Desperate Duchesses

  Except…could he have done it differently?

  Could he have headed off the moment when Berrow took himself home and put a gun to his head?

  The question nagged and nagged. It visited him in his sleep sometimes, leading to dreams full of black pawns. If Berrow had taken his rook in the fourth move, his pawn attack would have collapsed.

  But perhaps he shouldn’t have pointed that out to Berrow after the game was over. Villiers hunched his shoulders, striding down the block toward Elijah’s house. Odd that he still thought of the house as Elijah’s, though the two of them had barely exchanged a word in years, and weren’t on speaking terms, let alone the intimacy of first names.

  Yet to all appearances, they were now playing for Elijah’s queen. Whom Villiers didn’t really want. All he wanted was someone to play with.

  Or perhaps: all he wanted was Berrow to play with.

  It was a maudlin thought and had Villiers banging the knocker with such a fierce scowl on his face that the butler fell back a pace. “Her Grace awaits you,” he said.

  But Villiers was already on his way up the stairs. He shook off paltry regrets. Yesterday Jemma had played a pawn to King’s Four, as had he. Likely she would move a knight.

  She moved a pawn to Queen’s Four; he promptly took her pawn with his from the day before.

  He sat back. “May I see your husband’s board?”

  The duchess shook back her delicate ruffles. She really was a remarkably beautiful woman, he noted with a certain detachment.

  “No.”

  “Tell me about Philidor’s mode of play?”

  “He’s a round little man with pince-nez. He is quite bald and—” Her eyes laughed at him.

  “He looks like a pawn,” Villiers guessed.

  “Slightly. One of the most interesting games I ever saw him play was one in which he was challenged beforehand to checkmate using his queen’s bishop.”

  “A contract game…and such a difficult one. Fascinating!”

  “He sacrificed his queen, two rooks, a knight and a bishop, but he did it.”

  Villiers sat for a moment, imagining the chess pieces flashing from place to place. He couldn’t be certain how that game had gone, naturally, but he could see the beauty and complexity of it.

  “He taught me a great deal about sacrifice,” she continued. “In one game he took from me, he sacrificed his queen, promoted a pawn to a new queen, and won my queen rook.”

  “Did you sleep with him to celebrate his victory?” he enquired.

  She seemed unoffended. “No.”

  “I think if I met someone who could play like that I would do everything in the world to bed her,” he said, watching her.

  “Would you?”

  She looked like a classic Greek statue, every feature in perfect symmetry. “Playing chess is like music and passion. It gives one a reason for living. Surely to combine two of them would be heaven.”

  “I have made love while a violin played,” she said. The secret smile playing at the corner of her mouth turned his blood hot.

  “But have you made love to a master chess player?”

  “It depends on one’s definition.”

  “I fit the definition. Philidor as well.”

  “A chess master with a resemblance to a pawn is not in my purview. And I feel I should add that Philidor is happily married and Madame Philidor would likely resent any encroachment upon her king.”

  “Unfortunate,” he said. “Though I should warn you that I myself have never viewed queens as being possessed by a king. Queens have so much more flare and daring: they move in every direction; they attack and counterattack.”

  “They can certainly operate independently,” she agreed and rose.

  Villiers rose as well, conscious of a feeling of disappointment. He didn’t want to leave. He wanted to stay in Jemma’s bower, talking in double talk about chess and desire. “Why don’t we play a game on the side?” he said impulsively. “A private game…one that is not being played out by days? Or do you only play games involving a daily move?”

  “If you mean by that do I need an entire sunset in order to think out my next move, the answer is no.”

  “Then play with me,” he appealed. “I’m tired of playing idiots. I have nothing particular to do. Let’s play together.”

  “I should have to offer my husband the same courtesy.”

  He shrugged. “Do so. My impression is that Beaumont has no time for the games of mere mortals.”

  Jemma sat down again before the board. “He did once say something of the sort to me.”

  “He told Gentleman’s Magazine that his chessboard was England.” He started putting the pieces in place before she changed her mind.

  Jemma turned back the ruffles that fell over her fingers, leaving her slender fingers and wrists free.

  “So intriguing,” he commented, watching her closely.

  “Why do you say so?”

  “It makes me think of undressing you. Women wear so much clothing…one lusts for the small amounts of flesh that make themselves visible.”

  “I am beginning to think that you find everything sensual.”

  “To my mind, there are two things worth doing, one out of bed and one in. Perhaps we should change the rules of the final game?”

  She turned the board around. “Your advantage this time.”

  “The final game blindfolded,” he said, “and in bed.”

  “And how precisely would that work?” she said, her mouth curving in a delicious lopsided way. “Would my maid stand beside us, moving the pieces? You did say blindfolded, did you not?”

  “I never pay the slightest attention to servants. But if you would feel discomposed by her presence, we’ll set up the chess board in the corridor and I shall call out our moves.” Villiers caught himself before he started begging like a bishop blocked by a pawn. What was that about? He never begged. He took.

  He scowled at the board and leaped his knight over the row of pawns. He didn’t believe for a moment that she was as good as she claimed.

  It incensed him that something in her eyes suggested she knew precisely what he was thinking.

