Duchess by Night

  And so it continued, with laughter and the occasional bawdy insult. From what Harriet could hear of the other table, the play—and the bets—were the same. Large. Powerful.

  They took a break between hands and she leaned toward Jem. “This Game…”

  “Centrally important to the governing of England,” he said. “And so much more interesting than hanging about in Parliament and getting hoarse shouting at each other.”

  “But what if someone wins who—”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll take that provisions contract off you next round. Castlemaine knows I mean to have it.”

  “Is that legal?” Harriet asked.

  Jem looked surprised. “Why in the bloody hell wouldn’t it be? Of course it is.”

  Another hand. Harriet was starting to enjoy herself. All the hours she’d spent in Judge Truder’s court, reading the eyes of men who were accused of crimes—and the eyes of those doing the accusing—were coming in very handy. She knew when Jem was lying. Within two hands, she knew Castlemaine well enough to guess whether he had a good hand, and though Villiers was tricky, she managed to beat him as well.

  But now Villiers was looking tired. “I’m afraid I’ll have to call it a night, gentlemen.”

  The provisions contract was still in Harriet’s hands, and she’d won four hundred pounds from Castlemaine as well. “Does the money actually come from you?” she asked frankly.

  “Discretionary funds from the Crown,” Castlemaine said. “The king would love to attend the Game himself, but that wouldn’t be effective. I’ll post back immediately tomorrow morning and tell him the outcome. I admit that he’ll likely be surprised to hear that such a young gentleman has taken over the provisions contract, but given what I’ve seen of your play, I have no doubt but that it’s in good hands.”

  Harriet thought with a little shudder about the king’s reaction to hearing that the Duchess of Berrow now owned the contract. “Pray do not write him yet,” she said. “Why doesn’t the king stage his own Game?” she asked.

  “Difficult to beat a king resoundingly,” Jem said. “Especially an irascible one.”

  “I never knew there was a Game like this,” Harriet said.

  “There’s always a Game, behind every government,” Jem said. “Sometimes it happens in the king’s own bedchamber, and sometimes in an anteroom. And sometimes at Fonthill.”

  “Often at Fonthill, it seems,” Harriet remarked.

  He bowed, and went to speak to his other guests.

  So she left.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Leaving the Audience Forever

  Harriet couldn’t sleep. Even though she didn’t care to admit it to herself, she had thought Jem would come to her bed. She was leaving the next morning…Didn’t he want to make love again?

  And yet how could she call it making love?

  She finally got herself to sleep by making a list of all the wonderful things she would do with Eugenia during her visit, from finding kittens (there were always kittens in the barn), to having tea with the Froibles’s little girls, to playing dress-up with all those Elizabethan gowns in the attic.

  Harriet was having a wonderful dream, one of the best of her life. She was on her back, boneless, and Jem was kissing every inch of her. His mouth was open and his tongue was caressing her, soothing her until she craved more, until she was murmuring with—

  Until she woke up.

  “What are you doing here?” she gasped. Her nightgown was up to her armpits. He was sprawled out next to her, stark naked. “How did you get into my room?”

  He stopped kissing her ribs just long enough to say, “I walked in.”

  It was such a laconic, Jem-like thing to say that her heart thumped. His fingers were trailing up her ankle.

  “And now,” Harriet said, with a little squeak—

  “I’m going to make love to you.”

  “We have to talk. I need to talk to you about Eugenia.”

  “No. We need to make love.”

  She pushed away his fingers and sat up. “It’s very kind of you, Jem, but I think I would feel more comfortable if you listened to what I said.”

  He groaned and his fingers fell from her thighs.

  “Eugenia needs the companionship of other little girls,” she told him.

  He pulled a pillow over his head.

  “I know you loathe the idea,” she said sympathetically. “But you needn’t send her away to school. If you would send her with me for visits now and then, I would invite children to my house. There are very nice girls just down the lane.”

  He said something but it was muffled by the pillow. Years of marriage had taught Harriet a great deal about men, however, and she kept talking. If he really had something to say, he would remove the pillow.

  “Eugenia thinks you have her locked in her rooms, as if she were some sort of prisoner. One of the maids told her the house was full of monsters.”

  The pillow flew to the ground. His eyes were blank. But she couldn’t shelter him; she couldn’t.

  “Apparently she was frightened by the monsters, but now she says she’s more frightened by rats.”

  “Damn it!” Jem growled, throwing himself off the bed. He walked across the room to the hearth, bent over, and picked up a log.

  Harriet watched the lean powerful line of his body. “She could visit me,” she said. “There are often kittens in the barn. The family down the road has three little girls. I’ll invite them over for tea. She can learn to ride a pony.”

  “A tea party? I could—”

  Harsh things needed to be said, Harriet felt. It was like lancing a wound. “Proper little girls couldn’t come to Fonthill,” she said flatly. “Let her visit me, Jem.”

  He slammed his palms down on the mantelpiece. “I’ve bungled it all, haven’t I? I should have sent her away.”

  “I suppose you might have done that,” Harriet said cautiously.

