This Duchess of Mine

“Oh, how is Isidore?” Jemma asked with pleasure.



“I haven’t seen her since our Twelfth Night ball.”



“She seemed the same,” Elijah said, pulling off his boots. “Beautiful woman. Not as lovely as you, of course. But more importantly, I think she has a good point about smiths making use of something to protect their eyes.”



Jemma picked up her manuscript. She had been working all morning on her latest project, a treatise entitled The Beaumont Chess Series: Complex Problems for Master Players. “That’s wonderful, darling. I’ve been writing all morning. I thought I’d stow this in the library and go for a walk. Would you like to join me?”



“But I haven’t told you what happened yet,” Elijah complained. He took off his shirt.



Jemma put her book back down and sat to ogle her husband as he undressed. Even now, at sixty, Elijah was still lean and muscled. She had grown a little plumper, but he maintained the exercise practice that he insisted was half of the reason his heart was still—even now—beating as steadily as the pendulum of a clock.



“Isidore was accompanied by one of her daughters. The younger one, with the extraordinary eyes.”



“Lucia has her mother’s eyes,” Jemma said. “Isidore’s eyes tilt up at the corners in precisely the same fashion.”



“Well, between us, Lucia looks like a harem dancer,” Elijah said. He was down to his smalls now, and Jemma thought he looked delicious. His legs were as powerful as they had been at thirty-five. It was such a pleasure to still desire her husband, these many years later, that she couldn’t stop smiling.



“You sound a little moralistic,” she teased. “Lucia is a very nice girl and no harem dancer. When she debuted last year, she had at least four requests for her hand, and one of them was from the Earl of Derby’s heir!”



“That’s my point,” Elijah protested. “Any normal unmarried man—except for Evan—would have gravitated to Lucia’s side like steel to a magnet.”



“Evan ignored her,” Jemma said resignedly.



“He’s just like me,” Elijah said, for perhaps the fourteen-thousandth time since Evan was first put in his arms. It was undeniably true that their eldest son’s grave, intelligent eyes looked exactly like his father’s.



“He’s so passionate about furthering his study of heart ailments that he can’t stop thinking about his latest experiment, even when a woman as beautiful as Lucia shows interest.”



When Rosalind was born, Jemma happily recognized a bit of herself in one of her children. Rosie’s bright hair and laughter had kept Evan from being too solemn as a little boy.



But it wasn’t until their third, Marguerite, came along that Jemma saw herself and Elijah combined in one child. Marguerite would passionately argue one minute for the life of a frog that Evan planned to dissect, and then turn about and argue just as passionately for the right to wear Spanish blue rather than white for her debut.



“I know, darling,” Jemma said. “Evan is just like you.”



“He’s—” Elijah looked up. “Laugh if you like. But that boy is twenty-five years old, and he shows no signs of being interested in looking for a wife. Perhaps we should have arranged a marriage for him.”



Jemma got up and wrapped her arms around Elijah’s chest. “He’ll find his own way.”



“An arranged marriage worked for us. At this rate, he’ll never get married. And I think that Cosway might welcome the suggestion for Lucia. Perhaps I’ll ask him.”



“No,” Jemma told him. “Marguerite is going to force Evan to accompany her to balls this season. He’ll find someone on his own.”



Elijah snorted. “Did you hear that Marguerite slaughtered poor Villiers at chess again last night? He’s going to refuse to pay us visits at this rate.”



“Mmmm,” Jemma said. “You know, Elijah, I think your heart may be missing a beat.”



“Really?” He looked unconcerned. “I doubt it.”



“No, I mean it,” Jemma said. “And you know what resets this particular clock in the best possible fashion.”



The smile on his face was positively wicked. “It is two in the afternoon,” he said with mock severity. “Are you trying to lead me astray? I had plans to work on—”



She turned her mouth to his chest and his voice broke off.



A moment later he picked her up and laid her on the bed. “You shouldn’t lift me,” Jemma protested. “I’m too plump for that.”



“I love carrying you,” Elijah said. “Have I told you how grateful I am that you stopped wearing all those panniers and petticoats?”



“Yes,” she said, gasping a little because his hands were wandering.



“And you are not plump. What you are is delicious, Jemma. Every time I see you, I want to make love to you.”



“Oh, Elijah,” she whispered.



“Last night at supper,” Elijah said, pausing for a moment and looking down into her eyes, “Marguerite was nattering away with one of Villiers’s boys, and you were talking to Rosalind about a new modiste. And I couldn’t concentrate on what Villiers was saying at all because I kept looking at you and thinking about how you taste, and how you smell, and how soft you feel…”



He stopped talking, but only to give her a kiss.



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