Desperate Duchesses (16 page)

Very nice. There was a certain lack of eagerness there that was entirely appealing in a gentleman with whom one might be embarking on an
affaire
—she caught herself hastily. Of course, she was merely dal ying with the idea. Had she not promised her husband that her salad days were behind her? More to the point—since Elijah had made no promises about his mistress

—she had decided to deliver Vil iers into the virtuous, if thorny, bonds of matrimony. She sighed and handed the card back to Brigitte. “Six of the clock. Inform him that he may stay to sup afterward. And do send a note to Lady Roberta informing her the same.”

Of course, the servants would gossip, but servants always knew everything so Jemma saw no reason to prevaricate.

“Oh, and Brigitte,” she said.

Brigitte turned as she was about to leave the room. She was as exquisite a little Frenchwoman as existed on British shores and sometimes, Jemma thought, dressed with more
éclat
than did her mistress. “You know the
écharpe
cloak that you so admire?”

Brigitte clasped her hands together. “The blue one, Your Grace, with the black lace?”

Jemma smiled at her. “It is yours in return for a smal act of espionage, which I am convinced you wil enjoy.”

She trembled with excitement.
“Enchantée!”
Brigitte said, eyes aglow.

“Vil iers comes to play a game of chess with me. He wil be accompanied by footmen, natural y.”

Brigitte nodded.

“I should dearly love to know every detail of
une petite affaire
he had with a certain Lady Caroline Kil igrew, who found herself with child.”

“
Quelle folie
,” Brigitte said, indicating with a Frenchwoman’s briskness just what she thought of Lady Caroline’s foolishness in not control ing her reproductive options.

“There has been a certain amount of gossip suggesting that Vil iers went through a false wedding ceremony with the young lady.”

Brigitte’s loyalty switched sides instantly.
“Chien!”
she spat.

“Perhaps…perhaps not. There are so many sides to a tale, are there not? We need to know everything of Lady Caroline.

”

Brigitte dimpled. “I wil do my best.”

Before a Frenchwoman’s best, an English footman is but a house of straw. “I shal accept two gentlemen to help me dress, Brigitte. Corbin, of course, and perhaps…oh, Viscount St. Albans. He was wearing a truly magnificent costume last night and ought to be rewarded.”

Brigitte curtsied and flew down the stairs to find St. Albans and Lord Corbin, who were ushered up the stairs and into the duchess’s bedchamber, where they found Jemma attired in a chemise and corset, ready for the gentlemen’s skil in helping her answer delicate points to do with patches, powder, ribbons and final y her gown.

Roberta awoke to find herself in a room that looked like a copy of her original, except for the faint imprint of Damon’s personality. There was a cravat flung over a chair. A book sat on the dressing table; Roberta wandered over, saw the name John Donne and dropped the poems with a thud. His clothes were in the wardrobe, of course.

He had a magnificent costume of cherry velvet lined in cream sarsenet. Taking the coat to the window, she could see metal sequins, sewn into elaborate patterns with silver embroidery. Even looking at it made her heart twist with longing. And desire. She had to marry Vil iers soon, so that she could buy a gown in precisely this cherry color with sequins.

There was a scratch at the door and Roberta hastily dropped the coat onto the bed. But as the door opened, she didn’t see her maid. In fact, she didn’t see anyone until the door closed again and Teddy appeared around the end of her bed.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said by way of greeting.

“Gotta apologize, my papa says.”

“My papa says—appropriately—that I should apologize,” Roberta corrected him.

He grinned at her. “Brought you—
I
brought you a present.”

Roberta summoned up a smile. Of course she ought to be touched by whatever grubby, bent flower he was about to produce from under his coat.

It wasn’t a flower, but a struggling, spitting kitten. She felt no inclination to take it from him.

“Perhaps you’d better put it down,” she said after the charming feline gave Teddy another red welt across his hand.

He dropped it and the kitten landed on its splayed-out feet with a rather pitiful mew of protest and then streaked under the bed.

“It was much nicer when it was in the shed,” Teddy said, with an edge of apology in his voice. “I thought you might like it.

Since you have to sleep alone. Cats are good company.”

