When the Duke Returns(24)

“You?” she asked, startled.

“Yes. I, the eternal bystander.”

“I always thought you found the affairs of others exhausting and uninteresting. My goodness, Villiers, you’re not planning to reform? I shall be so disappointed if it transpires that the only reason to invite you for an evening is because you lend an air of respectability.”

“It would be a terrible come-down,” he said thoughtfully. “But in truth, I feel no Puritanical leanings.” There was a flare of something deep in his eyes that made her want to smile back, reach out her hand…

“Do ask my advice, then,” she said. “I’m sure I’m capable of wise pronouncements on almost any subject, and yet no one asks for evidence of my wisdom.”

“Beaumont doesn’t come to you with knotty matters of state?”

“Odd, isn’t it?”

“You can mock yourself, Jemma, but he couldn’t find a better mind to consider those affairs.”

Jemma could feel herself growing faintly pink—and she never blushed. Never.

Of course Villiers didn’t miss it. His mouth curled into a mocking smile. “I like blushing,” he said. “Women do entirely too little of it, to my mind.”

“It can be very useful.”

“Useful?”

“There’s nothing more disarming than a woman’s blush.”

“I’ll take your word for it. Most women wear so much face paint that blushing is not an option.”

“I often wear a great deal of face paint,” Jemma said. “Particularly if I think there is the slightest chance that I shall be shocked. If you are bent on reform, Villiers, I shall take to wearing it regularly.”

“Reform…” he said. “Or not.”

He had so much charm. He’d never wielded it on her like this before. When he smiled at her, it was almost like a caress.

Suddenly she remembered his drawling voice saying that he gave her fair warning that he meant to have her.

She almost shivered. Villiers was beautiful, depraved, tired…her husband’s enemy, though she never understood precisely why. She had offered herself to him last year and he had refused on the grounds of being Elijah’s oldest friend. And then he had changed his mind.

Now Villiers apparently meant to woo her, if that word was appropriate for a married woman.

She swallowed. She had promised Elijah that her scandals were over. She had come back from Paris to give her husband an heir. She felt dizzy.

Villiers didn’t seem to notice her silence. Instead he took out a piece of paper. “Read this, Jemma.”

She opened it. The letter was headed with the Duke of Cosway’s crest. “Isidore’s duke!”

“He’s back in the country.”

“I knew that. Isidore is staying with me at the moment. He left her at a hotel, if you can countenance it, Villiers. A hotel! He left his duchess at a hotel and proceeded to drive to the country to see his mother.”

“I find that story unsurprising, given my acquaintance with him. I actually played a game of chess with Cosway on the deck of some rapscallion prince’s boat,” Villiers said.

“On the Nile river?”

“The same hemisphere. If you can imagine, it was twilight and stiflingly hot, around seven years ago, I suppose. I had decided for a number of reasons that I wished to travel to Arabia—”

She shook her head. “No.”

“What?”

“You wanted to play chess, of course. You had no redeeming reason for your journey, such as a love of exploration.”

His smile was a wicked thing, the kind of smile that lured a woman. “You have me with a pawn, Jemma. I wanted to go to the Levant and play the chess masters there. But it was so damned uncomfortable!”

“Sand?”

“Heat.” He stretched out an arm and looked at his lace. “I am a duke. It has been my charge since I was a mere boy, and while it has undoubtedly spoiled me, it has also marked me. I like to be clean, and I like to dress. Even in my bedchamber, if you can believe it, Jemma, I choose my garments with great care.”

She had a sudden entertaining vision of Villiers wrapped in silk. Instinctively, she struck back. “You are so thin after your illness…I wonder that you do not need an entirely new wardrobe.”

“It is a cruel truth,” he sighed. “I seek to build myself up, of course. I am so hopelessly vain that I could never allow myself to visit a lady’s chamber until I am more fit.”

Perhaps that was why there would be no third game in bed. It was to be a long campaign, she thought. The Duke of Villiers was setting himself out to entice her, before he allowed that last game to be played.