He was an idiot. He was beyond an idiot. He loved Harriet. And love meant that you didn’t let someone go home to an empty house and an aging dog, even if she did turn out to be a duchess. And even if she was infuriating, and holier-than-thou.
And even if—
He looked down at Eugenia and suddenly realized something so obvious that he couldn’t believe he hadn’t understood it before.
That pain in his heart, the one that was so deep it made his bones ache, that was his fault. He accused Harriet of lying. But in reality, he was the one who concealed who he was.
He was a fool, an idiot, a child who was unable to stop looking for his father’s approval—even when he knew his father was dead and immoral in the bargain.
Why else did he turn his house into his father’s version of Paradise? Why wasn’t he the sort of father he truly admired—a father who created a house that was safe?
Because he wanted his father’s approval…a man who was dead and gone, and before that, drunk and dissolute.
Eugenia was pulling at his sleeve. “Papa, don’t look so sad. I promise you can always live with me.”
He buried his face in her hair. “I know that, poppet. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” Eugenia asked, snuggling close but, as always, logical.
“Sorry for not being a better father. For allowing a rat to bite you, and keeping you in the west wing so you wouldn’t meet my guests.”
“It’s not your fault the rat came in from the cold, Papa. Goodness!”
How could he have been so stupid as not to see the pattern of his life? Fonthill was designed and driven by his boyhood wishes. He wasn’t ashamed of that deep, driving wish he always had that his sister’s life hadn’t been ruined by circumstances outside her control, that she had been able to marry and have babies, as she deserved. But he was ashamed that he took his guilt and love for her and allowed it to blind him to the kind of household in which he was raising his own child.
But he was even more ashamed of the way he allowed a boy’s wish for his father’s approval to linger and shape his life, even when as a man he understood his father’s corrupt nature. The way his father’s shallow, careless attitude toward women that had led to his only daughter’s violation.
He couldn’t give every woman in peril a safe harbor…and his father would never come back to life and recognize that Fonthill was his version of Paradise.
If Harriet would just take him back, he would never sit down at the Game again. And every brick in Fonthill could crumble to the ground, that blasted bordello of a tower included.
“Eugenia,” he said, “do you think that perhaps if we went to Harriet’s house, she might see us?”
“Of course she would, Papa.”
Despair plunged through him. She wanted a Jem who didn’t even exist. “We can’t just go fetch her,” he said, thinking it through. “We have to move to her house.”
“Harriet has kittens,” Eugenia said, reasonably.
What if she wouldn’t take him? How could she possibly take him—and she, a duchess? With his house and his reputation and his habits and—
“That will make Harriet very happy,” Eugenia said. “I could tell she didn’t want to leave me, Papa. She doesn’t have a little girl of her own, you know.”
“I know.”
Harriet had said that she loved him, there at the end. She’d begged him, and he threw it back at her. She had given him the most precious gift in the world and he flung it at her feet.
Jem felt as if he had been hit on the head and suddenly started thinking rationally. He loved Harriet. And yet he’d hurt her so much. If there was even a chance that she would take him back…
He would do anything for her. Sell the house, disperse the Game, say goodbye to the Graces…
All those things were easy compared to the possibility of living a lifetime without her.
Chapter Forty
Duchess By Day
March 30, 1784
The Berrow estate was easily as grand as Fonthill. Probably the grounds weren’t as large…but he couldn’t fool himself. The old stone house was settled into the ground, surrounded by ancient orchards. It made Fonthill look like a presumptive younger neighbor.
“I don’t want you to feel terrible if Harriet decides not to keep us,” he said to Eugenia.
She looked at him with her serious, straightforward gaze. “Don’t be silly, Papa. Harriet loves me.”
The footmen opened the carriage and he handed Eugenia out. They were announced. They waited.
After fifteen minutes, Eugenia got restless and started dancing around the drawing room. Jem was feeling sick. This was absurd. Likely Harriet had come back to her beautiful estate and realized what an idiot she had been ever to entertain the idea of marrying a loose fish like himself.
All of a sudden the door opened. The Duchess of Beaumont. And…the Duchess of Berrow. Two gorgeous women of the very highest rank, bedecked and bejeweled, dressed in silk and satin.
Jem called Eugenia to him and bowed.
Harriet was exquisite as a woman. Her hair was piled on her head, all the curls tamed. In a gown she was even more sensual than in breeches. Now she didn’t have a cravat under her chin, but a gown that plunged in front to show creamy skin, her small waist…her gown’s billowing skirts made him long to tip her over, uncover her secrets.
Her eyes met his with all the curious welcome one might give a mere acquaintance. “Lord Strange,” she said, holding out a hand to be kissed. “You do me too much honor. I had not expected a visit at such short notice.” Then she turned to Eugenia and gave her a true smile. And a true kiss.
Eugenia leaned in and said something in Harriet’s ear.
“Of course!” Harriet said, and without a glance in his direction, she took Eugenia’s hand and led her away. “The kittens are in the barn,” she said, as she left.
