Desperate Duchesses (17 page)

Elijah watched her go back up the stairs. She was wearing a gown light enough to flutter in the breeze. It was indisputably French, designed to make a man break into an instant sweat.

He couldn’t think of Jemma’s sensual appeal if he meant to win this game. The one thing about his wife that he had never underestimated was her intel igence. In truth, his memories of their early beddings were not that interesting. It was so long ago that he could hardly remember, and everything took place under the covers, and that rarely.

It wasn’t her fault, exactly, that she was a tedious bedpartner. Obviously, he’d been a poor teacher. But it had meant that his mistress Sarah’s bouncing, erotic pleasure in his company provided a sharp contrast to the wife his father picked out for him when he was a lad of seven.

He started up the stairs. Would it have turned out differently had Jemma not found him in his chambers in Westminster with Sarah?

Perhaps.

And perhaps not.

Neither of them appeared designed for the narrow straits of matrimony.

She entered his room a few minutes later, as he was setting out the pieces. “Ah, your grandfather’s chessboard,” she said. “I hadn’t remembered it until now, but of course I played many a game on it during our first year of marriage.”

“Who did you play with back then?” he asked. He had been so feverishly excited by his burgeoning role in the House that he barely remembered being at home. Not that things were much better now. Al day long people had elbowed him, and smirked at him, and asked him what he was stil doing in Westminster. Until final y they drove him to come home some four hours earlier than was his usual practice.

“The second footman was a fairly good partner: remember Jacobs? He had a long face, like a bul dog. I was saddened to hear that he had died.”

“He died?”

Jemma nodded. “How gorgeous this chess set is.” Each piece was a delicate marble fantasy of medieval warfare. The paint had long ago worn off, except for faint touches of red, in the fury of the king’s eyes, on the queen’s lower lip, in the bishop’s robe.

“You think I don’t remember your game,” Elijah said. “I do. I am ready for attack, if you please.” He moved a pawn to King’s Four.

Jemma smiled and moved her pawn to King’s Three.

“The pawn is my favorite piece,” Elijah remarked.

Jemma sat back, their moves ended for the day. “I could have guessed that. So lowly and humble as you are.”

“A pawn is crafty, versatile, and in pairs, they sometimes prove irresistible.”

“There’s little flair in a pawn,” Jemma said, picking up her queen to examine her faded robes.

“Your game is al about flair, as I recal .”

“That sounds remarkably dismissive.”

“I didn’t mean it so.”

“I prefer to think of my strength as being in the area of assault.”

Elijah watched his wife’s delicate fingers. “What I remember of your game,” he said slowly, “was that you would attack, but in the event of opposition, you would sacrifice. Run. You sometimes lost on that account.”

Jemma replaced her queen with a little click. “How gratifying to know that you remember the intricacies of my failures.”

Around three in the afternoon

The Fleet River

“I
told you that the kitten wanted to come,” Teddy said.

“But I disagreed,” his father said. “And I thought my sentiments constituted a mandate.”

Roberta watched footmen pack a sturdy basket into a flat-bottomed boat. It was a very pretty boat, with a roof of flowered muslin that rippled in the breeze, little benches for seats and rol ed canvas wal s that could be lowered from the roof in case of a sudden shower.

“This is Mr. Cunningham,” Damon said, introducing a serious looking young man who apparently arranged for the boat.

“Ransom, this is Lady Roberta St. Giles. Ransom is my brother-in-law’s secretary. We know each other from years of debauchery at Cambridge.”

“Hardly debauchery,” Mr. Cunningham protested.

Damon ignored that. “More to the point, Ransom knows every bend of the river, and he has been kind enough to eschew the duke’s company for ours today.”

Roberta smiled at Mr. Cunningham, and thought that he had lovely dark eyes, and that it was a nice thing to go onto the river with two handsome young men.

Wel , one could say three. Or two and a half.

The kitten was the only interloper.

Roberta could see precisely why Teddy was sleeping hither and yon, in beds where he had no cal to be. Damon was attempting to be charming to his son, which, while a nice impulse, was the wrong tactic. Of course Teddy ignored talk of sentiments and mandates.

The fact that Teddy was reasonably entertaining company did not excuse the fact that he was a child, therefore, by definition, a lower species.

