Harriet hesitated. “You have a ball tomorrow. Surely you have—”
“Absolutely not! I have a marvelous secretary who handles all the wretched details of putting on an event. She thrives on it. My role is to stay to my rooms and keep out of the way.”
Harriet got up and dumped her hoops. “How I loathe these things.”
“I adore them,” Jemma said. “There’s nothing better than arranging huge swathes of silk just so; one always makes a grand entrance if one’s hoops are large enough. This season the fashion in Paris is for smaller panniers, which in itself was a good reason to leave.”
Since Harriet loathed the idea of a grand entrance under any circumstances, and particularly with huge wire baskets attached to her sides, she changed the subject. “So who is Roberta, and what is her surname?”
“Lady Roberta St. Giles. She’s great fun; I am persuaded the two of you will like each other enormously. The only problem is that she’s quite desperately in love and the man is rather unlikely.” She reached out toward the bellcord. “I’ll ask if she could join us, shall I? She’s been in fittings for a ballgown but perhaps she is finished.”
But Harriet quickly waved her hand. “I want to ask you something first.”
Jemma dropped the cord. “Of course.”
“It’s—It’s about Benjamin.” Whenever she brought up her dead husband, people’s faces took on one of two expressions. If they knew only that she was a widow, their faces took on a practiced look of sympathy, often quite genuine. They would offer stories of aunts who were widowed and found true love a mere week afterward, as if she, Harriet, were lusting to marry over the very coffin of her husband.
But if they knew that Benjamin committed suicide, their faces had an entirely different look: more guarded, more truly sympathetic, slightly horrified, as if suicide were a contagious disease. No one offered stories of relatives who put themselves to death.
Jemma looked purely sympathetic.
“He killed himself,” Harriet said bluntly. “He shot himself in the head after losing a game at which he gambled a great deal of money.”
Jemma blinked at her for a moment. Then she jumped out of her chair and plumped down next to Harriet. Without panniers, the chair was more than wide enough for both of them. “That is absolutely terrible,” she said, wrapping an arm around her. “I’m so sorry, Harriet. No one told me.”
Tears stung her eyes. “I’ve gotten used to it.”
“Does one? I supposed I would get over my husband doing such a thing, simply because we aren’t very close to each other. But you and Benjamin—how could he do such a thing?”
“I don’t know.” Despite herself her voice cracked a bit, and Jemma’s arm tightened. “He was so miserable. He was never good at being miserable.”
“No, I think of him as always laughing.”
“He was never very good at being formal, nor sad either. Nor ashamed of himself. He was ashamed of himself, and that’s why he did it.”
“Over a game of cards! And why was he playing such high stakes?”
“It wasn’t cards,” Harriet said. “It was chess.”
“Chess!”
Despite herself, a tear rolled down her cheek. Jemma produced a handkerchief from somewhere and blotted her cheek. Harriet almost smiled. It was the softest, most elegant little scrap of cloth she’d seen in years, perhaps ever.
“It’s mortifying to be crying for him,” she said, sniffing a bit.
“Why? I would think you should wear your grief like a badge of honor. After all, you care enough to grieve. I can hardly imagine.”
“It’s mortifying because he—he was so eager to leave me that he took his own life.” It came out angry.
“That’s foolish, darling, and you know it. Your husband no more wished to leave you than he truly thought to give up life. I know Benjamin, remember? I was there when you fell in love.”
“When I fell in love,” Harriet said, more angry tears swelling in her eyes. “If he was in love with me, he showed an odd way of displaying his passion.”
“He did fall in love with you. But Benjamin was a remarkably impetuous person. I’m sure he regretted shooting himself the moment he did it, but it was too late. He just didn’t think clearly before acting.”
“He should have thought about it!”
“Was the chess game public?”
“Of course. Chess is all the rage now. Everyone’s playing it, in the cafés, in private houses. White’s. Sometimes I think it’s all anyone talks about.”
“How surprising. I had no idea. I thought it was only like that in France.”
“Benjamin had a tremendous passion for chess. He couldn’t just play, you know? He had to be among the very best.”
“But he wasn’t,” Jemma said sadly.
“You remember that? Of course, you used to play him occasionally, didn’t you? Did he ever win?”
Jemma shook her head.
“He could beat most everyone,” Harriet said. “Truly. But he couldn’t bear the fact that he couldn’t beat the very top players. It was almost like a disease, the way he wanted to beat Villiers.”
“It was Villiers he played at the last?” Jemma asked. “Villiers?”
Harriet dashed away more tears. “Why are you so surprised? Villiers is the best chess player in England. Or so they say.”
“It’s just very odd,” Jemma said slowly. “I’ve been talking of Villiers all morning.”
“Are you planning to play him in chess?” Harriet said, feeling hopefulness tighten in her chest like a vise.
“It wasn’t that. It’s my guest, Roberta. Lady Roberta St. Giles. She’s in love with him.”
“In love with Villiers?” Harriet smiled weakly. “I believe I pity her.”
“Was he a friend of Benjamin’s, then?”
“Villiers played Benjamin all the time, but he never allowed any stakes. Which was just a condescending way of telling Benjamin that he was unlikely to win. Then finally Benjamin challenged him and Villiers agreed to play. Benjamin played well in the beginning. But now, I think that Villiers may have been just playing along.”
“I see,” Jemma said, holding her hands tightly.
“And Benjamin started to raise the stakes on the game. I gather that Villiers refused and Benjamin got so angry—it was when he was winning, or he thought he was winning—that he forced Villiers to give in. That’s what everyone told me afterwards.”
“And then…”
“I don’t think Benjamin realized at first. But he must have gone home and thought over the game, step by step. I was in the country, you see. I wasn’t there; perhaps if I’d been in London I could have stopped him somehow. At any rate, he must have realized that Villiers had just been babying him. That he never had a chance of winning that game.”
“Benjamin loved chess that much,” Jemma said.
“He should have loved me that much!”
Jemma sighed. “Chess is a passion.”
“The problem was that Benjamin was too good to play most people, and not quite good enough for the very best. He used to try to get your husband to play with him; he even said that he would trade a game for his vote in Lords.”