  “Do you ever resist the feeling?” she asked some time later, as he was frowning down at the board. Her queen had just taken one of his knights. There was no good move that he could see.

  “Resist what?” he asked absentmindedly. Perhaps if he moved his queen to Bishop’s Two…

  “Resist women. Or a woman. Resist a woman whom you desire.”

  He looked up at her. She had to know that her intelligence made her more luscious. She made no effort to hide it, never simpering or giggling, as far as he could see. Yet there was something odd about their match prickling the back of his mind. Why had she summoned him to her ball? Why was she challenging him?

  It might have been simply for the pleasure of a match, of course. He looked back at the board.

  She leaned toward him, and the curve of her breast was enticingly plump above her stiff bodice. “Do you ever resist desire, Villiers?”

  “Very occasionally. I have felt impulses that I have not pursued; I feel that impoverished women would come to my bed with desperation, and the emotion is enough to dampen my appetite.”

  He bent forward and moved his pawn to take one of hers.

  “Women resist desire as a matter of course,” she said almost dreamily, taking a pawn of his in return.

  “There are so many more consequences for the female sex.” Suddenly he was scowling down at a game that had flipped from comfortable to…otherwise.

  “Damn it,” he said. It was the first comment either of them made for a few minutes.

  Until: “Checkmate,” Jemma said.

  She leaned back in her chair and smiled at him. “To answer your earlier question…there won’t be a third game unless we each win one.”

  Villiers nearly growled. Did she really think he would go down in both games? This was nothing but a side game, and he hadn’t properly
concentrated.

  “It would have been amusing,” she said, “if you had moved that pawn to King’s Bishop Three.”

  “I would have won,” he agreed. He was already playing through all the moves in his head. “I would have won, except that was the moment when you raised the question of desire.”

  Her mouth had a mocking curve to it that burned him to the bone. “If you survive to a third game,” she said, rising again, “your proposition might be a very interesting one.”

  “What proposition?” he asked, rising automatically, but still thinking through the game.

  “To play our third game blindfolded, and in bed? It certainly would amuse the staff banished to the corridor. I shall consider it.”

  Villiers had never come quite so close to hating someone after whom he lusted. It was true that he hated—if momentarily—every person who beat him at a game of chess, but to have that person be a woman who seemed supremely insouciant about his offer to take her to bed was infuriating.

  He walked behind her down the stairs, moodily assessing her narrow frame, the elegance of her shoulders, the beauty of the dull gleam of her hair…

  Christ.

  He’d met a woman whom he really wanted—and she was the first female to beat him at chess.

  Quite possibly the two facts were not unrelated.

  There was still something prickling the edge of his mind about these matches. Wasn’t it odd that she summoned him to play the very moment she reached England?

  It couldn’t be that Beaumont was behind it. He thought of his old friend’s furious, cold eyes and knew that Elijah had no knowledge of his presence at the ball, nor any idea of the proposed chess game.

  So it had to be for the chess.

  Or did she want a whipping boy? She thought she could simply trounce him, the best player in England, by asking provocative questions at the right moment?

  A flash of pure rage went through his spine. The hell with her provocative games. Had he ever resisted lust? Indeed he had. And from now on, he was going to resist her.

  No woman was going to trap him, with her beauty or her chess skill.

  In fact…

  A smile grew on his face.

  It was time he married. The ultimate lust killer, in his opinion. It pleased him to think that Jemma would find him planning a marriage at the same time he offered to bed her. It would keep her from refining too much on her little success.

  Yes, that was the solution.

  Marriage.

  Chapter 19

  Roberta greeted the news that her father had just arrived and was waiting for her in the drawing room with a feeling that could only be described as near hysteria. Surely not. He couldn’t do this to her!

  “Is he alone?” she asked, trying in vain to school her features into calm.

  “I believe the marquess has a companion,” the footman replied, his face not yielding even a flicker about that companion.

  Of course he wasn’t alone, she thought, despairing. Of course Mrs. Grope was with him.

  “Is the duchess in her chambers?” she asked.

  “I wouldn’t know, your ladyship. Would you like me to enquire of Her Grace’s maid?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Unfortunately, he reported a few minutes later that the duchess was playing chess with the Duke of Villiers, although she promised to join Lady Roberta at her first opportunity.

  She had to decide what to do. Figure out how to make her father leave. It was like a musical beat in her head. He had to leave, leave, leave.

  “Please send Lord Gryffyn my compliments and ask him if he would meet me in the library,” she said to the footman.

  He hesitated. “What shall I tell the marquess, your ladyship?”

  “Please convey my apologies. Tell him I am not ready to receive visitors. I shall attend him at the earliest possible moment.”

  It didn’t help when Damon burst into laughter on hearing her request.

  “Help you get rid of your father? An uncharitable act, and not worthy of a member of the family of Reeve.” He gave her a lofty look.

  “Please,” she said. “Please! You have no idea what he’s like. He’s going to ruin everything.” Tears were threatening.

  “What can I possibly do?” He frowned at her. “No crying. Thoughtless rakes like myself can’t bear to see a woman cry; it reminds us of all those we left weeping on the roadside.”

