Villiers cast him a look under heavy-lidded eyes. “You wound me, Feddrington.”
“We all lose sometimes,” the man said, smirking.
“But here’s a question. The duke and the duchess have both beat Villiers, and he’s rated first in the club. So who’s first?” He turned to Parsloe. “Are they to play each other?”
“Doubtless we shall play each other on many occasions,” Elijah said, smoothly cutting in before Parsloe could name him number one, as Jemma was certain he was about to do. “As it happens, my duchess and I intend to play the final game in our rather widely publicized match in the very near future.”
Villiers gave a little crooked grin. “The duchess had an equally publicized match with me some months ago, but she threw over the game. Shall we assume that she fights to the end with you?”
“Such is the nature of marriage,” Elijah said.
“We shall make the outcome of the duke and duchess’s match the key to rating these two players,” Villiers said, laying down the law. “Should the duchess win, she will become number one, and vice versa.”
Jemma always meant to win her final game with Elijah. Now the only thing that stood between her and victory was her refusal to bed her husband, because for all that Elijah seemed to enjoy their wooing, she had no real expectation that he would come to understand her point of view.
She could bear being ranked number two. “Tonight,” she said to Villiers, and swept from the room.
She found herself in the carriage, waiting for Elijah, who was engaged in conversation with a couple of elderly women. “Did you know them from somewhere?” she asked curiously once he joined her.
“Not so to speak,” Elijah said. “Mrs. Mogg was kind enough to bet on my winning the game with Villiers, so I felt I had to give her the news in person. She has a shilling sixpence riding on my beating you as well,” he added.
Jemma smiled. “I do hope that she has some money laid aside for a rainy day. Because that shilling is lost.”
Elijah leaned over. “Pride goeth…” he said softly. Suddenly the air in the carriage changed, and every nerve in Jemma’s body jumped to attention.
“Elijah,” she breathed.
The duke was a man who knew when a game was won, without even being played. Anyone who had seen the look in his eyes after he beat Villiers would have recognized his face when the duke and duchess stepped from the carriage in front of Beaumont House.
The duchess looked pink-cheeked, disheveled, and a little dazed.
The duke was smiling.
Chapter Fourteen
London town house of the Duke of Villiers
15 Piccadilly
That evening
“I haven’t been here since Villiers was on the point of death,” Elijah commented as they walked up the steps.
“I’ve never been here,” Jemma said, wondering if she ought to hand her pelisse over to the duke’s butler. He looked extremely old and frail; the weight of it might knock him to the ground. Elijah saved her the decision by taking off her pelisse and handing it directly to a footman.
“His Grace and his guests are in the sitting room,” the butler proclaimed, tottering ahead of them.
Jemma walked into the room and almost checked her step. Villiers had invited the Marquise de Perthuis. And this was not the marquise who would be recognized in the Court of Versailles either. Rather than her customary frizzed, crimped wig, styled to be nearly as wide as it was tall, the marquise was clearly wearing her own hair, albeit powdered. It was dressed in loose ringlets all over her head, with some flowing down each side.
What’s more, she had eschewed her black-and-white attire for a chemise gown, precisely the style that Corbin had declared too sensual for Jemma to wear. The marquise’s gown was made of pale hyacinth blue lustring so delicate that the fabric floated behind her as she turned to rap the gentleman she was speaking to on the shoulder with her fan. He turned his head and Jemma realized it was Corbin. But she couldn’t help noting that the marquise looked utterly delectable and outrageously sensuous.
“The marquise looks much better sober,” Elijah remarked. “Shall we?” Not even waiting for Jemma, he walked forward. The marquise’s roguish smile turned to something else, something delicious and intimate.
Jemma’s mouth tightened. Given the way the marquise’s bodice dipped in the front, Elijah could probably see her nipples.
Villiers appeared at her elbow. “Dear me,” he said, an obvious thread of amusement in his voice. “Did I misstep by inviting my dear cousin to dinner? You seemed to have achieved civility, if not friendship, in the past.”