When the Duke Returns(33)

The pulse of longing he felt was for everything about his wife: her wit, her beauty, her breasts, her brilliance…

How in the hell could he not have realized it when they first married? How could he have wasted those years, thrown them away on politics and his mistress? Couldn’t he have thought—just imagined—that perhaps time wasn’t a gift one had for the asking? Couldn’t he have remembered that his father had died at thirty-four?

And he was thirty-four, as of this month. Time wove its changes, marched apace…he would give anything to have back those first weeks of marriage when Jemma looked to him for advice, when she cuddled beside him in the morning, asking questions about the House.

Great fool that he was back then, he had leapt from their bed eager to be at the House, not sitting about with a wife whom he barely knew. Off to his mistress, who appeared during the noon hour on Tuesdays and Fridays. That was part of his routine: emerge from the House of Lords and exhaust himself with Sarah, right there in his office.

Good old Sarah Cobbett. She loved him; he loved her in a way. One had to hope that she was happy.

He’d pensioned her off after Jemma caught them on the desk in his chambers.

The stab of guilt was an old friend, though it seemed to grow fiercer with the years, not less so.

For her part, Jemma seemed to have forgiven him. Perhaps.

She looked up at him, and her smile made his heart stop.

Life had given him a woman who was—he knew it with a bone-deep certainty—the most intelligent woman in Europe. And he had thrown her away to rut with a kindly woman whose only claim to intelligence was that she was never late to their twice-weekly appointment, not once during the six years in which Sarah was his mistress.

He couldn’t even remember Sarah’s face now, which just made him feel guiltier.

“Look at this!” Jemma called to him.

He walked over and looked down at the board, rather blindly.

“It’s a counter gambit credited to Giuoco. I think I’ve improved on it. Look…” and she moved the pieces so quickly that he almost didn’t follow, but of course he did. Their brains were remarkably similar.

He sat down.

“Terrible day?” she asked.

It was almost too much. Her eyes were blue, like the midnight blue of the sky at night. And he wanted—her. Life. To stay here, on this earth with Jemma. To see the child they would create, if they had time.

“Elijah!” she said, startled. Slipped from her seat and sat on his knee. He turned his face into her shoulder. She smelled like roses.

He didn’t cry, of course. He never cried. He hadn’t when his father died, and he wouldn’t cry over his own death either.

But he put an arm around his wife and pulled her closer. She hadn’t been this near to him in years.

It felt good.





Chapter Twelve




Revels House

February 29, 1784

Simeon knew the moment that Honeydew opened the study door that there was more trouble. He put down his quill.

The news that the Duke of Cosway had returned, and that he was actually paying the family debts, had spread like wildfire. Half of England seemed to be lined up outside the servants’ door, begging five minutes to plead cases, generally to do with bills that his father or mother had refused to pay. Some stretched back twenty years.

“Yes?”

“We have a visitor,” Honeydew announced.

Simeon waited, bracing himself for an irate creditor.

“Her Grace, the Duchess of Cosway.”

“Oh—” He bit off the curse. He was exhausted, he was dusty, and he could smell the water closets even with the door to his study closed. Isidore would probably take one look at this moldering excuse for a ducal palace and demand the annulment by tomorrow. Which would be a good thing, of course.

Honeydew had become distinctly more friendly, and had even stopped giving Simeon directives regarding his attire and manners. But he didn’t seem to be able to stop himself this time. “If you’d like to—”

Simeon looked at him and Honeydew dropped the suggestion. Likely Isidore did think he should be wearing a wig and waistcoat buttoned to the neck with a cravat on top. Even more likely, she pictured Revels House as perfumed and elegant.

He pulled his coat down, straightened his cuffs, noted the ink stain and dismissed it. He could bother with white cuffs and a cravat when he had to go to London and find himself another wife.

“Her Grace is in the Yellow Salon,” Honeydew said rather nervously.

“Yellow? Which one is that?”

“The drapes used to be yellow,” Honeydew admitted.

“Ah,” Simeon said. “The Curdled Milk Salon.”

There was actually a smile on his butler’s face. “This way, Your Grace.”