This Duchess of Mine

by Eloisa James

  Behind him, Elijah could hear Jemma’s helpless laughter. He made the mistake of smiling at the sound.

  “You’re laughing at me! I did nothing to your wife but what she welcomed. She’s worse than a light-skirt. She’s a—a…” Maybe it was the look in Elijah’s eyes that dried up his words. Without bothering to finish his sentence, the sailor lowered his shoulder and charged like a bull, catching Elijah square in the chest.

  Elijah was expecting a blow to the face because that was how the men fought in the boxing salon he regularly visited. He barely managed to keep to his feet, and the man was rounding about, ready for another charge.

  In one lightning quick moment, Elijah calculated the rate of speed of his attacker and his relatively lower height, drew back his fist, and waited for the man’s chin to connect with it.

  Over the sailor went, out cold.

  The thunk that resounded through the night air was followed directly by an unmistakably official bellow. “Now what’s all this, what’s all this?”

  “Ah…the watchman,” Villiers said softly.

  Elijah turned his head. “You’re at my shoulder?”

  Villiers shrugged. “He might have had a brother. How are you feeling?”

  Elijah waited a split second, shook himself, and started grinning. “Stupendous. Where’s Jemma?”

  “Fool,” Villiers muttered, stepping forward.

  The duke made an imposing figure. A plain domino would never do for Villiers, of course. His was of black velvet with a border of pale lilac. His silver cane looked exactly like the sword stick it was. The crowd stopped chattering when they saw him.

  He prodded the fallen man with the tip of his boot.

  “Drunk,” he announced.

  The watchman frowned. “I was informed there was a fight and I think I heard…” His voice died out.

  The cold look in Villiers’s eyes could have graced the devil himself. “You must have been mistaken.” He looked around at the bystanders. “He was mistaken, wasn’t he?”

  Vauxhall might attract those of different backgrounds, but it wasn’t limited to the stupid. “Drunk as a sailor,” the burly woman in the front said promptly. “Only person drunker would be my old da, and he ain’t here tonight.”

  “Humph,” the watchman said.

  “I suppose someone must drag him away to sleep it off,” Villiers said, sighing. “For your trouble.” There was a gentle click, the kind made by guineas passing from one hand to another.

  “Now, now!” the watchman shouted briskly. “No need to stand about gawking at this unfortunate inebriate.”

  Jemma was standing to the side, still giggling.

  “You are a reckless wench,” Elijah said, taking her hands.

  “I’m not,” she protested, but her eyes were alight with laughter.

  “You enticed that man to kiss you.”

  “If I wanted to make you jealous,” she said with a delicious pout, “I could do far better than that.”

  “Yes?” He pulled her mask over her head.

  “Villiers is here.”

  “I saw him.”

  “I could—” She broke off in a little grunt. “What are you doing?”

  Without further ado, he picked her up and threw her over his shoulder. “Going where I can chastise my errant wife.”

  There was an enthusiastic shout behind him. “That’s the way, square toes! Keep the missus in line!”

  Elijah turned. “I shall, thank you…Villiers!” he called.

  “You couldn’t be an acquaintance of mine,” Villiers said. “Are you the local dockworker?”

  “The Marquise de Perthuis is here somewhere, unless she’s fallen into a drunken stupor. Will you escort her to her house? I must take my wife home.”

  Villiers bowed and disappeared.

  “That’s the sauce!” someone shouted. “Give her a bit of the home remedy and she won’t be flirting with the first jackanapes she sees!”

  Jemma was laughing helplessly. Her hair had fallen around her face and she couldn’t see anything. “Elijah,” she gasped.

  “In a moment,” he said politely, walking off.

  “I had too much Champagne to be in this position,” she said a second later.

  He put her down immediately. By then they were in one of the shadowed lanes that spread out from the orchestra pavilion and were lit only by infrequent lamps.

  “I’m afraid I’ve lost track of where we are,” he said.