The Duchess of Beaumont lingered. Jem stood in the center of the room.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
Jem just looked at her. “You know, don’t you?”
“You’ve come for Harriet. You won’t let her go.”
“Never.”
“I thought you weren’t such a fool. I’ll make her come back to the room.”
He sat down and waited. And waited.
Presumably Harriet was exacting some sort of revenge. Or screwing up her courage. It didn’t even make him angry. He felt a strange sense of peace. His whole life had been defined by degrees of dissipation. He had thwarted his father by never entering brothels—but he certainly lived in his father’s footsteps in other respects. Since the moment he turned fourteen he had flaunted himself and his life as debauched.
Harriet was the only person he’d ever met who thought that he was worthy of a better place than a brothel. She was worth the demise of Fonthill.
So he waited.
Finally, after two hours, she walked into the drawing room and quietly closed the door, leaning back against it. “Eugenia is having a bath. She slipped into the horse’s trough.”
He came to his feet. She was fifty times more sensual, more delicious in a dress than in breeches. “I love you.”
“I know you do,” she replied, rather unexpectedly. But she didn’t leap into his arms, the way she had in the stables. Instead she just stood there.
He thought desperately about what to say. “I like your dress,” he said. Her face looked duchesslike. Polite. “I thought you didn’t like having your hair up in the air like that.”
“I meet with Judge Truder this morning and we heard outstanding cases.”
His mouth snapped shut.
“The duchy’s administrative powers are exceeded by those of the government, of course,” she said, standing ramrod straight, every inch a duchess. And a judge. “As you know.”
He fumbled, trying to think how to start. “I didn’t mean the things I said.”
“It’s quite all right,” she said, with a cool incline of her head.
“I entirely understand. In the heat of the moment one often makes rash comments. I shan’t give them a second thought.”
“But you don’t know what I’m apologizing for,” he said, watching her closely.
Her eyelids fluttered and he knew she wasn’t as calm as she was pretending.
“I assume that you were referring to the rather wounding things you said after I disclosed my rank,” she said. “Believe me, I do not remember them.”
“I remember every word.”
“I’m ignoring the horrid things you said because you are an ignorant fool.” She said it with great precision.
“I am. I am, Harriet, I really am.”
She looked away.
He had to tell her everything. And then she would still have a hundred reasons to throw him out, but he would have tried. So he dropped to his knees, because when a man really wants to beg…
That’s how he does it.
“Don’t!” she said, frowning at him.
“I must.”
Her mouth trembled and then straightened into a firm line. “Very well.” She folded her hands.
The floor was very hard under his knees, and her face was even harder. He knew, he knew in his heart that it wouldn’t work. She didn’t love him any longer.
“I didn’t know I loved you, not really. Men just don’t think that way.”
“I know that,” Harriet said.
“Because your husband didn’t really love you?”
“You already established that,” she said. “Right around the same few moments when you pointed out how unattractive I was as a woman, and how stupid I was to think I could get away with calling myself Mr. Cope.”
Jem’s heart twisted with the pain of it. “I didn’t mean those things.” Then he couldn’t stay on his knees any longer, even though that’s where a man was supposed to be. He leapt to his feet and brought her hands to his lips. “I was furious that you were a duchess. You suddenly moved out of my reach—out of anyone’s reach. I couldn’t bear it. All the time I was thinking—do you know?”
She shook her head.
“That I would never have you. I knew how much every man at that party would have lusted after you, if they knew you were female. And they were able to go off to London and court you, without my reputation.”
“You thought I would fall into marriage with the next man I saw?” She looked at him more with curiosity than anything else.
“I can’t help it,” he said jerkily, not letting her draw her hands away. “I had one image of you in bed with someone else, and I lashed out at you. But God, Harriet, you’re so beautiful. In a dress, in breeches, in just your skin. Any man under God’s sky would wish to make love to you.”
She managed to pull her hands away. “That’s good to know.”
He looked down at her and he loved her so much that the words piled up in his chest and couldn’t come out. Not in the right order.
“You don’t believe that I love you.”
“Actually, I do,” she said. “But I don’t believe that you really want to be with me. With me, Harriet. I’m just a boring widow, you know. I wore black for a whole year. I never met a courtesan before I entered your house, and while I found it interesting, I’m not enamored of the experience. I’m boring, Jem, and you’re not.”
“I sent everyone away. The Graces, the guests, everyone.”
She looked at him.
“They’re tearing down the tower this week.”
He had her hands again, was kissing them and trying to tell her all the things he couldn’t put into words. “I told them to tear down the tower, and Eugenia will tell you, I found a governess. Eugenia hates her.”
For the first time, Harriet felt a gleam of hope. “What’s she like?” she asked cautiously.
“She has a remarkable figure. I can’t hardly describe it other than saying that it goes out in the front as much as it goes out in the back. She wears black in honor of her husband. He’s been gone a few years.”
“How many?”
