This Duchess of Mine(5)

“Are we allowed to be serious only about stockings?” she asked.

He thought about that longer than she thought necessary. “I am quite serious about scandal,” he offered.

“But never about passion itself?”

He wrinkled his nose but his eyes were sympathetic. “Thank God, infatuation has never forced me into seriousness. A beautiful woman should never be serious, Duchess.”

“Why not?”

“It implies that there is something you cannot have. And we who are not as beautiful prefer to believe that you have everything you wish for in life. That is the essence of beauty, after all.”

“I feel myself growing plainer every moment,” Jemma said. “Perhaps it is the curse of age.”

“Age and passion!” Corbin looked faintly nauseated.

“I shall have to ask your maid for a drink of brandy if you continue in this vein.”

“So I should not wear the chemise gown,” Jemma said.

“Absolutely not. In fact, given what you have just told me, the green silk may be a trifle too revealing in the bosom.”

“For a husband?”

“For your husband,” Corbin said. “The duke is…” He paused delicately. “Well, were Beaumont a woman, his skirts would be long and his neckline high.”

Jemma thought about that and shook her head. “I can’t transform into a Puritan wife in order to please Elijah. He’ll have to take me as I am.”

Corbin paused. “If you don’t mind the question, exactly what sort of taking do you have in mind?”

“We need an heir,” Jemma said.

“Of course. But that need not, in itself, involve passion on your part, and surely no anxiety. Though you might wish to put a bottle of brandy on the night table and take a surreptitious swig now and then.”

“I want more than that.”

“Thus the quest for passion?” Corbin asked.

“I’m a fool.”

“You’re not the first, but you set yourself such a difficult task, Duchess.”

“You’d better call me Jemma,” she said, rather grimly. “You’re the only one who knows.”

“I won’t advertise it and you shouldn’t either. So what you need is lessons in making a husband feel passion for his wife.”

It seemed impossible, put so bluntly. “I’ll wear the green dress.”

“Seductive clothing will never work, not—”

“Not for Beaumont.” She picked up a rosy ribbon and started wrapping it around one finger.

“If you wear the chemise dress, you’ll likely just make him angry. Or embarrassed. After all, such flamboyant clothing is designed to make a man hunger for what he cannot have, and what he cannot imagine. But a husband…”

“Precisely.”

“You’ll have to surprise him,” Corbin said. “Show him a side of you that he’s never seen.”

“I don’t have any sides,” Jemma said despairingly. “I play chess; he knows that. We play together occasionally.”

Corbin groaned. “Like an old married couple?”

“In the library,” she confirmed. “While discussing the news of the day.” But there was a look in Corbin’s eye, a smile. “What?” she asked.

“You have something that he’s never seen.”

“What?”

“You are a woman with a past, Jemma. And better than that, you have a reputation.”

She knitted her brow. “He doesn’t like my past. And he never liked my wilder parties. Some years ago he paid me a visit in Paris over Twelfth Night. You should have seen his face when I informed him that all the gentlemen were to come to my ball dressed as satyrs! He refused, of course. Every Frenchman wore a satyr’s tail, but Beaumont was in a frock coat, precisely as if it were not a masquerade at all.”

“Naturally. And I’ve never heard a breath of scandal attached to the duke.”

“He had a mistress, but no one considers that scandalous,” she said, dropping the ribbon in a tangled heap back on her dressing table.

“Because it isn’t. Mistresses are commonplace. And for a man of Beaumont’s character, the presence of such a woman in his life must have been shaming after a time.”

Jemma raised an eyebrow.

“They’re paid,” Corbin said. “Paid to play out the fantasies every man has in the back of his mind.”

“Fantasies!” Jemma cried, revolted. “He had a regular appointment with her, in his chambers at the Inns of Court, at lunchtime yet. How could that possibly stem from fantasy?”

“That’s just business,” Corbin said. “He likely made the arrangement before marriage, and simply forgot to change it. How old was the duke when he inherited the title?”