“I apologize, Your Grace,” she said. “I didn’t realize you had left your chambers.”
“I was threatening to rise to my feet and dance the sara-band,” he said, in his slightly drawling accent, “so my dragonish valet finally allowed me to be near the festivities, if not part of them.”
Harriet sat down stiffly, promising herself that she could leave within five minutes. She could plead a headache, she could say the fire was too hot for her, she could say that she had promised to meet someone in the ballroom…Anything to get away from Villiers.
“As you entered, Harriet,” Isidore announced, “I was just saying that I have decided to create a scandal.”
“Poor Lady Beesby,” Harriet said.
Isidore laughed. “Not with Beesby. That was just entertainment. No, I mean to create a true scandal. The kind of scandal that will force my husband to return to England.” Harriet suddenly noticed that Isidore had a very firm jaw.
“I hate to use my misbegotten history as an example,” Jemma said, “but my husband never found my scandals an adequate reason to travel from England to France. And your husband is somewhere in the Far East, isn’t he?”
Harriet silently agreed. Propping up a drunken judge had caused her to see any number of cases involving scandals caused by women. Often their husbands didn’t bother to travel to the next county to rescue them. But then, dukes and duchesses never showed up in the shire court of the Berrow duchy and presumably the duke cared for his reputation.
“I pity Cosway,” Villiers said languidly. “Jemma, have you a chess set in this parlor?”
She shook her head. “No. And you know that the doctor told you to stay away from chess. You need to recover from those fevers, not exacerbate your tired brain by thinking up intricate plays.”
“Life without chess is paltry,” Villiers growled. “Not worth living.”
“Benjamin would have agreed with you,” Harriet said, before she thought. Her husband had killed himself after losing a game of chess.
To Villiers.
There was a drop of silence in the room, a moment in which no one breathed. Then Jemma said, “We all wish Benjamin were here to play chess with us.”
Villiers turned his face to the fire and said nothing, but Harriet felt a rush of acute shame, along with the memory of his stammering apology. Villiers had been dying, literally burning up with a fever, and he’d come all the way to Jemma’s house just to apologize to her for winning the game that led to Benjamin’s suicide.
“I wasn’t referring to his—his death,” Harriet scrambled into words. “Merely that, if a doctor had told Benjamin that he couldn’t play chess—”
“For a whole month,” Villiers put in.
“Poor Benjamin would have been enraged. Crazed.”
“I would be rather crazed myself, I think,” Jemma said.
“That tyrannical Scottish surgeon of yours could at least allow us to continue our match,” Villiers growled. “One move a day…how difficult could that be for my festering brain to handle?”
“You truly can’t play chess for a month?” Harriet asked.
“It’s not so terrible,” Jemma said. “You can read books. Though not books about chess, of course.”
“A month,” Villiers said.
There was a world of leaden boredom and misery in his voice, so much so that Harriet couldn’t help smiling. “You’ll have to find other interests.”
“Women, wine, and song,” Isidore suggested. “Classic male occupations.”
“I can’t sing.”
“Beautiful women, preferably mermaids, are supposed to sing while you quaff wine,” Harriet pointed out, rather liking the image of the Duke of Villiers surrounded by sirens. If she were a siren, she would try to sink his vessel.
“If you know of any mermaids, do send them my direction,” Villiers said, closing his eyes. “Right now I am far too tired to pursue a woman, fish tail or no.”
He did look white. Given that Harriet loathed him, she was feeling provokingly sympathetic.
“I know! I can use you in my scheme,” Isidore exclaimed.
“No.” Villiers stated, not opening his eyes. “I never join schemes.”
“A pity,” Isidore said. “I am quite sure that the news that his duchess was frolicking with the infamous Duke of Villiers would summon my ne’er-do-well husband. Cosway’s solicitor last indicated that he was somewhere in Ethiopia. Apparently he’s discovered the source of the Blue Nile. And aren’t we all happy for him?”
“But if the duke returns to defend your reputation, poor Villiers would have to fight another duel,” Jemma said. “Your husband probably fights off cannibal tribes over his morning cup of tea, Isidore.”
“I’m in no shape to emulate the cannibal hordes,” Villiers said, ladling his voice with such a layer of dramatic gloom that they all started laughing.
“Then I need someone with your reputation,” Isidore said.
“You can’t be serious!” Harriet exclaimed. “Are you really hoping that a scandal will make your husband return?”
Isidore looked at her, one eyebrow raised, her lips curved in a hard little smile. “Can you think of one single reason why I shouldn’t try? I am married to a man whom I have no memory of meeting. He shows no concern for my whereabouts, and has never answered a single communication I sent to him, though I know he receives my letters.”
“Surely mail goes astray between here and the Blue Nile.”
“Occasionally I receive a note from his solicitors in London responding to something in a private letter I wrote to him. I am tired of this situation. I am married to the Duke of Cosway and I want to be a real duchess.”
“Why does Cosway stay away from England?” Villiers asked, opening his eyes. “Are you so very terrifying?” He peered at her in an interested kind of way.
“Why don’t you go to him?” Harriet asked, at the same moment.
“He is an explorer,” Isidore said with withering scorn. “Can you see me on a camel, trotting around looking for the Blue Nile?”
Harriet couldn’t help grinning. She herself was a sturdy type who probably could—if she had to—clamber up onto a camel. Isidore, on the other hand, looked as exotic and delicate as an orchid.
“Can’t his mother summon him?” Jemma asked.
“She pleads failure,” Isidore said. “And says that nothing will bring him back home, that he is the most stubborn of her children.”
“I met Lady Cosway several times,” Jemma remarked. “If she put her foot down, the King of England would bow to her will. I’d back her over her son.”
“That’s just what I think. I’m trusting her to gauge the scandal and force him to return.”
“How long has it been since he was in England?” Harriet asked.
“Eighteen years. Eighteen! I could divorce him on some sort of grounds, I suppose.”
“Non-consummation would be a possibility,” Villiers noted.
“But I’m not stupid. It is a great deal better to be a duchess than not to be a duchess. I’ve lived on the Continent. I visited Jemma in Paris, and spent a great deal of time in my favorite of all cities, Venice. But now I want my life as an adult woman to begin. And I can’t do it while caught in this half-life!”