  She couldn’t even manage a smile at his foolery. “It’s not that I don’t love him,” she said, gripping her hands together. “It’s just that he’s eccentric. He doesn’t care what people think.”

  “Not at all?”

  “Never! He never has. You’ll see what I mean when you meet him. Mrs. Grope is only the latest of the courtesans with whom he has been passionately in love. She has lived with us for the past two years.”

  “Mrs. Grope?” Damon asked with some interest. “Is there a Mr. Grope still?”

  “I have no particular belief in the existence of Mr. Grope. Except…”

  “Who would choose that name on its own? I agree entirely.”

  “Please take me seriously,” Roberta said, dropping into the couch. “I simply cannot stay in London if my father is here. Please!”

  Damon sat down beside her. “Am I allowed to call you Roberta yet?”

  She sniffed. “We shouldn’t.”

  “Kissing cousins,” he said, dropping a kiss on her eyebrow.

  “You really shouldn’t do that.”

  He ignored her. “What’s so terrible about your father, then?”

  “Mrs. Grope,” Roberta said, “is something of a liability in terms of my reputation.”

  “There are liabilities and liabilities. One would think that Teddy would be a liability, for example, but his presence in my home doesn’t seem to have put off the matchmaking mamas a bit.”

  “If you don’t mind deserting the fascinating topic of your popularity for one moment,” Roberta said, “no matchmaking mamas are going to enter this house while Mrs. Grope is here.”

  “I knew you would prove useful,” he said, grinning at her. “Mrs. Grope won’t stop your old roué from entering the house, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “Villiers is not a roué!” she scolded.

  “Close enough. But the point is that you can seduce him here or—”

  “That is not the point. You have no idea how humiliating it is being around my father.”

  Damon wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her a little closer. “Tell me your tales of horror and I’ll do my best to comfort you.”

  “No!” Roberta said, but as usual he paid no attention to her. He bent his head and kissed her cheek, which wasn’t very intrusive, so she ignored him. “My father is prone to falling on his knees and bursting into tears.”

  “Interesting,” Damon murmured, kissing her ear.

  “It is not interesting,” Roberta said fiercely.

  “I know he fell to his knees and implored the heavens for a husband who would never kiss you in public. Obviously, I would not qualify.” His lips had drifted down and he was kissing her neck now.

  “No,” Roberta agreed. There was something oddly distracting about those feathery touches of his lips.

  “That was bad enough,” she said, struggling to get her mind back to her story, “but then Rambler’s Magazine—”

  At the end of that story, he stopped kissing her and actually looked at her with something approaching sympathy. For a moment she felt a thrill that he finally understood how dreadful her situation was, but: “You are nothing more than an example of incestuous inbreeding and I never noticed!” he cried. “I’ve sinned by having anything to do with you. Give me my sin again…”

  He grabbed her and for a moment Roberta lost track of her complaints because he was saying things about sin in a husky voice, and his hands touched her front in an improper manner that turned her mind to smoke.

  “Feeling better?” he enquired, sometime l
ater.

  Roberta blinked at him for a moment and then straightened up. “I think so,” she said weakly.

  Damon looked pleased with himself.

  “Is this your kindly way of assuring me that you’re going to convince my father to go back home so that I can marry the Duke of Villiers?”

  “Will you reward me for my services?” he asked with a ridiculous leer.

  “Why don’t you go kiss one of those girls who want you so much?”

  “Are you saying that you don’t enjoy my kisses?”

  Roberta burst out laughing. “Anyone would enjoy your kisses! But you know I’m in love with someone else.”

  His eyes had turned a dark sea green and she knew what that meant. “I think that’s why you’re so irresistible to me,” he said, his voice deep as his eyes. “You belong to someone else.”

  “Oh—” she said, but he was kissing her again. And truly, she did love kissing him. In fact, she dimly thought that she could do it all day, except her father must be wondering why she was taking so long to dress.

  A while later she gasped when his hand found her breast. She slapped his hand away. “I don’t belong to Villiers yet, but I’m not open territory either.”

  “Because you don’t want me,” he prompted, a sardonic note in his voice.

  She raised an eyebrow. “Who said that?”

  He burst out laughing. “Try to play a docile maiden at least until after your wedding, could you?”

  “I am a maiden,” she protested.

  “So you do want me.” The words hung on the air, like some sort of challenge.

  Roberta wasn’t going to lie. Lust, as any poet’s daughter knows, is nothing beside true love. “It’s not the same way that I feel about Villiers.”

  A moment later she felt sorry she’d clarified the point, because something flew across Damon’s eyes, and she thought perhaps she’d hurt his feelings.

  She tugged her bodice back into place. “Please help me send Papa back to the country.”

  He looked down at her and sighed. “I suppose it’s no more than a cousin’s duty.”

  They walked into the drawing room to find the marquess holding forth to a nonplussed Fowle. The butler was standing next to the door, as if he were on the point of flight. Even from the corridor Roberta could tell that her father was on one of his favorite subjects. “She was like a basilisk,” he said, “her eyes killed every man at whom she has glanced.” She realized with a sinking heart that her father had launched into the story of how he fell in love with Mrs. Grope.