Page 107

The Cricket and Song Inn

West of London

March 4, 1784

Jemma, the Duchess of Beaumont, allowed herself to be handed out of the carriage only to discover that there was an acre of mud covering the inn yard. She halted on the bottom step of her carriage and surveyed her groomsmen, trying to estimate their general strength. Unfortunately, the two standing at her carriage door looked suspiciously weedy. The last thing she wanted was to be dropped into the muck.

“Your Grace,” came a drawling voice.

She jerked up her head to find that the only other carriage drawn up in the yard had just flung open its door, revealing the Duke of Villiers.

“Villiers!” she cried, “Do tell me that you have a husky footman who can get me into that inn. I’m feeling extreme trepidation, as I’m sure my poor groomsmen are as well.”

He stepped down into the mud as if it didn’t exist. He was dressed exquisitely, of course. His cloak was a ruby red so dark that it seemed nearly black. Its capes lay over his shoulders with the sleek elegance that comes from the very finest wool.

Jemma couldn’t help smiling at him. Villiers was so dramatic, and yet now that she had come to know him, his elegance and drama seemed to fade in relation to the rest of him. He walked over to her.

“I hope you don’t expect me to put down my cloak,” he said in his usual drawl. “I’ve worn this only once, and I am inestimably fond of it.”

She laughed. “I expect you to lend me a strapping footman, Villiers! I must needs get to that inn. I’ve been on the road for hours and I’m famished. I set out yesterday from London, if you can believe it. We lost a wheel, and I had to spend the night a mere hour from the city.”

He held out his arms. “Come, then.”

Jemma froze. “You’re convalescing.”

He scooped her off the step as if she were no more than a girl of five. “I’m feeling better. Of course, it could be that I’ve miscalculated my abilities.” His steps slowed. “Oh—”

She shrieked as his hands suddenly gave a little and she dipped toward the ground. “No!”

“Oh, all right then,” he said. There was a dark strain of laughter in his tone.

“You’re evil,” she accused him.

“And you’re not the first to tell me so,” he said comfortably, putting her down within the door of the inn.

“Well,” Jemma said, shaking out her skirts. “I do thank you, Villiers. Naturally I would have preferred to walk on that cloak of yours, but I’ll take what I can get.”

“A sensible notion. Life is, alas, full of compromises.”

Jemma felt a bit strange about the whole thing.

“Your Graces,” the innkeeper was gobbling, “I’m afraid that I have no private rooms at the moment. The south chimney has collapsed.”

Villiers turned his cold eyes on the innkeeper and a moment later it transpired that the public room had no other customers, and the innkeeper would take it upon himself to keep out any who might appear.

“Until the duchess has had some tea,” Villiers said gently.

Jemma felt so oddly unbalanced that she found herself chattering as they walked into the room, telling him that she was on her way to pay a visit to his one-time fiancée. “Roberta’s father, the Marquess of Wharton and Malmesbury, is marrying a mermaid he met at a public fair.”

“My joy at the dissolution of that engagement deepens by the moment,” Villiers said languidly. “Does the mermaid come with piscine accoutrements?”

“Naturally,” Jemma said. “I believe she straps on a tail and speaks in verse for a few shillings.”

“Just what one wants in a mother-in-law. Yes, I truly made a lucky escape.”

“I should like some tea, please,” Jemma told the innkeeper. “And something to eat as well, if you would be so kind.” She had a strange uncertainty in her stomach, and it was always best to eat in those circumstances. “How odd that we should meet at the same inn.”

“I’m off to pay the Duke of Cosway a visit, as I told you I would,” Villiers said.