This Duchess of Mine (Desperate Duchesses #5)

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?”