This Duchess of Mine(74)

Chapter Eighteen




Jemma was curious about one thing in particular: what would Elijah wear when he appeared at her door? On reflection, she decided he would be fully dressed. To appear in a dressing gown would lack a gentleman’s discretion, given the household’s focus on their chess game.

For her part, she put on an utterly delicious nightgown. It was made of delicate silk in a cream color, lined with lace and covered by a matching wrapper. It was only when she was lying down, and the neckline shifted in a certain way, that one suddenly had a glimpse of a gorgeous cherry silk lining. That was something she had learned from a circle of Frenchwomen, years ago.

“Surprise him!” an older woman had laughed.

“Wear a sweet-natured gown, and underneath, a harlot’s scarlet. Play the innocent and then the rascal.” She followed that advice with a few earthy suggestions involving the male anatomy, none of which Jemma had tried…but none of which she was opposed to trying.

Her face paint was so artfully applied that only a man of Corbin’s perception would have known she wore any. Her hair didn’t have a speck of powder. It fell over her shoulders, gleaming like bottled sunshine.

“His Grace will be a happy man,” Brigitte said, pausing before she left for the night.

Jemma looked up, surprised. “Thank you! Though you and I know better than he how much of my beauty comes from Signora Angelico’s brilliant designs, not to mention my favorite lip rouge.”

“I don’t mean that,” Brigitte said. “I mean because you—you are interested in this evening, no? You—”

Jemma sighed inwardly. Could life become yet more embarrassing? “Yes.”

Brigitte smiled brilliantly. “He is lucky.”

Elijah appeared precisely at ten, which Jemma thought showed a healthy level of enthusiasm for the game, as well as—no doubt—what would likely follow it.

He was fully dressed. Naturally.

She opened the door, well aware that the candles placed around the room cast an extremely flattering light on her skin.

Being Elijah, his eyes didn’t drop from her face. Instead he strolled into her room as if they were in the drawing room. He looked at the delicate little table set up by her bed, the delicious morsels Mrs. Tulip had sent up, the carefully draped scarves she’d chosen to serve as blindfolds.

To her utter surprise, he started laughing. “I feel as if I just happened into one of the great courtesan’s apartments.”

Jemma bit her lip, and then smiled swiftly. “Should I demand a payment before, or trust on your gentleman’s honor to provide payment after?”

“Oh, before,” he said gravely, walking toward her. There was something in his eyes that cured the hiccup in her heart, the pulse of shame she felt at his first comment.

“May I kiss you?” His question was so simple, and so—so Elijah.

She swallowed hard and said, “Only if I might return the favor.”

He bent his head then, and gave her the kind of kiss that no man gives a courtesan. Or a mistress. Or anyone who is paid for the most intimate of pleasures. It was a kiss that started with a brush of the lips and a silent question.

A courtesan couldn’t have answered, because she wouldn’t have been able to read all the hundreds of ways that the question came to Jemma: through the touch of his hands on her shoulders, through the controlled stillness of his mouth, through the very tilt of his head.

“Yes,” she said, telling him silently as well, brushing his bottom lip with hers. “Yes.”

He pulled back and looked in her eyes and then just folded her into his arms. It was as if they could try their wedding night all over again.

That first time, they hardly knew each other. She was terribly infatuated with him; he seemed barely to have registered her first name.

It was all different this time.

He let her go without another word. She took his hand and asked, “Will you blindfold yourself…or would you like me to do it?” She hesitated. “And Elijah, if this reminds you too much of your father’s predilections, we could simply skip the blindfold. It was a silly idea anyway.”

“Never,” he said, and the grin on his face had nothing to do with the sorry fate of his father. He picked up a swath of pink silk that she had chosen for its exquisite match to her gown. “I’ll just put this on, shall I?”

A moment later it was tight around his eyes and she was laughing helplessly, watching as he bumped into the end of the bed and stretched his arms out, trying to catch her.

It wasn’t until he accused her of unfairness that she picked up the unadorned white scarf she’d chosen for him. He had caught her by then and was laughingly trying to pull her toward the bed.