The thought was demoralizing, and just like that, his personal weapon drooped.
Jemma stood up and moved down the remaining stairs. The water came to just the level of her breasts, so it looked as if the water was caressing them. Was she coming to him? Breaking this foolish rule?
She walked until her pink toes touched the line between the men’s and women’s baths. Then, suddenly, she ducked under the water and came up a drenched nymph, a denizen of the seas, sleek and beautiful.
Elijah was down his stairs in a moment, across the water so fast that he caused a minor tidal wave. He didn’t have to look down to realize that his weapon had leapt back to full life again.
“Surely kissing is allowed in the baths,” he suggested, leaning forward.
She shook her head. Wet, she looked mysterious, her eyes dreamy. He could see the romantic girl who came to the baths with her mother, the young wife in love with her husband, though it was an arranged marriage, and one where he paid her precious little attention to boot.
“No touching,” she said, and that wicked little smile was back. “So…”
She was within his reach. His hands itched to shape the soft weight of her breasts, take a nipple into his mouth, run a hand down her sleek back. His heart was pounding—
His heart was pounding, but regularly. In tune.
He didn’t care.
“You seem to have ideas that you didn’t attempt when we were married,” she noted.
“We are married,” he said hoarsely.
“You know what I mean. We were—” She waved her hands in the water, and drops fell on her breasts, like the caresses Elijah wanted to give her.
“Strictly under the covers,” he said resignedly. “I was very young, you know. And stupid. That goes without saying. And I was also very afraid.”
That surprised her.
It was killing him to stand just before such a luscious body, Jemma’s body, and keep his hands at his sides. His cock strained forward, as if unable to obey the command to stand still.
“Did anyone ever tell you how and where my father died?” he asked.
He hated sympathy, but not from her. It warmed something cold and miserable in his heart.
“He was entertaining some ladies,” she said carefully.
“The Palace of Salomê,” he told her. “We managed to keep some of the details from becoming public.”
“I know there were two women.”
“The true scandal wasn’t the women,” he said, resigned to telling her everything.
Her mouth dropped open. “A man?”
“No. But my father was—” It was difficult to force the words past his throat. “—he was tied to the bed. His tastes were peculiar.”
“Ah.”
“It took me a while to realize that engaging in more than the strictest interpretation of the act didn’t necessarily include a spanking.”
She laughed. The sound was delicious, charming, inviting. Shocking. “I’m sorry,” she said, giggling. “But the idea of someone spanking you, Elijah, is absurd. You’re such a duke. Even now, even naked.” She waved her hands.
He looked down at himself. “I look like a man, nothing more, nothing less.”
“No.” She shook her head, laughing. “It’s the way you stand, as if you own the ground you stand on. And the way you hold your chin. There’s something powerful about you, Elijah, bred in the bone.”
“Something rigid, you mean.” He was resigned to being his hidebound, moralistic self. It was probably too late to relax.
“I suppose I won’t try to tie you to the bed with my corset strings, then,” she said.
He blinked for a moment and then realized she was laughing again. At him. His hands twitched, ready to lunge at her, pull her to his side of the baths. “I’m absurd, aren’t I?” he said a moment later.
“No! It’s just that…well, I always thought it might be fun to…”
“You did?” He stared. “You want to tie me to the bed?”
She was blushing.
“No!”
But there was something in her eyes, something secret and delicious, something that turned intimacies into shared pleasure between a man and a woman rather than a horrid act, fraught with disgust.
“My mother probably shouldn’t have told me all those details,” he said. He made little waves with his hands, for the pleasure of seeing them lap her breasts.
“How old were you?”
“Seven? Eight?”
Jemma looked appalled. “She told you the details of your father’s death just when it happened? All the details?”
It had never before occurred to him how damaging that had been. His mother hadn’t just told him of the circumstances of his father’s death; her voice had vibrated with disgust and revulsion as she detailed the women, the leather the former duke wore, the humiliating truth of it.
Jemma apparently could see it in his face. “That was very wrong,” she observed. “No matter how egregiously your father behaved, she should have protected his memory in front of his only child.”
“I think she couldn’t control her anger.”
There was a moment of silence, a contented moment in which Elijah felt as if his childish disgust and fear were being washed away in the warm water.
“Did any of those Frenchmen ever tie you up?” he asked cautiously.
Just like that, her face turned pink again. “Of course not! And there weren’t so many. You make it sound as if I had hundreds of lovers! There were only two.”
“I know you didn’t.” He doubted he would ever feel comfortable in that position, but he could suddenly imagine winding a soft ribbon around Jemma’s wrists. Tying her to the bed so that his oh-so-sophisticated wife couldn’t stop him from doing whatever he wished to her body.
She must have read his thoughts in his eye. Her hands came up to cover her breasts, as if she were suddenly protective.
“No,” he said, tired of the limitations she set. The next second he had her in his arms, her soft body pressed against his. In between ferocious kisses, he told her all the things he would do to her once she allowed him to join her in bed.