“Twenty-six. I can’t think about anything but you, Harriet. You left, and there was no point to the Game anymore. I had no interest in riding. I found myself walking up and down that damn picture gallery four times a day. I dreamed only of you.” He pulled her close again and caught her lips in the most passionate kiss she’d ever experienced.
“I can’t be feeling this alone,” he said, voice low. “Don’t tell me that, Harriet. I never felt like this before. Sally and I—we laughed. We were like children together. She never scolded me, or noticed what my faults were. She never made love to me the way you did.”
Harriet smiled.
“I couldn’t have made love to her the way I make love to you,” he said, cupping her face in his hands. “Something happened since we made love in the barn. I can’t stop thinking about you. I meant to leave you alone. You’re a duchess, for God’s sake. My family and my reputation are equally black. You do realize that, don’t you?”
“I don’t care.”
The truth of it must have been in her voice because he said, “You don’t know the worst of it yet,” but something eased in his eyes.
She was tempted to kiss him, but she made herself pull away and sit on the sofa.
He stayed there, a bewildered-looking man, with his dear lean face and a dark glower that made him look like a gypsy king.
“What if you miss all your friends?” she asked. “The problem is that you shouldn’t have to give up all your friends just to be with me. And someday—” she wrapped her hands in her skirts so they wouldn’t tremble “—someday you’ll be tired of me and you’ll miss the Game.”
He looked at her, his eyes dark blue and clear. “Do you think that I will ever get tired of Eugenia?”
A little snort escaped her.
“Then why would you think I’d get tired of you?” He didn’t sound challenging, just interested, the way he always was when there was a question of logic involved. “I love you, Harriet. Love is not something that comes easily to me.”
Her smile was wobbling.
“I didn’t want to love you. Especially when I thought you were a man. And even more when I knew you were a duchess.” He shrugged. “But there we are. I tried to cut you out of my heart, but I love you. How can I let you go? It’s the same question I had with Eugenia, so be warned. I never could send her to school.”
“Are you going to keep me locked in the west wing?”
He walked one step and looked down at her. The look in his eyes…
“I think the west wing is too large for you. I’m thinking more about just one chamber.”
“Oh,” she whispered. It was almost too much to take in. He did love her, plain widowed Harriet. He loved her.
And she knew Jem. He would never let her go.
He reached down to her at the precise same moment she flew to him. They kissed for…Harriet didn’t know how long. They were talking to each other silently. Once she broke it off, only to whisper, “You’ll never leave me, will you?”
He knew what she was saying, and kissed her again before murmuring, “I gave up the Game and it was never that important to me. What happened to Benjamin will never happen to me. Never. I’m staying with you, wherever you are, Harriet.”
“When my nephew is old enough, he’ll take back this estate.”
“By that point, we’ll have Fonthill shaped into a perfect habitation for a duchess,” he said promptly.
“Not a duchess,” she whispered. “Lady Strange.”
He started kissing her again, and only stopped to say foolish things about how they’d be together until they were both eighty-five years old, and her hair was white as snow, and she was a toothless crone…
She had to kiss him to make him stop.
Chapter Forty-one
A Chapter of Revelations…of Fathers and Brothels
They had tucked Eugenia into bed together, only to discover a dismal meowing noise coming from under her covers. The kitten was resc
ued and taken back to his mother. Then Harriet thought to lift up the cover again and discovered an unfortunate accident involving that kitten.
After the maids had come and gone, Jem whirled her against the wall in the corridor.
“I can’t do it without you,” he said, his voice husky.
“Yes, you could, and you have,” she said, not bothering to pretend she didn’t know what he was referring to. It felt as if she might be answering his unspoken thoughts the rest of her life. “You’re a wonderful father.”
But he shook his head. “I need you. I don’t think about rats and cat piss and falling towers. I didn’t—I didn’t have much of a father, and I think that’s why I don’t know what I’m doing.”
He wouldn’t tell her anything more, and it wasn’t until the middle of the night, when he was lying on the bed, his chest still heaving, that Harriet propped herself up on one elbow and said, “I want to know why you were so angry when you found me in the stables with Nick.”
He closed his eyes, shutting her away, but she had one great fear and wanted to say it. “Did someone harm you when you were a boy?” she asked quietly.
His eyes snapped open. “Thank God, no.”
She waited.
“But it could have happened. Anyone with a story and a joke was welcome to our house. Sometimes they would stay for weeks, and my father thought it was all great fun. We were the lucky ones, he would say.”
“Did you live at Fonthill?”
“No, we lived in Lincolnshire. One of those men was a hell-hound by the name of Sattaway. My sister was thirteen. Perhaps twelve. I can’t remember.”
“Oh no!” Harriet cried.
“He left after a few weeks but it was too late. She bore a child.”
“And then?”
“The child died because he had given her syphilis. A disease.”
Harriet swallowed. Jem didn’t say anything else. “And after that she was kidnapped by a different man?”
“Yes.”