This Duchess of Mine

by Eloisa James

  “Knight to King’s Bishop’s Three.”

  How could Elijah’s voice sound so untouched, so steady? “Bishop to Bishop’s Four,” she continued, pushing her voice above a whisper. The chess game in her head grew more complicated. Elijah was playing defensively, but brilliantly. She attacked, preparing to safeguard her king by castling. Elijah responded, attacking one of her knights. The dance of chess pieces became ever more intricate as they moved about the board.

  “Pawn takes Pawn,” he said some moments later.

  “Milady?”

  She felt a little dizzy. “I have a two-part request.”

  “I’m not sure that’s legal,” Elijah said. His voice was husky and dark, and ran like brandy through her blood. He didn’t sound like Pitt’s opposition in the Lords, like the bright young hope who would save the English nation.

  “I’d like you to—to touch my breasts, just as I did your chest.” She’d never said such a thing out loud, and she had to steady her voice. “If you would be so kind. And I want you to tell me what it feels like.”

  “Tell you how it feels for me?”

  “Talk to me,” she said, sliding flat and stretching her arms above her head to the wooden headboard.

  “Tell me what you feel, since you can’t see my breasts. I loved what you told me in the baths.”

  She felt maddened with desire, waiting for the touch of his hands. When finally—finally!—she felt strong hands cup both breasts, she let out an involuntary moan. And when he started moving his thumbs, she found herself shaking, her breath coming fast.

  “Tell me,” she gasped.

  “You have the most beautiful breasts in the world,” he said, and the guttural sound of his voice told her everything she needed to know. He was being a little rough now, and she couldn’t help twisting up against his touch. “I can’t feel well enough with my hands to describe you, so…”

  His lips set trails of fire across her body. He spoke the whole time, talking of sweet curves and cherry something, but she wasn’t listening. Without her eyesight, her body seemed to have taken over. She couldn’t stop moving, twisting under his hands and his mouth, begging silently.

  It was hard, surprisingly hard, to remember the chessboard. But she did, and they played on, until:

  “Bishop takes Knight,” Elijah said, his voice dark and sweet.

  “My turn,” she said with a gasp, breaking free. She found his head with her hands and pulled him down to her lips. “Kiss me,” she breathed.

  Elijah’s kisses were like words. This kiss was a rough caress, a controlled warning from the pirate king to the maiden. Tremors of fire crept down to Jemma’s stomach.

  “Queen takes Bishop,” she said, shocked to hear the hunger in her own voice.

  “I’ll take a kiss like this,” he whispered, and he thrust his hardness against the cradle of her legs. Their kiss was like a fire in the blood. Jemma found herself instinctively arching against him.

  “Pawn to Queen’s Rook’s Three,” Elijah murmured.

  Then she tried to remember what move should come next. She knew it all…she knew the next move. But just when she almost remembered, Elijah ran a hand down her body and her mind went blank. Was it a pawn she meant to move? To take his bishop, perhaps?

  He stretched toward the table, and his body shifted deliciously against her. She was thinking about that, and trying to ignore the urgent signals her body was sending, when she suddenly gave a little scream. Elijah must have drunk from the Champagne bottle because cold lips slid across her throat.

  Her skin felt as if it were burning. “No,” she gasped, turning her head toward him.

  “It’s not your turn to ask for a kiss,” he said, laughter running through his voice. “Not even if you beg, Duchess.”

  “I never beg!” Jemma said, instantly remembering the move she planned. “Knight takes Bishop. Your boon.”

  A cold tongue ran shockingly up her throat.

  “Oh—”

  His lips trailed fire and ice across her cheek and hovered at the corner of her mouth. She opened her mouth, but his lips evaded hers. “I’ll have you begging,” he said. “That’s what I want, more than a boon.”

  “Oh—”

  “Rook takes Knight,” he whispered in her ear.

  The very sound of his voice turned Jemma’s legs to sweet fire. She tried to think of the next move, the one that was going to smash his game and win her the top spot in the Chess Club. He was braced over her, nuzzling her chin. He smelled wonderful, like clean male. His lips were tracing patterns on her cheeks.

  She couldn’t think. The only thing she wanted to do was tear off the blindfold and run her hands into his hair. Kiss him again, and again.

  “Your move!” he commanded. She didn’t answer, and she felt his ripple of laughter as clearly in her body as in his.

  Jemma suddenly realized something that she should have known all along.

  There are times where winning at chess doesn’t matter. She loved Elijah. She loved him with all her heart—and that meant that she wanted him to win. Or rather, she didn’t care. She didn’t have to win every game of chess.

  “You win,” she said huskily, and gave him a free kiss, one that had nothing to do with boons or chess pieces.

  “You win,” she repeated. Then she reached up deliberately and pulled off her blindfold.

  Only to meet Elijah’s dark, smiling eyes.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “You’re not blindfolded!” she gasped.

  “I cheated.” He rolled off her body and sat up.

  Jemma pulled herself to a seated position as well.

  “You—You cheated?” She couldn’t believe it. Not only had Elijah the Perfect Paragon cheated by untying his blindfold, but he didn’t seem in the least repentant.

