When the Duke Returns(78)

“I won’t go near Jemma again. It wasn’t for revenge; truly, it wasn’t. It was just that—”

“She’s Jemma,” Elijah said simply.

“Yes. Does she know that you’re ill?”

“No! And she mustn’t.”

“That’s not fair.”

“There’s no fairness in life,” Elijah said, his voice heavy. “I’ll be gone whether she has time to grieve and fear for it, or not. I want the time I have left with her without grief.”

“Of course.” Villiers cursed himself for ever trying to entice Jemma.

“I’m winning, you know.” Elijah’s smile was a beautiful thing. It had helped him triumph during many a difficult battle in Parliament, that smile. It had won the heart of a prickly, ugly young duke by the name of Villiers, back when they were both nine years old. “She’s planning to concede the remaining game in your match when she sees you next.”

“You are winning,” Villiers said. “You are.”

“I’ve been very slow, very tactical,” Elijah said. “I wasted so much time in my life. I’ve planned this like a campaign, the most important campaign of my life. And you played a part, Leo.”

“I—”

“I needed formidable opposition,” he said. “You provided it.”

Villiers sat down opposite Elijah again. “You must tell her. How often do you have these spells?”

“Oh, once a week or so. More frequently of late.”

“Do you have any idea how much time you have?”

Elijah shook his head. “I don’t want to know.”

“I’ll leave,” Villiers said. “You’ll have an open field. God, I…”

“Don’t leave. I wish you would play chess with me. Now and then.”

“I would be honored.”

There was a silence during which, had they not been English noblemen, the men might have embraced. Might even have cried. Might have said something of love, of friendship, of sadness. But being English noblemen, they didn’t need to say those things: their eyes met and it was all there. Their boyhood friendship, their childish rages, the blows they dealt each other.

“I won’t go anywhere near her,” Villiers said. It sounded like a vow.

“You must.”

“No—”

Elijah smiled at him, but his eyes were shadowed. “You have to be there for her, Leo. I need to think you will.”

“You want me to continue to woo her so that…”

Sometimes even an English gentleman feels sorrow catch him like a wicked pain in the back of the throat. At times like that, he might walk to the window and look out at a garden in the first stages of spring.

Until he was sure he wouldn’t be unmanly.

But then, being English, he would eventually turn around and find his oldest friend sitting in the same place, waiting. And he would pull over a chess table and start laying out the pieces.





Chapter Thirty-two




The Dower House

March 3, 1784

As the dowager’s carriage drove away, Isidore walked back to the Dower House with one thought in her mind. She was a fool. Simeon may not love her, but he was the man she had. And she could not allow him to be in this fetid, empty house by himself. He could learn to love her. She thought of the way he whirled and struck, and knew the feeling in her heart for what it was. She was halfway to being hopelessly in love with him, for all the same reasons that drove his mother to despise him: for his strength, for his uniqueness, for the Simeon-ness of him.

Simeon rose from the desk when she entered. “You entered Revels House without my permission,” he stated, by way of greeting. “I asked you to wait for me because I knew those men posed a danger.”

“I thought you were accompanying me in order to add your voice to my entreaty.”

“And you thought that my participation would be a disadvantage,” he said. His jaw was set, his shoulders rigid.

“Yes.”

“I commanded you.”

“I don’t recognize commands,” she stated, making sure that he knew exactly what she was saying.

“I didn’t want to frighten you by mentioning the Dead Watch.”

“I don’t frighten easily.” But she didn’t feel like squabbling, so she said, “Simeon, I just want to say that you were magnificent!”

“That is very kind of you.”

“I think your mother was flustered by the shock, the horror of all that had happened,” Isidore said, galloping on without any encouragement from his expression.

“She was horrified by my exhibition of foreign skills,” he said. But his voice was dry, and not wounded.