She cut directly into Damon’s courteous discussion of the kitten’s likely distaste for boating. “Perhaps we should see if he likes to swim.”

Teddy clutched the animal to his breast, his eyes rounding as he reassessed her as a homicidal cat hater.

“Just to see if he likes it. Your father can fish him out if he doesn’t.”

Teddy shook his head.

“If he’s not a swimming cat,” Roberta said, pausing a little to make clear her opinion of smal kittens who professed no skil s at swimming, “then he’l stay in the carriage until he learns to know better.” And without further ado, she plucked the cat from Teddy’s arms and handed it to a footman.

“Are
we
going swimming?” Teddy asked, trotting along next to her as she walked down the stone steps to the waiting boat.

“I certainly hope not,” Damon said, handing her into the boat.

Roberta settled herself under the awning and they set out. The Fleet River was much smal er than the Thames, no more than a sleek and sinuous little stream, gleaming and sparkling in the sunlight. Mr. Cunningham moved them along by stabbing a large pole in the water and drawing it back out. Every movement caused the water to chatter and boil around the pole, which enchanted Teddy.

Damon kept himself occupied by ineffectively remonstrating his son for crimes such as getting wet, and Roberta trailed a hand in the water and watched the ripple of the water. Presently a family of ducks joined them.

“If only we had your kitten now,” Roberta said to Teddy, “we could throw him in and he could catch us a nice fat duck for supper.”

He shook his head at her. “My kitten, he’s too smal .”

Roberta corrected his grammar, and Teddy al owed as how the kitten would have liked a ride on a duck’s back. “I’m going to catch a fish for his supper!”

Damon grabbed him back into the boat just in time.

The backs of large pleasure gardens stretched to the river; it was as if they were in Bath, or another more slumberous place than the great city of London. Just where green turf came to the water’s edge, one could see brown tree roots jumbled at the surface of the water. There was a squeal when Teddy discovered that sleek silver bodies flashed among the roots.

“You’l have to catch a minnow out here if you want one,” Damon said.

“Mr. Cunningham,” Roberta said, “do people boat on the Thames as wel ?”

“There’s too much river traffic,” Mr. Cunningham explained. “The Thames is no place for anything other than a large pleasure craft. Unfortunately, they’re talking of covering over the Fleet, which would be a great shame.”

They drifted past a field al glossy and yel ow with buttercups just as Teddy managed to catch a large amount of dripping weed. “Look!” he said, “I’l give this to my kitten because Rummer says that cats eat grass sometimes, did you know that?”

Damon said fiercely, “Drop it, Teddy.”

Mr. Cunningham was laughing. “You need to teach your son how to swim, Damon. He’l swim like a minnow on the first try.

”

“I’m sure that I would,” Teddy put in.

“The water’s quite shal ow around the curve over there,” Mr. Cunningham suggested. “Mud flats. We could simply drop him off the boat, just as Lady Roberta suggested for the kitten.”

“That would be good,” Teddy said, nodding so vigorously that he didn’t notice his father pul ing the seaweed away, although he promptly plunged his hand back in the water to try to rescue it.

“Teddy, I told you not to get wet,” his father said. “And Ransom, do I understand you to be volunteering for the pleasure of such instruction?”

Rather to Roberta’s surprise, Mr. Cunningham didn’t say no outright. “Swimming involves disrobing, which wouldn’t be appropriate for ladies,” he noted.

“A boy never shows a girl his pizzle,” Teddy informed Roberta.

“I’l keep that in mind,” she said.

“But once you’re married, you can look at al of ’em that you wish.”

“I assume that is a philosophy learned at Papa’s knee?” Roberta enquired.

Damon stopped laughing to say that perhaps the field would be a good place for their picnic.

Mr. Cunningham agreeably began steering the boat in that direction and a moment later they were on the bank. Teddy let it be known that he would like a private visit to the trees, and he and Damon set off in that direction. Roberta busied herself with setting out the picnic basket under a tree while Mr. Cunningham fashioned a landing post out of a sapling.

By the time they came back, Roberta had discovered that a rug on top of bumpy ground is not a comfortable seat. They al seated themselves except Teddy, who danced around them like an impatient dragonfly.

