When the Duke Returns(76)

Isidore met Simeon’s eyes over his mother’s head.

“We’ll go outside now, Your Grace,” she said, lifting the remaining jewelry box from the dowager’s arms. “Follow me, if you please.”

They left Simeon there, the marble around his feet littered with tarnished jewels, in settings popular a half century ago. Isidore turned around once, but he was staring at the ground.





Chapter Twenty-nine




Gore House, Kensington

London seat of the Duke of Beaumont

March 3, 1784

The Duke of Villiers handed his cloak to Fowle, the Beaumonts’ butler, pausing at the news that Jemma was out, but that the duke was in.

He and Elijah had to talk.

It had been years since they had spoken properly, although his valet Finchley babbled of how Elijah saved Villiers’s life when he was in a fever. Since Villiers had no memory of that, he could hardly savor the reunion  .

The truth was that Villiers was currently doing his best to seduce Elijah’s wife, and yet apparently he owed him gratitude for the said life-saving.

What was all that between old friends?

“I’ll announce myself,” he told Fowle. As he entered the library, he saw Elijah’s profile around the side of a high-backed chair. He seemed to have closed his eyes. Villiers loathed naps. But then Elijah spent his adult life saving the world, or at least the English parts of it, while he himself concentrated on frivolities like chess.

As always when he observed differences between his life and another man’s, he paused to consider whether he would prefer to order his world on Elijah’s model.

No. He had no wish to take up his seat in the House of Lords. In fact, he had a positive revulsion to the idea.

Villiers walked noiselessly across the wine-colored, flowered carpet. It was as glorious as one of his own coats. He rounded the chair.

Elijah was indeed asleep.

Or not asleep.

There was something odd about the immobility of his face, about the way his body was slumped in the corner of the chair.

“Duke,” Villiers said sharply, bending over. Could Elijah have fainted? His face was rather white. “Elijah!”

His eyelashes were dark against his face. He had been beautiful even back when they were both clumsy puppies and Elijah was the only person in the world that Villiers loved. Villiers himself had had a big nose, and uncontrollable hair that wouldn’t stay tied back properly, nor yet fit under a wig. Then Elijah had the white-blond curls of an angel, and the perfect profile of a young Gabriel.

Villiers reached out, touched Elijah’s shoulder.

Shook Elijah.

Shook him again.





Chapter Thirty




Revels House

March 3, 1784

The last thing that the dowager said to Isidore before she left for her sister’s estate was that she wanted every jewel cleaned before they were returned to her.

“He gave them to me every time,” she said to Isidore. “I’m sure you know what I mean.”

“No.”

“Then you shall. After all, you have married a Cosway. I never liked those necklaces, but they remind me of my husband.” She had the smaller box, the older one with silver hinges, beside her on the carriage seat. “These were my mother’s. I don’t mind if you keep some of the others; after all, you’re married to the duke. But these I shall keep and give to my sister’s children. You may inform my son so.”

“The duke is bathing,” Isidore said. “Could you please wait until he is able to bid you goodbye?”

“No. I shall stay at a neighbor’s and be at my sister’s estate by tomorrow at dusk. You can tell him where I’ve gone. He’s no son of mine, I’m convinced of that.”

Isidore frowned.

“Oh, don’t be such a fool,” the dowager said, in her cracked, breathy way. “He’s my blood, God knows it to be so. And Godfrey as well. But Godfrey is off to Eton, and I’m tired of all this. I did my best!”

“Of course—”

“I was a good wife, a proper wife. I never questioned the women. The jewels were given to me from guilt, you know. At least he felt that.” She looked at Isidore accusingly. “That was something.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to be in this house full of memories, and letters I haven’t answered, and the stupid, stupid things he did.” Her voice was savage. “That stink—it’s the stink of stupidity.”

Isidore nodded.

“My sister, the Dowager Countess of Douglass, keeps an old-fashioned house, perhaps, but it’s the sort that I’m comfortable with. This son of mine, with the way he looks and he acts…I can’t do it anymore. I can’t be here and pretend that I don’t care when traditions are violated, and stupid, stupid men do just as they wish. He runs about the country naked.”