  “The carriages don’t seem to be in this direction. Did you have a great deal of Champagne?”

  “This is the Dark Walk,” Jemma said, sitting down on a bench. “I suppose I shouldn’t have flirted with that ginger-haired fellow.”

  “Why not?” he said agreeably.

  “It was rather fun, knowing that you were watching.”

  “Though of course he didn’t know that.”

  “He shouldn’t have tried to kiss me so roughly.”

  “He had reason to think that you welcomed his advances. After all, you stayed on the floor with him.”

  “Well…You’re making me feel shabby, Elijah. I hate it when you do that!”

  He reached out and pulled her into his lap in one swift movement. “Let’s discuss the rules of marriage.”

  “The rules of marriage!”

  “You’re not to kiss anyone else.”

  “No?” She must have recovered from her shame, because she gave that one word a deeply wistful tone.

  “Never again.”

  “I shall think about it.”

  His arm tightened. “No thinking. No kissing.”

  “Then I get to tell you the second rule of marriage.”

  “All right.”

  “You have to care if someone is going to kiss me. While dancing or elsewhere.” She whispered it.

  “I—”

  Jemma laid her head against his chest, so she couldn’t see Elijah’s eyes. “When I went to Paris, you didn’t follow. I cried every night for months, but inside, I thought you would arrive any day. Then I decided that you couldn’t come while Parliament was in session.”

  He groaned.

  “But then Parliament went into recess, and friends wrote me and said that you had gone to Kent, to the Earl of Chatham’s estate. I thought perhaps you couldn’t escape the work,” she said, relentlessly.

  “But I never came.”

  “You never came.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “And not because of work. Because—Because it wasn’t my right, Jemma.”

  “Your right to do what?”

  “To follow you. I’d broken our marriage. I’d done just what my father did to my mother, over and over, without even realizing it. I’d broken your heart and your trust.”

  Jemma thought about reassuring him, but it was all true. “So why didn’t you come after me?” She sounded like a little girl.

  “I waited.”

  “Waited for what?”

  “Waited until you had found someone.”

  “But I didn’t want anyone!”

  His arms tightened. “You had the right.”

  “It hurt to see you with a mistress. It was heartbreaking when you said you loved her. But the real heartbreak came when I realized you didn’t even care what I did. That I meant so little to you that you didn’t bother to visit for years.”

  “Three years, ten months, and fourteen days.”

  The only sound was that of a sleepy, confused lark, somewhere deep in the park. Jemma straightened up so she could see Elijah’s face. “What?”

  “That’s how long it took you. You finally had an affaire with DuPuy. It lasted only—”

  “It lasted three days,” Jemma said. “You knew that?”

  He nodded. “My friends were as assiduous in letter-writing as were yours. And of course the fact that DuPuy had fallen so deeply in love with you was considered tantalizing news for your husband.”

  “So you came that Chr
istmas.”

  “I came as soon as the Parliament recessed. I had this foolish notion…”

  “What?”

  “That it would all be fine. But you were furious at me. And I—I found that for all my reasoned decision that it was your right to have an affaire, I wanted to throttle you.”

  “The things you said drove me to more excess.”

  He ran a finger slowly down the slope of her cheek.

  “I know. I came again the next year, but…”

  “We didn’t fight as much,” Jemma said, remembering.

  “You thought I was moralistic and boring. And I was. You had become so sophisticated and beautiful. I had ruined everything, and I didn’t know what to do. So I went back to England, back to the House. But I never took another mistress, Jemma. I mean that.”

  “I’m stunned,” she said. She kept searching his eyes, but it was too dark and she couldn’t see them well.

  “The third rule of marriage,” he said.

  She put her arms around his neck, feeling a huge wrench of emotion that she wasn’t even sure how to name. “What is it?”

  “We never let anger or the sea stand between us again.”

  It was too sad, all that time lost. She couldn’t even smile. Her throat moved, and then he was kissing her and she could have sworn that the same sorrow was in his mouth and his touch, in the way his hands twisted into her hair. Finally the sweet deep pleasure of his mouth made all the rest of it fade away.