Damon drained his glass of wine with a slightly desperate air. “Parenting is exhausting,” he said.

“That is because you have insufficient help. Weren’t you going to find a nursemaid?”

“The Registry Office is sending a new one tomorrow,” he said. “I only have to survive today.”

Roberta looked at him and couldn’t help a tiny smile. His hair was standing on end, and his arm was wet to the elbow from pul ing Teddy’s hand out of the river. He was pouring himself another glass of wine as if it were the elixir of life. Mr.

Cunningham had deserted his uncomfortable seat and was swinging Teddy in a circle until he shrieked.

“Perhaps Mr. Cunningham would be kind enough to go through the grove to the mud flat?” Roberta asked. “He can teach Teddy how to swim and we’l sit in this vastly uncomfortable spot and wait for them to come back, sparing me the sight of a miniature pizzle.”

Damon blinked at her for a moment and then leapt to his feet. “Ransom!” he cal ed.

Roberta finished her glass just as Mr. Cunningham and Teddy set off through the grove.

“He won’t drown, wil he?” Damon said, sounding not terribly concerned.

“I think it’s unlikely. Where did Mr. Cunningham learn about children?”

“Likely he has siblings,” Damon said. He lay backwards and then sat up with a curse. “Damn it, where have you placed us, Roberta?”

“In a field of buttercups. Tables and chairs are unaccountably missing.”

“I’ve been in many a field,” Damon said, “and this is the most uncomfortable of my experience.” He brought Roberta to her feet. Then he picked up the rug and kicked at something underneath.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Cowpats,” he said. “You put the rug down on a lovely col ection of them. In fact,” Damon said looking about, “this entire field is dotted with cowpats.”

“Do you suppose a bul wil be coming along?”

“In a month or so when the grass is high enough. I’m going to have to sacrifice my gloves, which wil give Martins palpitations, but what can I do? Back up, Roberta.”

Two minutes later, cowpats started sailing across the field.

“See if you can get one in the river,” Roberta suggested.

The river lay gurgling in the sunshine, about ten yards away. Damon pul ed back his arm and then let the cowpat fly.

It struck the bank just before the river. Roberta very loudly said nothing.

“I can do better than that,” Damon muttered. “Here, help me take my coat off. I don’t want to soil it with my gloves.”

She helped him pul off his beautiful coat. It was a misty grey, lined with scarlet silk that trimmed the sleeves with a huge open cuff. His breeches were the same scarlet, very tight. His waistcoat fol owed until he was wearing nothing but the breeches and a linen shirt, so fine that she could see the swel of his muscles as he threw another cowpat. But it landed a good foot before the edge.

“Do gentlemen invite women into their chambers to help them dress, the way ladies do?” she asked with some curiosity.

He shook his head. “I’m aiming at that duck, Roberta—” And he gave a little whoop. “Hit it!”

“Perhaps, if it hadn’t dived first.” And then, answering his gesture, “No, I am certainly
not
going to hand you a cowpat.”

“I’d never ask such a thing of a proper lady, but that’s the great thing about you, Roberta. You’re not so ladylike.”

“I don’t think that’s a compliment.”

“Only because you have no idea how tedious ladies can be. For one thing, they have no sense of competitiveness. And having grown up as Jemma’s brother, you can imagine how boring I find that.”

“Is Jemma competitive?”

He laughed. “Jemma is the best female chess player in England and France, and quite likely better than al the men as wel . She kept beating Philidor, and he is the best in France.”

“Who’s the best in England?”

He blinked at her. “You don’t know?”

She shook her head.

“Your lover,” he said with relish. “Vil iers. Though I suppose I shouldn’t yet cal him that. Now, do you suppose I could hit the sapling we tied the boat to?”

“No.”

“You’re not very encouraging,” he complained and then leaned back as far as he could and let go with a mighty fling. The pat fel far short.

“I’l try,” she said.

It was very gratifying; his mouth actual y fel open.

Clearly, the right shape of cowpat was essential. It had to be disc shaped, as opposed to some of the bal s Damon was hurdling around; they lost their shape in midair and fel to a pile of dust.

Final y she found just the right one and, saying a silent apology to Jemma’s beautiful lilac gloves, crossed her hand over her chest and spun the disc as hard as she could.