“I like sleeping alone,” Roberta informed him.

He wandered over. “That’s Papa’s French coat,” he said. “France is in Paris.”

“Paris is in France,” she said. “You need to retrieve that kitten and take it back to its mother.”

“It’s
yours
now. Besides, I wanted to tel you about the gardener, he works in the gardens and—”

“The gardener works in the gardens,” Roberta said automatical y, moving over to pul the cord.

“His name is Rummer and he used to be a prize-fighter. Rummer used to stroddle his opponents and once he almost spent five guineas for a wife—”

“For a wife?” Roberta said, rather startled by that. She had seated herself before the dressing table and began brushing out her hair.

“Yes, indeed. Rummer was at a fair in Smithfield and a man was auctioning his wife, and he wanted five guineas to start, and Rummer thought about it hard, but then he decided that the life of a prize-fighter was no place for a wife because”—Teddy finished triumphantly—“lady’s gowns are pinned so high these days that you can’t see their heads for their tails.” And he broke into a mad fit of giggling, and repeated the head and tail part two or three times for the pure naughty value of it.

Roberta just kept brushing. It was rather sad to think about the wife auctioned off for five guineas, but when questioned, Teddy didn’t know her fate, only that Rummer hadn’t bought her.

“That’s two things you need to discover,” Roberta told him. “What happened to the wife, and what a bog-trotting croggie is.”

“I likes you!” he said, beaming up at her. “I likes you—”

“
Like
you,” Roberta said.

“I like you because you listen to me. Papa says that I’m a gossip who could out-rattle fifty porters.”

“I agree with him.” Final y there was a knock at the door and she cal ed, “Enter. I didn’t know it was
you
,” she said rather crossly.

“Papa, look at this,” Teddy said. “The lady’s new kitten likes your red coat.”

Sure enough, the kitten had clawed its way up on the bed and was nestled in velvet with silver embroidery.

“I’m not dressed,” Roberta said with dignity. “I’l thank you to take your son out of this room—once again—and al ow me to continue dressing.”

He raised an eyebrow. “At this very moment my sister is undoubtedly entertaining at least two gentlemen in her chambers as they aid her in choosing the day’s costume. Why don’t Teddy and I do the honors?”

Roberta realized she stil had her brush in the air and put it down in exasperation. Teddy had picked up the kitten, who actual y seemed to be purring.

“I very much doubt that your sister is al owing gentlemen into her bedchamber while she’s”—Roberta glanced down to make sure that her dressing gown was stil tied tightly—“
en déshabillé
.”

“But that’s precisely the fashion these days,” he said, taking a chair and swinging it about so that he could sit on it facing her. “It would be a dismal thing indeed for a lady to dress herself. General y one has a maid or two in the room as wel . They throw the clothes on you, while Teddy and I advise you where to place a patch, if you wish one, and face color, and ribbons

—that sort of thing.”

“I do not believe that unmarried ladies invite gentlemen into their rooms while they dress. And I don’t wish to wear a patch!” Roberta said, feeling rather discomposed. She prided herself on her lack of naïveté, but she was beginning to realize that being sophisticated in comparison to Mrs. Grope was nothing in relation to the Reeve family.

Damon’s eyes were even greener in the sunlight.

“I think we should go onto the river,” Teddy said. “This kitten would like that.”

“I doubt it,” his father said. “Roberta likely has important things to do.”

The river? In truth, Roberta had a singular longing to see more of London. “I have to return to the house by early evening,”

she said cautiously.

“Ah, the great Vil iers chess match,” Damon said, rising. “Come on, scrap. Let’s give Roberta some time to put on a gown without our help, and then we can al go on the river. Haven’t you ever been out on a river?”

Roberta shook her head.

“On a picnic?”

Roberta did not feel like explaining her disinclination to picnic with Mrs. Grope, so she just shook her head again.

“A woman with much to learn,” Damon said, with a wicked smile that spoke of kisses, not picnics. Then he was gone, leaving behind a red velvet coat with smal white hairs sprinkled across the front.

Roberta untied her dressing gown. Perhaps she shouldn’t be going on the river, whatever that signified. Perhaps she should stay at home so that she was definitely here when Vil iers arrived.