  After a while he unwound her arms and stood up, slowly putting her on her feet. “I need to get my duchess home safe,” he said. “You will be glad to know that I am not attending Pitt tomorrow. I would be happy if you would accompany me.”

  “What shall we do?”

  “Nothing as colorful as the flower market.”

  “Dear me,” she said. “Shall I dress in black?”

  “It’s not a visit to the cemetery,” he said. “But perhaps it would be best to avoid being very extravagantly duchess-like.”

  “I shall eschew my jewels.”

  “And no wig.”

  “A hard bargain,” she said, smiling at him. “But I suppose I can be seen outside the house in such a pitiful state without my reputation suffering overmuch.”

  Chapter Twelve

  March 29

  “We’re going to Cow Cross,” Elijah announced the next morning.

  “Where’s that?”

  “In Spitalfields.”

  Jemma blinked. Spitalfields was one of the poorest areas of London, a tangled mass of grimy tenements and questionable businesses. Cook shops there followed no regulations and regularly were accused of serving rat stew, but who would know, since the entire district had the odor of cooking onions and aged chicken fat?

  No duchess entered Spitalfields. In fact, Jemma would have ventured to say that the only ladies who entered Spitalfields were of the missionary variety, tough by nature and likely carrying defensive weapons to boot.

  “I’m taking you to a house that is not as beautiful as the flower market but just as interesting,” Elijah said, acting as if he had said nothing much out of the ordinary.

  “Is Cow Cross on the outskirts of Spitalfields?” Jemma asked, knowing she was a coward.

  “In the very center.” He helped her into the coach.

  “Cow Cross is a tiny lane, bounded on one side by a sewer ditch and the other by Simple Boy Lane. Most people don’t know these streets exist,” he pointed out, which was something she knew quite well herself.

  “I can’t say that I’ve had the opportunity to call on anyone in Simple Boy Lane,” she said. “Who lives there?”

  “Cow Cross is the home of glassblowers, for the most part,” Elijah said.

  “Glassblowers. And?”

  “My father owned a house there, which I inherited.”

  “You own a house in Spitalfields?” She was stunned. Moralistic Elijah, champion of the poor?

  “I can see that you think I should have torn it down.”

  She chose her words carefully. “I am surprised to find that you are a landlord in such an area.”

  “Someone must be,” he said reasonably. Then he relented. “In fact, I don’t rent rooms.”

  “An orphanage?” she said, her frown clearing. Of course Elijah would be involved in good projects.

  “No children,” he said. “And you might not like it once you learn more of the place. I inherited it from my father, and I maintain it. But it is shameful, all the same.”

  “If it’s shameful, why don’t you sell the house?”

  “It’s also complicated.” A moment later he added, “We own the Cacky Street Glassworks.”

  “Oh,” Jemma said uncertainly. “Is that a large establishment? In Spitalfields?”

  “It is certainly located there.”

  He seemed to be in a fierce mood, and she wasn’t quite sure what to do. One good thing about being separated for the past years was that she hadn’t had to deal with anyone’s moods but her own. If she were in a bad mood, she stayed inside and played chess against herself until she felt better.

  But what did one do with a grumpy husband? She stole a look at Elijah, but he was frowning out the window. Already the streets were growing smaller and grimier.

  After a moment she took off her gloves and removed the diamond her mother had given her. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Elijah to protect her, but there was no need to be foolish. She dropped it neatly into the pocket next to her seat.

  “Will Muffet wait for us?” she asked.

  “Of course. Though we may wish to take a walk.”

  Take a walk in Spitalfields? She had done very daring things in her life, as she saw it. She had ridden a horse bareback, once. She had left her husband and presented herself to the Court of Versailles before she understood how to look truly expensive (and thus irreproachable). She had provoked a woman into attempting to seduce her husband.