  “Sally died the night she was born. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t believe it for months. Sally was so young—and I’d never even thought about death. It never occurred to me, fool that I was!” His voice was savage.

  “But if you had thought about it, what could you have done?”

  He swung around, eyes burning. “Don’t you know? You’re a widow.”

  “No,” she said quietly. “I’ve never found there was any way to prepare for death.”

  “I could have said goodbye,” he said, his lips a thin line. “I would have said goodbye. I would have told her that I loved her. I would have—” he broke off.

  A tear rolled down Harriet’s cheek. “I’m sure she knew you loved her. She knew.”

  “I doubt it. I never told her.”

  “You don’t need to be told those things,” Harriet said. “People rarely talk of love.”

  “My father arranged the marriage,” Jem said, his mouth twisting. “I was too much of a hellion, he said. A danger to all of England.”

  “Really?” Harriet asked, jumping at the chance to lighten his tone. “All of England?”

  “The facts of the matter are rather ironic, under the present circumstances,” he said, smiling faintly. “My father didn’t mind when I was raising Cain at Oxford. He wouldn’t have cared how many demi-reps I bedded. He told me repeatedly, since I was five years old, that a bordello is man’s version of paradise.”

  “Oh.”

  “My personal rebellion,” Jem said broodingly, “is that I have never paid a woman for her attentions. And I never will.”

  Harriet swallowed. “I suppose that’s good,” she ventured.

  “As a youngster, I managed to find plenty of women who were happy to do the deed for free, thus following the family tradition while engaging in a little mutiny at the same time. It was only when my father thought I was pursuing men that he got the wind up.”

  “Men!” Harriet exclaimed.

  “Men.” He shrugged. “It’s not in me. But one of my closest friends from Oxford was of
a different sort. He was a true friend. Not my lover, but my father couldn’t be bothered to see the difference.”

  “Isn’t he alive anymore?”

  He shook his head. “Killed. No goodbye there either. At any rate, my father thought I was learning to share his proclivities, so he married me off to Sally.”

  “What was she like?”

  “Funny,” Jem said. “I resented her, of course. She was tall and slim, and I fancied my father had picked her because she looked like a boy. But she was a woman, all through. She could pull witticisms out of the air.”

  Jealousy sometimes masqueraded as hatred. Sometimes it was just hatred, though. Harriet thought she probably hated tall, slim Sally.

  “It’s been eight years since she died,” he said. “We had very little time together. But we had amusing times while she was alive.”

  “Wonderful,” Harriet said flatly. And then she added: “I can see why you wished you had said goodbye. I’m sorry that wasn’t possible.”

  “Did you say goodbye to your husband?”

  “No.”

  “Was it quite sudden?”

  She nodded.

  “They came and told me Sally was dead,” Jem said, dropping into a chair. “And then they brought me Eugenia. She was ugly, of course. She had an odd head because Sally had labored so long. I thought she looked like some sort of monkey. But she looked at me with her squinty little eyes, and I could see Sally there.”

  “That’s so sweet,” Harriet said, feeling a lump in her throat.

  “Not really,” he said. “I didn’t see Eugenia herself. All I saw was that Sally had left a scrap of herself behind, and that I had to treasure it. So I bought this house and had the west wing secured to keep her safe.”

  “But why on earth would you have to worry so much?” Harriet asked. “I just don’t understand—”

  “I’m the richest man in England,” Jem stated. “My father had a fair amount, as well. And my sister—”

  “What happened to your sister?”

  “A man kidnapped her and forced her into a false marriage. My father had him tracked down and killed, of course. Just like that, my sister became a widow.”

  “She must have been so distressed by the whole event!” Harriet cried.

  “She was distressed long before,” Jem said. But his tone didn’t invite any more questions.

  “There has to be some way that Eugenia can have more of a childhood,” Harriet said. “If she visited me, no one would suspect who she was; she would be perfectly safe.”

  “I’ll think about it,” he said. “All this talk of visiting…you haven’t left yet, Harriet. You’re in my house…” She loved that look in his eye. “In my bed…”

  His hand slid under her and wrapped around her bare bottom; she started to say something but his mouth was on her breast. This was no whispery little caress. His mouth was warm and wet. A tremor went through her body. He sucked harder and whatever Harriet was going to say died on her lips.

  He was shaping her buttocks in his hand, pulling her up and toward the pull of his mouth. He made his way down her body with tiny bites, and every touch of his mouth made her shake.

  He reared up and she opened her eyes again. There was a wicked spark in his eyes, something that spoke of lust, pure lust.

  “I want you. Now.” He ran his thumb over her nipple. “Do you understand, Harriet?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  He rubbed a little harder. “I think I’m going to want to make love to you in the morning as well.”

  She opened her mouth to say something, but he ran his thumb down between her legs and she started gasping instead.

  Eyes still on hers, he put a hand on her breast. “You’re part of this, Harriet. You’re not just the audience.”

  “I know,” she said, hearing the desire in her own voice. Then she woke up to what he was saying. “What do you want me to do?” She looked rather wildly at his body. Would he like to be kissed?

