This Duchess of Mine(93)

Yet she was wrung with fear. Her fingers trembled as she picked up the chess pieces. She was on the point of giving up, and joining Elijah in his study, when Fowle entered, a grim look on his face.

She sprang to her feet so quickly that she knocked over the chessboard. Pieces rolled on the ground. “Is he—”

Reading her mind, a look of deep sympathy crossed Fowle’s eyes. “He is fine, Your Grace. Should His Grace faint again, I shall call you from outside the room, as I approach.”

She sank back down into her chair. “Thank you, Fowle.” Her fingers were shaking like leaves in a high wind.

“The dowager duchess has arrived,” he announced.

She’d forgotten that there had to be a reason for his entry. “The—The dowager? The duke’s mother?”

“I have placed her in the rose chamber,” Fowle said.

“She expressed the wish that you would join her immediately. Apparently she intends to return to Scotland very shortly.”

“Return to Scotland?” Jemma asked. “That’s impossible! I am certain she will change her mind. She will be making a prolonged stay with us. Please inform Mrs. Tulip.”

Now Jemma understood the grim look on Fowle’s face when he first entered. Her own memories of her mother-in-law were distinctly unpleasant. The dowager duchess was tall and angry. She carried herself like a man, and Jemma found her alarming.

Jemma had lived the first weeks of her marriage in a house full of portraits of Judith holding Holofernes’s head (minus his body) because she was worried about the dowager’s reaction if she removed them.

Of course, when she returned from Paris, she ordered all paintings removed without thinking about it twice.

“Your Grace,” Jemma said respectfully a moment later, dropping into a curtsy. As she raised her head, she realized that the dowager had hardly changed. She was still tall, and although she leaned on a cane, it gave her no air of weakness. In fact, the cane seemed more like Villiers’s sword stick: an affectation that could serve as a weapon.

She had Elijah’s beauty, with sharp angles and sweeping lines. But on her the angles looked enraged, and what was calmness in his face was irritation in hers.

“Jemma,” her mother-in-law said. “I am grateful that you returned from Paris.”

That was an auspicious start.

“We must sit,” she continued. “My hip is quite troublesome these days.”

“I am so sorry to hear that,” Jemma said, seating herself opposite the dowager. “Did Elijah write you?”

“No.”

“But you know.” There was something in the dowager’s face, a version of the same dread that she was feeling.

“I knew the moment I heard that he fainted in Lords. You don’t appear to be with child.”

“I fear not,” Jemma replied, wincing inwardly.

“That is, there is a chance that I am with child, but I don’t know yet.”

“I suppose Elijah’s foolish second cousin will inherit after all. The man pads everything, you know, from his thighs to his chest. But he is, at least, a discreet creature. A foolish lust for admiration is better than the alternative.”

“Of course,” Jemma said, not at all sure what she was agreeing with.

They sat for a moment in silence. “I came to ask you something,” the dowager said, her fingers twisting the diamond cornucopia she wore on her bosom. Her fingers were swollen with rheumatism, and Jemma felt a pulse of sorrow. She remembered her mother-in-law sweeping through the house like a whirlwind, her voice as stinging as smoke in the eyes. Back then the dowager had few wrinkles and her fingers were strong.

“Of course,” Jemma said again. The dowager fixed her eyes on Jemma’s face, and they were so identical to Elijah’s, like a dark flame, that Jemma added, “Anything you wish.”

“I wish,” the dowager said heavily, “no, I insist that you cease all marital relations and maintain separate chambers.” Her face was at once both mournful and belligerent.

Jemma swallowed a gasp. “I—”

“My husband was known as Bawdy Beaumont,” the duchess said. “Were you aware of that?”

Jemma nodded.

“He died in the very act, wearing a frilly lace chemise and tied to a bed,” the duchess said. There was no particular rage in her voice as she recounted the facts. “He was attended by several women wearing leather who were engaged in spanking him. I gather he took pleasure in something children strive to avoid, which says a great deal about his character.”

Jemma murmured something. Her mind was racing, wondering if she should assure the dowager that Elijah showed no interest in wearing a chemise.