With a pile of ribbons.
“Jemma,” he said finally, raising his head from her mouth, running his hands down her back to her round bottom. Pulling her against him roughly. “If you truly insist that we should not be intimate in this bath, then may I accompany you to Beaumont House? And may I join you in your bedchamber later this evening?”
Jemma felt as if the steam were rising from her body, rather than from the water. Elijah’s eyes blazed down into hers with the same steady strength as his hands, holding her close against his demanding body.
“Yes,” she whispered. She knew it would break her heart, but she couldn’t steel herself against him any longer. If she were truthful, it was already too late…it was far too late.
He was the man she loved. The man who loved honor more than his life, and certainly more than his wife. There was nothing she could do but allow him to revel in his conquest.
But Elijah surprised her. He ran his hands up her back with an achingly soft touch, and then moved back, away from her. The water felt like ice touching her thighs, her belly, the places where his skin had caressed hers. “Yesterday you said no.”
He was so beautiful, with his grave eyes and marked cheekbones. “It’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind,” she said, guarding her tongue so she didn’t make a fool of herself and confess to loving him more than her life.
More than he loved his own life.
His smile was more intoxicating than wine, sweeter than honey. And because, after all, he was a man, it was more than a little triumphant.
Chapter Seventeen
Later
“Lady Banistre holds a charity ball this evening,” Jemma said, entering Elijah’s study. She thought she knew what his response would be but…
Elijah, intent over a document on his desk, looked up absently. “What did yo
u say? I apologize, I’m writing—”
“Is it important? Shall I come back?”
“I can finish it later,” he said, putting blotting paper over a sheet as she sat down on the arm of his chair.
“Oh,” she said, taken aback by how quickly he covered his work. Not that she wanted to see it, but…
“I’m afraid that I must pay a quick visit to my solicitor,” he said. “I may not be back to the house before the sun sets.”
Jemma wrinkled her nose. “How tedious. Can’t it wait?”
“Alas, no. I thought we might play chess this evening.”
“Chess?”
“In bed,” he added casually.
Her mind reeled. “You wish to play the last game of our match? Tonight?”
He looked up at her calmly, every inch the duke. “I think we should put the Chess Club out of its misery, and solve the question of who is the first-rated player.”
Jemma felt herself growing pink, remembering their agreement. “Blindfolded?”
His smile caused a fever in her blood. Without saying a word, he toppled her into his lap. But there was something different about his kiss, she thought dimly, something savage and despairing, something—
“Elijah,” she said, struggling against the strength of his arms. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
“I’m just writing a difficult note,” he said, kissing her eyebrow. “It has made me ill-tempered, and I apologize.”
“Oh.”
“So our chess game begins tonight, Duchess. At eleven o’clock. I will give you one hour to try to win, blindfolded or no.” His teeth showed very white when he smiled. “And then I shall win.”
Jemma sniffed and turned up her nose. “Pride goeth before a fall, Duke.”
“You will fall before me,” he said, his smile a blatant challenge. “Backwards.”
Her breath caught at the blatant masculinity of him. The two French lovers she’d taken, years ago now, had both been secretive and circumspect, thrilled by the fact that the woman called the most beautiful Englishwoman in Paris had chosen them. They lavished attention on her.
They didn’t command. They weren’t arrogant or possessive. They were grateful.
One could say they weren’t dukes, and leave it at that. But the title didn’t explain things, Jemma thought. The title didn’t explain Elijah, and the way he was looking at her.
“I just don’t understand,” she whispered, saying it again, even though he’d explained before. “You let me go so easily, years ago. What changed?”
“It wasn’t easy to allow you to go.” The muscles in his jaw stood out. “I followed you to Gravesend, did you know that?”
She shook her head. “You said goodbye the night before, if one could call it that. I remember exactly what you said. If it was my decision to go to France, then you would not stand in my way.”
“I couldn’t sleep. Finally, I got in a carriage for Gravesend, arrived at dawn, and questioned the captain to make sure his ship was tight and safe. Then I waited.”
“You didn’t!”
“I stood on the pier where you couldn’t see me. You—”
“I cried,” she said.
“You were crying as you walked onto the ship,” he said flatly. “I knew then that I had ruined everything, ruined our lives. But you had the right to go. It was your choice, and I had to give you that choice.”
“I wish you hadn’t,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around his waist.
“If I hadn’t, I’d be no better than my father.”
“I don’t see that. You could have told me you were sorry…I would have stayed.”
“That would be to treat you as my possession. It would have been unethical.”
She started to laugh, caught against his chest again, listening to his heart. “And now?”
“But now you’re mine,” he said, growling it. His arms tightened. “And Jemma…”
“Yes?”
“You needn’t wear clothing tonight.”
The smile in his eyes was pure arrogance. “I just don’t understand,” she said, staring up at him.
“Maybe I never will understand. What if I said that I wanted to play chess with Villiers tonight instead of you?”