  He grinned, and the sparks were wild in his eyes. “For now, lie back and tell me exactly what you feel.”

  It took her a while. Harriet had not been raised to tell men what to do. Yet perhaps the fact that she’d practiced that particular skill in a court of law lay behind her success: by twenty minutes later, she was very comfortable with the practice indeed. “Yes,” she found herself saying. “No, not there—there!” And finally she couldn’t form words anymore, but by then Jem had turned her body into a musical instrument. He knew her strings and chords and melodies…

  He knew her song and he loved it.

  They took a bath (Harriet made Jem go into the wardrobe and stay there until the footman came and went). The bath was…interesting.

  They sopped up the water with a sheet and found their way back to bed, crawled, exhausted, into the bed.

  Harriet woke to find Jem’s large warm body curled around hers. I’m not just the audience, Harriet told herself.

  It wasn’t a concept she’d ever imagined. She was the audience in most of her life: Benjamin’s audience for chess, the court’s audience for arguments.

  Not an audience was a fascinating concept.

  She ran her fingers over his muscled chest, through his chest hair, circled his nipple. Jem made a sound in his sleep and rolled onto his back.

  A penis, Harriet decided, was an odd thing. Though she loved her breeches, she was just as glad not to have one of those. She slid her hand down his stomach and then touched him. It.

  It was smooth and hard, like a piece of marble. It raised questions in her mind. What would it taste like? What would it feel like in her mouth? What would—what did it feel like to Jem?

  He was sleeping so peacefully, long lashes resting on his cheek as his chest rose up and down. But the fact was that he kept kissing her in private places. An involuntary shudder ran through her body. Surely he would like it if she did so to him.

  She had dared to touch him in the bath, a soapy hand running up and down his shaft. He had thrown his head back and groaned, as if he were in pain. But then he stopped her.

  It had been stark desire in his face, the same sort of tearing, itching lust that made her cry out when he was kissing her, arching her hips, begging him to come to her.

  Yes, she had the idea that he might truly like it if she kissed him.

  So she did.

  He was warmer than marble, and he tasted like soap. Lemon soap, because it had been her bath.

  She started experimenting, and forgot he was part of the picture until all of a sudden a male body erupted from the sheet and flipped her over.

  For a moment Harriet relaxed, her body welcoming his touch, the fierce look in his eyes, the way his body—

  But: “No!”

  Jem froze. Gulped, like a little boy caught with a stolen cake. Harriet started grinning and wiggled her body backwards. “No.”

  “Why not?” His voice sounded rusty. Not smooth and sensual, but desperate. She started laughing, slid out from under him.

  “I’m not the audience,” she told him, leaning over, loving his chest and his arms, and the way his muscles defined his stomach. “Right now, you are an audience.”

  Then she pushed him down and began deliberately, slowly, powerfully taking over the game. Making it her own. His body…hers. Owned by knowledge of its every crook and corner.

  She turned his body into a musical instrument and finally held him helpless, groaning, begging, his hands clutched in her hair.

  “I never lose control,” he said, warning her, reassuring himself, something like that. His teeth were obviously clenched. “Harriet…”

  She ignored him, slid over his body.

  And took his control. Threw it away with her kisses, caresses, slow wet love…

  No audience, she.

  After, he lay there silent.

  “Are you all right?” she whispered.

  “I’ve never been so right,” he said, a moment later. He sounded awestruck. She let herself laugh, then
tucked herself against his side.

  When he rolled over this time, it was in a tangle of limbs that included a silent request, her affirmation, their utterly silent agreement…

  Then he was pounding into her and it was as if she felt both him, almost too large, pulsing with life, and herself, soft velvet, wet. She felt his body as much as hers.

  He lowered his head and they kissed. He never missed a beat; her body rose to meet his.

  It’s as if we’re not two people anymore, Harriet thought blearily. But those delicious heat waves were starting to spread, to grow from her toes, to rock through her body and everything slid away from her but the feeling of his strong body in her arms, the wildness of his tongue, the power of his body.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Marriage Proposals are So Romantic…Sometimes

  February 9, 1784

  “I have to pack,” Harriet said the next morning, very early. “And you have to leave this room. Any moment Lucille will enter to help me dress and she’ll likely shriek the house down if she sees you.”

  “I’m not leaving,” Jem stated.

  Harriet had seen that look on a man’s face before. It was the look Benjamin had when he had just started a game of chess and she wanted to leave a party and go home. It was the look her father used to get when her mother would demand that he wear jeweled heels.

  “And,” Jem added, “you’re not going anywhere either. I’ll send the Duchess of Cosway home with six outriders to protect her, if you wish. I’ll send the entire household with her.” He rolled over and put a finger on her nose. “You, Miss Harry, are staying with me.”

  Harriet was conscious of a feeling of giddy joy. “I can’t stay here forever,” she managed. “There are things I have to do at home.”

  “Your country squire is gone. My wife is gone. Neither one of us has any reason to be anywhere other than in this bed. You don’t have children, do you?”

  “No.”