  But she had never put herself deliberately in the way of bodily harm. Her native intelligence included a keen sense of self-preservation.

  Out the window, everything looked slightly foreign. The shops were jammed together like an old man’s teeth just before they fell out: dingy, leaning, doubtless full of holes. She could see alleys snaking away to the left and right, but buildings bent over them, so the sunshine disappeared a foot or two from the entrance. The darkness looked rusty, as if it had solid mass.

  She cleared her throat. “Elijah.”

  “Yes?” He was staring sightlessly out the window, as best she could tell.

  “I’ve never been into Spitalfields.”

  “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of you.”

  She bit her lip.

  “It’s quite safe,” he added. “Of course, Spitalfields would not be a wise place to enter at night. But it’s not as if hordes of savages roam the streets, Jemma. Spitalfields is simply a place where the very poor live. And they are trying, rather desperately for the most part, to find their next meal, rear their babies, afford a blanket or two.”

  “I hate it when you do that,” she said crossly.

  “What?” He honestly looked surprised.

  “Make me feel so shabby.”

  “I don’t mean to.”

  “I suppose you can’t help it. Don’t you ever get tired of being so good, Elijah? Of always—”

  His face looked forbidding now. “Always what?”

  “Knowing the right thing to do?” Being better than the rest of us frivolous mortals, she wanted to say. But she didn’t dare.

  “I am neither better nor worse than the next man,” he said, biting the words. “I have compromised on issues where I felt bitterly that the better option—the kinder, more ethical option—was being tossed to the side.”

  The carriage rocked to a halt. “Don’t be frightened,” he said, holding out a hand to her. His smile helped. “I do believe you’ll find yourself interested, Jemma. And I need you to know of this place.”

  “Why?” sh
e asked, just as the footman opened the door to the carriage.

  “You’ll have to carry on,” he said, rather obscurely.

  But Jemma knew instantly what he was referring to, and her heart hiccupped from fear. Then she pulled herself together. She had the blood of three arrogant duchesses running through her veins. She could certainly survive a visit to Spitalfields.

  They stepped out onto a street that was presumably made of cobblestones, but if so, the stones were buried under a thick compost of rotting vegetables. It felt like a springy blanket under her feet, as if made of horse hair.

  “The carriage won’t fit in Cow Cross,” Elijah said, tucking her arm under his. “It’s just down there.”

  Cow Cross was one of those little alleys that lurched suddenly off the street as if it were a hare fleeing a fox. This one broke left and then faded into the same rusty darkness as the alleys she’d glimpsed from the carriage.

  “You see?” Elijah said, sounding amused. “No one is lurking in Cacky Street, hoping that a duchess with a jewel in her slipper will happen by.”

  That was true enough. She didn’t see a single person, only a great congregation of ravens sitting atop a dilapidated house. They looked down at the two of them in a disapproving fashion, as if they were preachers in ragged blacks, squawking at the incongruity of a ducal carriage in Cacky Street.

  “Where is everyone?” Jemma asked. She had the mistaken idea that the poor lived in the street. That was how they were depicted in the papers: cooking, sleeping, fighting in the open. But Cacky Street was empty, just a twisted, shabby street dozing in the sun.

  “Sleeping,” Elijah said. “Working.” He glanced at her and there was a gleam of something in his eye.

  “Making love. If you’re not rich enough to have a hundred rooms, you know, you find yourself curled up next to the missus of a morning and that gives a man ideas.”

  Jemma ignored him. “Where are your glassworks?”

  “Down to the left,” Elijah said, his face closing again. Somehow she’d asked the wrong question.

  “Well,” she said brightly, “shall we continue to Cow Cross?”

  Once they entered the lane, Cow Cross wasn’t as dark as it had seemed from Cacky Street. A bit of sun managed to sneak past the buildings that leaned and wobbled toward each other like tipsy matrons sharing secrets. Elijah stamped down the lane as if it belonged to him, which, for all Jemma knew, it did.