This Duchess of Mine (Desperate Duchesses #5)

The butler put down another paper. “I have also the Morning Chronicle, Your Grace. They are comparing the riots to the Gordon Riots four years ago. Though thank the Lord, there were fewer casualties and the Clink is unharmed.”

Elijah had looked so exhausted last night. He was utterly delectable even tired, of course. His dark eyebrows and dark eyes emphasized his cheekbones, giving him the raw beauty of a marble statue of a Roman statesman. Or perhaps it was the expression in his eyes: all that serious passion in the service of good had chiseled his face.

If he had been in the room, Jemma would have screamed at him like a common fishwife.

Couldn’t he be selfish for once? He must give up his seat in the House of Lords. Corbin was right, though for the wrong reasons. Elijah needed to enjoy himself, rather than get up at dawn and leave for pressured meetings about riots and floating prisons.

She stared blindly down at the paper, reading one sentence over and over again. It was the beginning of a piece about a hoax carried out near St. Paul’s Cathedral. Convinced that the devil had taken up residence in his sitting room, Mr. Bartlebee gave a conjurer a gold chain to exorcise the unwanted guest, she read. And then read it again.

And then finally moved on to the next sentence. Mr. Bartlebee’s son Jeremy was equally convinced of the devil’s presence…

How could they have children now? When Elijah was a child he had had white-blond curls, which implied that their children might have had the same. A darling young boy with Elijah’s beauty and his serious eyes drifted in her mind’s eye. Her throat tightened and she turned back to her buttered toast.

There was nothing she could do—nothing. The knowledge was bitter in the back of her throat. Even the idea of playing chess felt horrible, like fiddling as Rome burned. She was desperate to find a plan, something she could do to help.

The only thing she could come up with was paltry indeed. If her husband didn’t have very long to live, then it was up to her to make certain that he enjoyed every moment. That meant following Corbin’s plan. Wooing Elijah. Winning him from another woman. Or was Elijah supposed to win her from another man?

She found herself staring at the account in the paper again. Given the lingering smell of sulfur, the constable asserted that a devil of some sort had paid a call to the sitting room.

She could not flirt with another man merely so Elijah could win her. The falseness of it curdled in her stomach. Even if he had cheerfully jaunted off to work, without even bothering to leave her a note, she could not flirt with someone merely for fun. Surely she could orchestrate a seduction—or an attempted seduction—of Elijah. There was only the matter of determining her rival. He knew all the English ladies of her acquaintance, and anyway, they were—

She froze, the toast halfway to her mouth.

For the eight years that she lived in Paris, she had had one great rival, the Marquise de Perthuis. Their sparring matches were known throughout the city. They competed against each other in fashion, in dress, and in manner. They excelled at insulting each other under the mask of an apparent compliment.

The marquise was now in England, and Elijah hardly knew her. Louise was consummately witty, but not so beautiful that she made Jemma’s liver curl. The question was only how to drive the marquise to Elijah’s side.

It wasn’t an easy proposition. The marquise cherished her milk-white reputation. Jemma knew it wasn’t for the sake of virtue itself; Louise was so besotted by her loose fish of a husband that she likely never even looked at another man.

The only way Louise would dance to her tune would be out of rage. That posed a challenge: to convince the marquise to attempt a seduction of Elijah, without that lady having the faintest idea of her intentions. It would be a fiendishly difficult task. Machiavellian, really.

Jemma finished her toast, forcing herself to read the paper’s account of the prisoners’ riot. Before recapture, the prisoners had burned a number of houses, though they were barred from a large area of the city due to the forethought of the citizens, who had defended themselves by erecting impenetrable barriers.

The Morning Post issued a challenge to the mayor of London and to Pitt’s cabinet: How had it come to pass that common citizens had to defend themselves, using brooms and trash cans? Why wasn’t the Queen’s Royal Regiment called in to quell the violence of these criminals?

Jemma couldn’t bear to read any longer. It just made her think of the speeches Elijah would undoubtedly be called upon to make in the House. She threw the paper aside and rose.

“I must be at my most elegant,” she told Brigitte a moment later. “I shall go to visit the marquise. I caught a glimpse of her on the king’s yacht last night, so I know that she is currently in London.”

Brigitte’s eyes widened and she set to work with the concentrated fervor of a lady’s maid whose work would be judged by the best—her rival femme de chambre. A few hours later Jemma tripped into the marquise’s drawing room, fit to dine with Queen Marie Antoinette herself.

She was wearing, unusually for her, a wig. Unlike the rather tatty and (she felt) dirty wigs that she commonly saw in ballrooms, hers was made of white curls so delicate that they shone like spun sugar in the morning sunlight. They rose to an exuberant height, but rather than supporting an entire birdcage with its songbird or anything of that ridiculous nature, Mariette had simply tucked a few pale blossoms among the curls.

With it she wore an exquisite morning gown of the same pink as the blossoms, the skirts caught back to show a deeper, rosy underskirt with a border of amber gold. The pièce de résistance, to Jemma’s mind, was her shoes: delicate high-heeled slippers in rose-colored silk, with tiny gold buckles.

She had been seated a mere twenty minutes before the marquise appeared. Jemma rose, dropping into a short curtsy. It was a signal honor, indicating that she was overlooking their difference in rank. The marquise fell into a deeper curtsy, the sort that recognized the delicate compliment Jemma had just given her, and topped it with an expression of deep respect.

Finally they managed to seat themselves, on opposing sofas, naturally, given the width of their skirts. The marquise was even more elegantly attired than was Jemma. As a matter of course, the marquise never wore any colors other than black and white, a rather eccentric notion that complemented her dark eyes and hair. This morning her gown was white and embroidered with elaborate swirls of black silk.

Jemma thought about that costume while they went through the motions of drinking tea and chatting about the riots. Hadn’t Elijah once said that the marquise looked like a chessboard?

“How do you find yourself?” Jemma asked, watching the marquise over the edge of her teacup. “The last time I saw you, you were on your way to Lincolnshire…” She allowed her voice to trail off in a tactful invitation.

The marquise’s eyebrows drew together. “I did locate my husband, or at least where he had been. There was a village where he stayed with this—this putain that he followed to England. I made my footmen inquire.”

The pained edge to her voice made her humiliation clear. “Apparently he and the woman were together, and then he suddenly left. She stayed a mere day or two longer—”

“At least they are no longer together!” Jemma exclaimed. “He left her.”

“Yes.” Louise’s tone lightened. “The villagers were very clear about that. Henri simply left. He must have been desperate to get away from her; there was some talk that he discarded his clothing in the inn where they were staying, though I don’t hold with that notion. Henri is not the sort to travel without proper accoutrements. I expect he went back to France.”