  “Why did you remove your scarf? Wait! I’ve been running my fingers through your hair! I should have known—”

  He was laughing outright. “You must have been distracted.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t want to win.” He leaned forward to brush his lips across hers. “I took my blindfold off the moment we began the game. I didn’t want to miss even a moment of watching you.”

  She scowled at him. “You should have told me!”

  The look in his eyes was tender and rough at the same time. “You’re so beautiful,” he said. “I never really saw you when we made love before. You were always under the blankets.”

  “I watched you,” she said. “I used to lie very quietly and pretend to be asleep while you dressed. Remember? We would sleep in the master chamber then.”

  He glanced indifferently at the walls of her chamber. “No difference.”

  “The difference is that you’ve come to me.”

  “I’ll come to you anywhere,” he promised.

  “Just come, and I’ll be happy,” she said, giggling.

  But he didn’t laugh with her. “I don’t remember you coming, all those years ago.”

  Jemma was torn between the delicious feeling in her body and a small tingle of embarrassment. “I didn’t.”

  “Tonight, will you tell exactly what you like?”

  She felt a blush starting. “Well…”

  “Do you mean to tell me that the reputation of Frenchmen is exaggerated?”

  It was embarrassing to admit. “Perhaps.” She might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. “I never—I didn’t stay long enough—I—”

  His mouth twitched and she realized he was laughing. Laughing! “I’m trying to tell you something important!” she protested, giving him a little push.

  “I should have known it. I was in England, suffering the tortures of the damned because I was so convinced you had discovered far better lovers than I.”

  “I didn’t drop them because our intimacies were unsatisfactory,” she said, shaking her head. “It was because of you.”

  “Of me!”

  “I always felt that I was betraying you. I would decide, in the mo
st cold-blooded way, to have an affaire, but it never seemed to work. They were so tedious, and the bedding wasn’t terribly interesting.”

  “We were fools, Jemma.”

  “Was there something you learned from your mistress that you would like me to try?” she said, clearing her throat.

  His eyes were serious now. “There are things I’d like to try, but none of them came from poor Sarah. I think perhaps we need to talk about her, since we keep circling the subject.”

  She bit her lip, but she wanted to know.

  “A mistress appears with her private parts oiled, Jemma. Did you know that?”

  She could feel her eyes widening. “So that a man—”

  “Precisely. Before we were married, I did try to give her some pleasure. I would touch her breasts. She was a good woman, and I was fond of her. But after I married you, I lost all enjoyment in it. I used to simply take her. With few words, and with all possible speed.”

  Jemma bit her lip. Her body felt suddenly cold. “We both made some terrible mistakes. I should have fought for you. Instead I simply ran away.”

  They stayed silent a moment. “Would you like to just—sleep tonight?” he asked, finally. “This has undoubtedly made you feel rather ill.” His eyes were black with self-recrimination, somber.

  “Are you going to sit there and feel bad about a woman who was paid a fortune to make love to a man who had one of the most beautiful bodies in England,” Jemma asked, “or are you going to make love to your wife?”

  His mouth softened, but still he just looked at her, as if there were something more she had to say.

  So she slid down onto her back and said, “Of course, we still need to talk.”

  He nodded.

  “I’ll tell what I learned in France.” Elijah frowned, and she added hastily, “Not from my two lovers. I’m afraid those encounters were less than inspiring, which was undoubtedly my fault since I was both cold and apathetic.”

  His eyes definitely looked less somber now.

  “I learned a great deal from Frenchwomen,” she said dreamily, running a hand down over her breasts.

  “I want to hear every word,” Elijah said, leaning over her, but not touching her.

  “Did you know that women love to be kissed, here?” Jemma asked, running a finger straight down her belly and below.

  “I’ve heard as much. And I would love to experiment.” The throaty pleasure in his voice was entirely genuine.

  “And did you know that some men enjoy a woman’s kiss—” She let her eyes drift down to the relevant spot.

  “—almost as much as they enjoy other acts? And that sometimes a woman’s pleasure is increased if her lover strokes her at the right moment?”

  His eyes looked wild, like those of a man at the very limit of his self-control. “Jemma, are you done talking now?”

  Without pausing to give her answer, she turned over on her stomach, came up on her knees, and turned her head to look at him over her shoulder. “I just wanted to say that an old Frenchwoman told me that this was the best position in which to conceive a child.”

  Elijah made a hoarse, strangled sound in his throat and flipped her back over. Then he was looming over her, on his knees, looking into her face. “It’s going to be all right, isn’t it?”

  She cupped his face. “I love you.”

  The words seemed to fall into the room like a blessing, like cool rain in summer. His throat worked and then he said, “Ah, God, Jemma, do you really?”

  “More than life,” she said simply. “Elijah?”

  He was staring down at her as if she were made of pure gold. “Yes?”

  “Would you mind very much if we made love now? Because I think that I’m about to go out of my mind.” Her whole body was prickling and tremors kept running through her legs.

  A corner of his mouth quirked up, and a hand settled on her breast.

  It felt so good that she twisted under him, gasping, and finally managed to say, “I need—”

  “This?” His lips replaced his hand, but it wasn’t enough. They had been playing for hours, and she was mad for him.

