to be passed from hand to hand.”

“Jemma, you are growing hysterical—”

She interrupted him. “Allow me the grace to finish. Since you consider nothing in life to be more important than your work, the question of an heir cannot truly perturb you. You have known for more than a year that your heart was unstable, to say the least, and yet you refused to bed me until I finished my chess match with Villiers.”

His mouth tightened. “It was for the good of the child. I wouldn’t want the world to think that my heir was not of my blood.”

“Then I shall make this as clear as you have your refusal to leave the House of Lords. I will not sleep with you, Elijah. I am no brood mare, available for breeding during the spare moments you are not with Pitt or the chief magistrate.”

“Jemma!”

She raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“I have been longing to sleep with you.” The words were halting. “As much as if you were a drink of water in the desert.”

Elijah was not a man who wanted to reveal a vulnerability, ever. When she didn’t answer, he kissed first one of her palms, and then the other. His touch burned. “We desire each other, Jemma.”

“No,” she said stonily. “Or rather, yes. We do desire each other. But that’s not enough, Elijah.”

He dropped her hands. His eyes were shaded, dark and impenetrable. “Then woo me.”

“What?”

“I understand courtship. I see it in the House of Lords every day. It takes an elaborate courtship to convince a man that his opinion is wrong. That he has made a grave mistake in backing the slave trade, or the tax on wheat. If you are right, and I am spending my time in a fruitless effort, then convince me.”

“In the five minutes you spare me on your way to the House of Lords?”

“Are you giving up?”

She narrowed her eyes.

“I thought you never gave up. I thought you always wanted to win. I thought you were my equal in that, Jemma.”

“I cannot work miracles.”

“I’ll give you time. I have dropped some of my committees.” He was watching her closely. Her thoughts were tumbling between inconsolable misery and irritation. “I want what you give to Villiers,” he added.

That made her head snap up. “Oh for God’s sake, Elijah—”

“Please. Woo me.”

“Elijah, I don’t woo Villiers.”

“Please.” He caught up her hands again. “Please. I am not going to the House of Lords tomorrow. Allow me to accompany you?”

“Where?”

“Wherever you are going. Whatever you are doing.”

“I shan’t go out and save the world, or even one prisoner tomorrow, Elijah. It’s Thursday, and that means I shall go to the flower market.”

“Will you woo me even though I am a fool who enrages you?” He asked it quietly, but she heard the strain in his voice.

“You make me so angry.” The words spat like fat in the fire. But she found it impossible to harden her heart entirely. She was too infatuated. Of course, it was only infatuation.

She put a hand to his cheek. It was faintly bristly, male, so different from her own. Elijah said nothing, so she let her fingers spread over his cheek, turning her touch carnal. One touched his lips, another the arch of his cheekbone. He closed his eyes, and his dark eyelashes lay against his cheek like the shadow of sin.

“I won’t sleep with you. I won’t go to bed with you merely to have an heir. Your cousin can inherit for all I care.”