But she wasn’t quite certain what she meant to do
to
or
with
Vil iers in order to make him marry her, although the very thought of him made her heart speed up again. Her maid burst into the room, carrying another of Jemma’s gowns. It was a pale blossom pink, and Roberta forgot al about Vil iers as she learned the intricacies of a skirt draped
à la polonaise
.

Some two hours later, Viscount St. Albans bowed his way out of Jemma’s room and minced his way down the stairs. He was a slender man who made the very best of himself. This afternoon he was wearing a magnificent suit of lemon-colored iridescent silk, set with enameled buttons. His coat curved away from his waist; he left it entirely open, displaying al twenty buttons on his waistcoat (matching enamel, natural y). The waistcoat was judiciously padded over the chest, which repaired the one smal fault he found with his own physique. Wel , that and perhaps the fact that his eyes were just a trifle too close together.

He picked his way down the stairs careful y because there is nothing worse than polished marble when one was wearing high heels, and he judged that height was always desirable. But his mind was racing far ahead of him, already at the coffee house reporting the pleasurable fact that when he announced a previous engagement that meant he
must
take himself off, though natural y he perfumed the fact with many compliments, Corbin had made no move to leave the duchess’s bedchamber.

In fact, he had left the two of them in a cozy discussion of some chess player from Poland, a god-forsaken country that did not interest the viscount in the least. He wrinkled his nose at the thought of how they tried to fool him into thinking they were actual y talking of chess. Clearly, Corbin and the duchess had bored him to tears in an effort to make him leave, which, frankly, he was more than happy to do.

Far be it from him to separate two love birds. Although he would do his best to ascertain just how long Corbin and the duchess would stay in unchaperoned harmony.

He reached the entryway and demanded a mirror. As a footman held the glass for him, he careful y placed his Macaroni hat on top of his curls at a jaunty angle. Then he noticed that a rosette was fal ing from his shoe; ten minutes later he was seated in an elegant little chair while the duke’s own valet sewed the rosette into a better position. After that, of course, he must needs readjust his stockings in private, and final y, he ended up in front of the glass again, rearranging his hat.

Just when he was about to give up altogether, he heard a brisk clicking of heels and down came Corbin.

“Stil here?” Corbin said, with a cheerful grin that—to the viscount’s mind—signaled far too much cheer for a mere discussion of chess.

“I suffered the greatest imposition to my shoe,” the viscount said, taking care to lisp slightly in the new fashion. “It is of al things annoying; these rosettes are prone to fal ing on the wayside, do you not think?”

“I never wear such things,” Corbin remarked.

“I see that,” the viscount said, larding his voice with disapproval. “Your waistcoat would look so much better with a smal fringe.”

“Yours would be greatly improved without it,” Corbin said, with such a gentle smile that at first the viscount didn’t take his meaning, and by the time he did—and would have rejoined sharply with a sharp comment about those buttons!—Corbin had slapped on a round hat and taken himself out of the house.

The viscount huffed and minced his way down the stairs to his waiting carriage. In his mind, there was no question. While the duchess did not seem to be carrying a child, she was clearly carrying a lover. He tittered to himself at his own jest.

In their wake, a perfumed, powdered and altogether delectable duchess wandered downstairs, leaving her bedchamber, strewn with silks and ribbands, flowers and shoes, to be made presentable for her upcoming chess match with Vil iers.

To her surprise, her husband was just coming in the front door.

She halted halfway down the stairs, hand on her heart. “Good lord, Beaumont,” she said. “What an odd start to see you here.”

“I finished the day’s business,” he said, looking up at her.

Jemma tripped down the last few steps, conscious of being glad that she looked her very best. Which was a sad reflection on the tedium of her life, if she considered such a thing in connection to her husband.

“Would you like to begin our game?” he said.

“Of course!”

“You play Vil iers in your chambers,” he said. “I would suppose that mine must do the honors for our game. If you’l give me a moment, I’l remove my wig.” And then, when she didn’t move, “You do know the location of my chambers, don’t you?”

Jemma didn’t glance at the footmen who lined the wal , their faces blank and their ears straining for every word. “I shal endeavor to find my way there.”