T he 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.”