When the Duke Returns(101)
What could he say to that?
Her lip curled. “There’s a woman out there for you. I would say that youth should be a prerequisite for you. Perhaps your mother can find you someone, rather than making up stories about me. I’ll leave tomorrow morning.”
“What?”
“In London, I’ll inform the solicitor that we’re going ahead with the annulment, on whatever grounds he feels will be the most timely.”
“Is there a need to be so hasty?” Simeon said, feeling peculiarly sick.
“Yes. I’m twenty-three,” Isidore said. “Most brides are sixteen, Simeon. Sixteen. I’m twenty-three. You’ll forgive me if I make haste.”
He grabbed her arm. “You must be insane.”
“Undoubtedly,” she snapped. “Why I didn’t annul this marriage years ago is beyond my understanding.”
“You are mine.”
“Don’t try to act as if I’m a desert princess you can scream at.” Isidore jerked her arm out of his hand.
“You and I—”
“There is no you and I.”
“You didn’t think so last night.”
“Neither one of us knew anything about bedding until recently,” she said, rolling her eyes. “It’s nice that we learned to be together and share reasonable pleasure, but let’s not pretend that it was unique, shall we? Likely the next time will be even better.”
Next time? Next time? There was a howl in Simeon’s soul that would terrify Isidore if she knew. He felt his teeth baring, like some sort of wild animal. She had no bloody idea what they shared. None.
“I don’t understand why you’re so quick to leave,” he said. “I think you don’t like the way you feel about me.”
Her lip curled. “I don’t. You’re right. I want to admire my husband.”
He ignored that. She had the tongue of an Italian fishwife, but her eyes were saying something else. “You’re singing,” he said suddenly.
The note broke off.
“You love me.”
“I don’t.”
“You do. You love me.” The certainty of it was in his heart.
When she finally spoke, her voice was gentle. “You probably thought that the princess loved you too, didn’t you, Simeon?”
He blinked at her, having forgotten what princess they were talking about.
“Some men are just like that,” she said, almost to herself, her voice lilting as if she were singing, a sad little song in a minor key. “They think everyone loves them.”
“And sometimes a woman thinks that no one could love her,” he said, catching her again as she was about to slip through the door.
“I haven’t allowed any men to know me,” she said. “Except you.”
“I love you.” He said it, and knew it was true.
But she didn’t act as if she heard. “I’ll be in London,” she said. “I’ll ask the solicitor to write you directly, Simeon.” Then she brushed off his hand as if he were no more than a passerby and left the room.
He stood there for a long time, thinking about a little girl who had just lost her parents and sang instead of weeping. And a grown woman who didn’t believe he loved her, and sang while she spoke. But never wept.
She would understand once she got to London. She would see what they had together.
As for Isidore, she retired into the Dower House’s bedchamber and indulged in an angry fit of tears. Why did Simeon have to have those dusky brown eyes, which were too damn beautiful for a man? Somehow it was even more of an affront that he had decided to dress like an English gentleman that morning. It made it harder to think about him as an object of ridicule, a man who trotted around the countryside dressed in short trousers, talking about the Middle Way.
It made it harder to scorn him, when he bowed with such easy and impersonal formality, held her gloved hand for just the right amount of time, as if he’d never told her to throw away her gloves.
He was in control again. Hatred of that fueled Isidore all the way to London the next day, all the way to Jemma’s house.
Where she discovered a houseful of servants, but no Jemma.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Gore House, Kensington
London, seat of the Duke of Beaumont
March 8, 1784
Isidore spent the two days before Jemma returned unsuccessfully attempting not to think about her marriage. Or, to be more exact, the lack thereof.
“Simeon doesn’t like me,” she told Jemma, once she finally came home. “Well, he may be right. That is, he likes things to be calm and ordered. And I’m afraid I don’t take directions—”
“Take directions?” Jemma said, sounding rather stunned. “What sort of directions? And what do you mean, he doesn’t like you?”