There was an instant flare deep in his eyes. “Don’t think you will ever walk away from me again.” His voice was soft, low.
Jemma had supper in her room, followed by a bath. Two problems came to her mind, and both stemmed from her memories of the first weeks of their marriage. In retrospect their intimacies had been, well, dull. She might not have had many or lengthy affaires in Paris, but to her mind, one learned most about the bed from talking to other women, anyway. And she had learned a great deal.
But meanwhile Elijah had dismissed his mistress and stayed at home by himself. Would he abhor her for the knowledge she’d gained? What should she do, and when should she pretend ignorance?
What if he became enraged, disgusted, thinking her nothing more than a light-skirt? She’d heard many times of women kissing men intimately, for example, though she had certainly never felt the impulse herself. But it felt different when she thought of Elijah. Even thinking of him in the baths made her feel flushed all over.
She would—yes, she would like to—
She couldn’t. The hard-headed side of her brain, the side that had successfully negotiated the intrigues that characterized Versailles, knew it deep down. Unless she played this adroitly, Elijah would feel a prickle of discomfort, a prickle of unease.
She had been an unfaithful wife, for all he kept saying that he allowed her to leave him because she “had the right.”
On the very verge of a panic, she stopped herself.
She was no timid mouse, to be frightened by a man’s emotions. She was Jemma. And if she’d had an affaire, it was more than half the fault of Elijah and his stiff-necked moral thinking that drove her away, by showing such cold indifference. What sort of senseless man waits to visit his wife until he knows she has taken a lover?
The thought was steadying, bitter though it was.
She would simply be herself. In bed and out of bed. She was too old to claim a virginity she no longer had, and too experienced to pretend that she wasn’t interested in pleasure. In fact, she had a veritable passion for it.
And if there was one thing she remembered clearly about their early couplings, it was that there hadn’t been quite enough pleasure for her. It was, after all, easy enough for a man to satisfy himself, but it seemed to be harder for women.
If she pretended to some sort of naiveté, she would risk finding herself in the position of a disappointed woman: in short, without what the French called le petit mort. And that was unacceptable.
She rose from her simple meal, feeling composed. Delicious though she found Elijah’s tone of command, he would simply have to learn to take instructions.
“I’ll serve a small collation to His Grace tonight,” she told Brigitte. “He comes to my room for chess.”
“I know, Your Grace,” Brigitte said. “All of London knows…finally the chess match will be over!”
Jemma was taken aback by that. It was bad enough that the household would encourage the bedding of its master and mistress, but all of London?
“Because of the wagers,” Brigitte explained, catching the look on her face. “There are so many bets placed on the match between yourself and the master. Fowle says that the entire London Chess Club is riveted to learn the outcome. There are only two women in the Chess Club, you know, yourself and Mrs. Patton.”
“I’ve heard as much,” Jemma murmured.
“The majority are betting in favor of you, Your Grace,” Brigitte said happily. “And if you win the match, you will be the top-ranked player!”
“I shall win,” Jemma stated. She had spent years playing herself at chess—with the twist that she played Black (for sin), and Elijah played White (for virtue). Or rather, since Elijah was in England, and she in France, she imitated Elijah, playin
g White. She knew his style of play: he had foresight, courage, and an uncanny ability to corner an opponent and smash his—or her— resistance.
“How should you like to manage the game?” Brigitte asked rather tentatively. “I mean, with the two of you blindfolded…how will you manage the pieces? Shall you call the moves to me and I shall make the moves you request?”
“Oh no,” Jemma said absently. “Luckily Elijah and I are both masters.”
Brigitte looked confused.
“We don’t need a board,” she said, smiling at her maid. “We’ll play it in our heads.”
“In your heads?” Brigitte had obviously never considered such a thing.
“Unless His Grace feels he hasn’t had enough practice to keep the board in his head,” Jemma said, grinning.
She had no idea whether Elijah had ever played without a chessboard, but he could do it. He was one of the best players she’d faced in her life, better than the French genius, Philidor, better (sometimes) than Villiers. Though to her mind, Elijah, Villiers, and herself were fairly evenly matched.
No, that was a lie.
They each had different strengths: Elijah his steady, rational forethought; Villiers his sweeping battle plans; she her moments of brilliant and beautiful play.
But they had weaknesses too. Elijah would always find himself misled into questions of virtue. It was a passion for him: to carve life into black and white, good and evil, right and wrong.
It was all in the chess game.
Even blindfolded and in bed…She had to raise the stakes.
She knew exactly how Elijah saw tonight’s game: as a means to an end, the end being her body and her bed. He would try to win, but what he really wanted was the last click of the pieces.
Whereas chess had been her dearest companion in the years of their separation, and it would be so now. What she needed to do was turn the chess to her advantage by distracting him.
The slow smile on Jemma’s lips would have given Elijah pause, had he seen it.
“Brigitte,” she said.
“Yes, Your Grace?”
“There are a few other things that I will need for the evening, if you would be so kind.”