This Duchess of Mine(61)

“I saw the two of you together,” Elijah said. “Do you know, Jemma, that I am besotted?” He was speaking between clenched teeth.

Her heart thumped. “Is that a compliment?”

“It means that I can’t stop watching you. It means that I watched you near the fireplace, touching Villiers, smoothing his hair, talking to him. That was no ripe, easily dismissed flirtation between a drunken woman and a man she decided to compliment!”

Jemma opened her mouth but he swept on.

“May I ask exactly why you set that woman to flirting with me? I felt as if I were a steak on a string, being dangled before a dog. Just what did I do to deserve that, Jemma?”

“How did you know?” Jemma cried. “It wasn’t supposed to be a punishment! I was trying to give you some fun! I thought if another woman wooed you, it would be fun for you!”

“Do you want to know the truly ironic thing about this?” Elijah asked.

Jemma was fairly sure she didn’t want to know, but he didn’t wait for her to answer. “I told Villiers to go ahead with his seduction. I told him to try his best, because I was winning you.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake!” Jemma said, losing her temper entirely. “You discussed me? You discussed which one of you could have me? Were my feelings in the matter ever taken into consideration at all?”

Elijah held up his hand. The chess king stood on his palm, arms folded, glaring. “I told him to go ahead and court you, and look what happened.”

Jemma frowned.

With one swift movement, Elijah hurled the white king straight into the fireplace. It shattered against the bricks. Jemma gasped, but by then the white queen was also in shards. Words choked her throat, but rather than utter them, she just folded her arms and waited. It was too late for the set. Once the king was gone, the set was gone.

She would have thought that Elijah might get tired of it, but no. Every single ivory piece smashed against the back of the fireplace, followed by the black pieces. They smashed more easily; she had to suppose that chalcedony was brittle.

Then her husband turned back to her. “Now is my face calm and reasonable?” he demanded.

“No.”

“I have my limits, Jemma. I will not watch you and Villiers express your—your love for each other in front of my very eyes. You played with his hair.”

“But—”

“You held hands with him. In front of a dinner party of some six persons. In front of your husband, you took his hand! I am a man, Jemma. You are mine, not his.”

“I belong to no one,” Jemma protested. She felt extraordinarily tired, and rather sad. This all confirmed her notion that Elijah’s relation with Villiers was far more important to him than that with his wife. “May I inquire why my chess set had to go the way of the fireplace?”

“You know why.”

“Because it was a gift from a man?”

“Not any man. Villiers. I lost my temper—” He caught himself, looking surprised. “I lost my temper because—”

“Villiers didn’t give me that chess set,” Jemma said. She folded her arms across her chest.

“Of course he did. He—”

“Lord Strange sent me the chess set.”

There was a moment of silence—and she enjoyed every second of it. Finally, Elijah said, “I apologize. I’m sorry about the damn chess set, Jemma. But you can’t behave like that in front of me—”

“Why not?”

“Because—Because you’re mine.” His eyes claimed her with the same ruthlessness as his words.

“Am I yours because you care about me, or because you don’t want to share anything with Villiers?”

There was a moment of stark silence in the room. “Why on earth would you think such a thing?” he asked finally.

She turned away, picked up the poker and stirred the shards in the back of the fireplace. “Because it is true. Because your possessiveness has more to do with Villiers than with me.”

“Not so. I cannot share you with any man, Jemma. I cannot.” The words seemed wrenched from his chest.

“Good night, Elijah.”

He caught her arm as she turned. “Tomorrow?”

“Surely Pitt is demanding your presence?”

“I told him I would be unavailable.”

“You mean…in the future? You told him that?”

“No! I cannot simply put aside everything that is important to me, Jemma.”

She flinched.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” he said quickly.

“There’s no need to qualify. I understand what you find important.” She felt an overwhelming sweep of exhaustion. “I suppose I can plan a diversion for tomorrow.” Her tone was bleak rather than bitter, which was a triumph in itself.