This Duchess of Mine(95)

The dowager’s eyes skated to hers. “You will inform me when—”

“I’ll take care of him,” Jemma said gently, standing up and pulling Elijah to his feet as well.

The dowager stood, looking up at her son as if from the bottom of a well. “You were a beautiful baby.”

Elijah held out his hand and she clung to it. “And you have a beautiful smile,” she said. “You have always had a beautiful smile.”

Jemma felt hot tears pressing in her eyes.

Elijah smiled his beautiful smile, as if his mother hadn’t just said he was deviant, and bent to kiss her cheek. “I may well live for years, Mother.”

His mother’s eyes met Jemma’s, and they both knew the truth. His mother closed her eyes for a long moment, her fingers tight on those diamonds.

“I shall stay for luncheon,” she announced, hunching a bit over her cane. “Then I shall begin my journey.”



They talked of nothing over the meal. The dowager was clumsy, her swollen fingers causing her to drop her fork repeatedly and knock a glass of wine to the table. But Jemma, watching, thought that it was a heavy heart that made her so awkward.

That night, Elijah came to her room. She held out her arms, and he came over to her, warm and hard, his hand sliding up beneath her nightdress. “We should talk,” he murmured. But his hands were already setting her aflame.

Jemma realized that in truth, she’d been waiting all day for this. In bed with her, Elijah’s heart beat strong and true. She didn’t have to worry.

“Later,” she said, her hands sliding lower on his body.

“But—”

“I want to taste you,” she said. And then his eyes were like dark flames, like his mother’s, but she pushed that thought away and kissed her way down his chest. Her fear was gone, blissfully gone, because she could feel the blood pounding through his body.

He said something, scrambled and inarticulate, but he arched toward her and she laughed and opened her lips.

He was hers, and he was alive, and that was good enough for the moment.





Chapter Twenty-five




April 3

Jemma kept Elijah in bed most of the next day. In the early afternoon, they found themselves lying on their backs, panting, the sheets twisted around their legs.

“I need a bath,” Jemma said groggily. She felt drained and happy. She had one hand on Elijah’s chest, and his heart was beating strong and true. “It’s as if we repaired a clock,” she said, changing the subject.

He had his arms thrown over his head and was smiling up at the tapestry hanging over the bed. “My heart can beat normally when it remembers to do so.”

“We’ll make love every day,” Jemma ordered.

“Twice a day. Morning and night so that your heart remembers the correct pattern.”

Elijah laughed. “If you tell your friends that plan, every man in the kingdom will be pretending to faint.” He rolled to his side, propping his head on one hand. “I heard what you said to my mother.”

She tried to pull her mind back from that hot, happy place. “Hmm.”

“I didn’t think that you guessed why Sarah Cobbett came to my chambers.”

Jemma raised her head. “So that was the reason? I used to think that it was just a question of saving time.”

“I couldn’t get anyone to believe that I wasn’t sneaking off to The Palace of Salomé in the evenings. God, I was sick of being called Bawdy Beaumont. There was always scorn to it, just under the surface. I knew they were making jokes about spankings behind my back.”

Jemma wound her fingers into his.

“I didn’t even really want a mistress. Oh, I wanted to bed someone…at that age, all you see are women, and each one is succulent, and delicious in her own way.”

“You thought every woman you saw was ‘succulent’?” Jemma asked, utterly fascinated.

“They had breasts,” he said, as if that was all the explanation anyone could wish for. “And other parts.”

She giggled, imagining Elijah walking down the street peering at women’s breasts. It seemed so unlike him.

“But I didn’t have time. I was so determined to mend my father’s damage, to change the reputation attached to my name.”

“Your mother shouldn’t have told you,” she said, sorrowing for the eight-year-old boy who was told those details far too early.

“She is obsessed with the reputation of the Beaumonts, as you heard. And, of course, it was much harder for her. She knew he had mistresses, but she had no idea about the storm of scandal that would break over her head when he died.”

“It was bad luck that he died at that moment,” Jemma said.