This Duchess of Mine(58)

The marquise and Elijah were tucked together on a small sofa. While Elijah stood up when she approached, there was something careless in the way he looked at her, and he immediately excused himself and sat down again, which was so extraordinarily rude that she could hardly believe it had just happened. Elijah was never rude.

Jemma stood in front of the sofa for a moment like a gauche debutante. “Do allow me to join your conversation,” she said, managing to keep her tone calm with an effort.

Elijah glanced up at her. “Of course,” he said, blinking as if he’d forgotten she was there at all. “I shall pull up a chair for you.”

The moment he stepped away to bring a chair, she seated herself beside Louise. “How are you tonight, dear marquise?”

Louise eyed her a little blurrily and then smiled. “I am enjoying myself. Your husband is the sweetest, most attentive man I’ve ever met.”

“I can imagine—” Jemma began, but then Elijah reappeared with a chair.

“We were discussing foolish antics from our childhoods,” he said. His eyes slid directly past Jemma and focused on the marquise again. Perhaps on her bosom; Jemma couldn’t quite tell.

“Villiers and I were just discussing the same thing!” Jemma said gaily. “He insists that he was an extraordinarily naughty boy as a lad.”

At that, Elijah finally looked at her. “Give me the boy and you give me the man,” he said. There was something remarkably cold in his tone.

“Were you naughty?” she asked him, fanning herself slightly. This conversation was not going precisely as she had planned.

“Between the two of us, I expect that you would win that particular ribbon,” he said.

“I was a bit of a madcap,” the marquise put in.

“I can’t believe that,” Elijah said, his tone caressing.

“You are, of course, lauded for being exceptionally stylish, but also for your irreproachable reputation.”

The marquise giggled and fluttered her eyelashes at him. “I assure you that I was a bit of a romp. My mother despaired of me. Why, I had a wild infatuation with Villiers. I took every opportunity I could to flirt with him, though my mother made it as difficult as possible.”

“Women have always shown an attraction to Villiers,” Elijah said. “It’s astonishing, from a logical point of view.”

Jemma realized there were undercurrents to the conversation that she wasn’t grasping. Elijah leaned forward and took the marquise’s fan from her hand, acting as if Jemma wasn’t even sitting there. “This is exquisite,” he said. “A lovely dancing scene. It can’t have been a gift from Villiers, of course, given as it is more coquettish than debauched.”

“As if I would accept a gift from Villiers,” Louise said, seemingly remembering her finicky disposition for a moment. “I am a married woman, Your Grace!”

“I have accepted many such small gifts,” Jemma put in. “Villiers gave me an exquisite fan last year…dear me, I wonder what could have happened to it? It was one of my very favorites.” She knew quite well what had happened to it. Her husband had taken one glance, thrown it to a footman, and she never saw it again.

“Perhaps he’ll give you another,” Elijah said. “My dear marquise, you appear a bit flushed. Shall we find you another glass of Champagne?”

Jemma opened her mouth to say that further Champagne was inadvisable, or something along those lines, but the marquise had already bounded up from the sofa and was flouncing away on Elijah’s arm before she could formulate the sentence.

Leaving her alone on the sofa.

“How the mighty are fallen.” Villiers plumped himself down next to her and handed her a glass.

She turned to him and to her horror felt tears rising to her eyes. “He’s angry for some reason, that’s all.”

“Drink your Champagne,” Villiers said. “Of course he’s angry. Elijah has no interest in my cousin, a sweet little drunken duck of a woman. Don’t be a fool.”

His tone was bracing, and the Champagne helped too. “He doesn’t want to flirt with me,” Jemma said a few minutes later, rather sadly.

“That makes two of us,” Villiers said. “Perhaps he wants something more than a light flirtation with you. You are his wife, after all.”

“But I intended to woo him this week,” she said desperately.

“Men can take only so much wooing. Not that I’ve experienced much of it.”

“That was the point. Elijah never had a chance to have the fun of flirting with a seductive woman. It was supposed to be fun!”

“Are you sure that Elijah considers it fun?”