  “I need you.” Her voice sounded childish to her ears, so she wound her hand hard into his hair and pulled his mouth to hers. She said it into the sweetness of his kiss, “I need you now.”

  The Duke of Beaumont was a man whom many in the English government had come to trust. If you told him there was a desperate need for something, no matter how difficult or impossible, he would do his best to satisfy you.

  Without saying a word, Elijah reared above her and a thumb stroked down her most delicate part.

  Jemma twisted under him, crying out. His voice was as deep as the devil’s itself, without a trace of the controlled statesman about it. “You are exquisite.” His hand caressed her so that she arched again.

  “Elijah,” she whispered, and then lost track of what she was saying because his lips followed his hand. His tongue sent wild sensations rocketing through her body. She closed her eyes as if the blindfold were there again. Elijah was ruthless, controlling her desire, driving her higher and higher, closer and closer.

  Finally, finally, he pulled back, pushing her legs even farther apart. “Open your eyes, Jemma,” he growled. “Look at me.”

  She could no more disobey him than she could fly to the moon. “Please,” she finally gasped. “Elijah!”

  She was small, and he was large, yet he stroked into her as if they had made love every night for years. It felt as if he were coming home, as if no time had passed. A dark pleasure burned down her legs, making her cry out.

  The passion that gripped her had nothing in common with what she remembered of the awkward couplings of their early marriage. She had been unsure and embarrassed, those days, biting her lip to keep silent so he wouldn’t be disgusted. Now she could no sooner control the moans flying from her lips than she could leap from the bed.

  Yet still their rhythm didn’t seem entirely right. He would thrust, and then she would arch up at the wrong moment. They bounced off each other rather than moving in unison.

  Elijah stopped moving.

  “No,” Jemma gasped. There was a lovely, building heat in her legs, more intense than she’d ever experienced, and she was desperate to chase the sensation. “Please, please don’t stop!” She shuddered and arched against him again.

  “You’re leading, Jemma,” he said, his voice hoarse.

  “What?” She blinked up at him.

  He deftly pulled her arms over her head and imprisoned them with one hand. “Let me,” he said through his teeth.

  But she didn’t understand, even when he stroked forward again. It was so lovely that the heat seethed in her legs and she cried out.

  Elijah stroked forward again, long and deep.

  It was so intoxicating that she twisted up against him any way she could. She couldn’t stay still.

  He made a noise that was somewhere between a groan and a laugh and dropped her hands, pulling her hips up so her legs wrapped around him and she couldn’t move.

  “Elijah!” she cried, shocked by the vulnerability of her position. But he wasn’t listening, just moving, and suddenly she got it, and pushed back against him at just the right moment.

  “Yes,” he said, between his teeth, his eyes intent, fierce. He kept moving that way, hard and deep, and she arched toward him frantically, at the right moment. The fire in her legs was spreading and making her seethe and tremble.

  Elijah was looking down at her the whole time. The look in his eyes, the raw possession, made the feelings in her body spiral tighter and tighter.

  “Jemma,” he said, deep and hard as his body, and she wrapped her arms around him and broke the way thunder cracks in the sky, into a before and after, into the Jemma-who-had-never and the new Jemma.

  He came with her, into the fury and the heat of it, and the only thing she heard was one word, and it wasn’t love, but mine, and that was good enough.

  Chapter Twenty

 
April 1

  Morning

  Villiers looked with some distaste at the page delivered from Templeton’s office. It contained a neat list of eight names and eight addresses. Why eight, one might ask? He, of all people, knew that he had six children. Or rather, to be precise, he had five children and was paying for six.

  Yet the list explained nothing. There was an ominous feeling to it, as if Templeton, his little rat of a solicitor, had disappeared into a hole from which he wouldn’t be re-emerging. And if that were the case, Templeton had likely taken a good amount of ducal coin with him.

  Either the list implied that he now had eight children, which explanation he rejected, or two children were unaccounted for in a welter of addresses.

  He sighed and summoned his coach.

  The first address was a house in a respectable area of Stepney. He considered instructing a footman to knock on the door and simply fetch the child, but thought better of it. This was the place where lived—the very thought made him clammy and slightly nauseated—his firstborn son.

  The woman who answered the door was pious, by the look of her. But there was a hint of spice in her eye. Villiers deduced that she had settled for piety when she couldn’t find something more lively.

  “Good morning,” he said. “I am the Duke of Villiers. Are you Mrs. Jobber?”

  “Huh.” She was clearly nonplussed by the appearance of a duke. Though of course Villiers did not fool himself that there were any in the kingdom who looked more ducal than he. This morning, he was wearing pale rose velvet and could have graced the king’s court with ease.

  Instead he was standing before a battered-looking little house. The irony was not lost on him. One might wear all the velvet in the world and still discover that one’s children were living in a small house in Stepney.

  “I’ve come for my son,” he said to her.

  A flash of pain crossed Mrs. Jobber’s eyes. “You’re taking him?”

  Of course she would have come to feel affection for the lad. Of course she would. It was what any reasonable parent would prefer. “If you would be so kind,” he said, bowing.