Duchess By Night
Page 66

He looked down and despair was written in every inch of his body. “I’ll take a bath and then I’ll hold her,” he said. His voice was toneless.
Shock, she thought. He can’t let himself face it yet.
Harriet kept rocking, her arms aching with exhaustion.
A slanted hint of pearly light came in through a crack in the curtains. Dawn had arrived.
The light wasn’t gray anymore. Rose, dusted with pearl, played over Eugenia’s closed eyes. She didn’t stir. Harriet freed one arm and put a hand on Eugenia’s forehead.
Jem entered the room, deep in the cotton wool he had somehow wrapped himself in. He felt like a snowman come to life, cold, emotionless, walking by some miracle.
Harriet was still by the fire, but she’d stopped rocking. He registered that was a bad sign, walked toward them. Harriet had patches under her eyes like bruises. Her hair was tied back with a simple ribbon, and strands of curled silk were falling about her cheeks. Eugenia was curled in her arms like a baby hedgehog.
There was something in Harriet’s eyes…He looked at his daughter again. Put his hand on Eugenia’s forehead.
Harriet’s smile was so beautiful that he felt it in the fiber of his bones. The cotton wool peeled away, left him reeling.
Morning light came toward him like a blow of color.
“The fever,” he whispered. “It—is it?” From the earliest days, the fever had waned, but it never really left. But Eugenia’s forehead was cool. Cool.
Harriet tried to say something but she was crying.
Eugenia opened her eyes. “Papa,” she whispered.
He scooped her up. “How do you feel?” He heard his voice crack with no embarrassment.
“Hungry,” Eugenia sighed, putting her head on his shoulder.
Harriet’s wonderful, husky chuckle was a shadow of its former self—but she hadn’t laughed in weeks. Eugenia hadn’t asked for food in weeks either. She’d protested every spoonful of soup they gave her. Jem laughed, felt something wet on his cheek and realized he was crying.
“You’re going to be all right,” he whispered, tightening his arms around his little girl. “Harriet, she’s going to be all right!”
Harriet laughed again.
He looked down at her. The joy was almost painful. “I love you,” he said suddenly. “Do you know that?”
Harriet turned a little pink. “Oh.”
“Eugenia and I both love you. Our Harry.”
Eugenia was asleep again, so he tucked her back in bed and then picked up Harriet and put her in his lap instead.
She put her head against his shoulder and they just stayed like that, staring into the smoldering fire. It took an hour, perhaps. But finally he heard her voice, like a kiss. “I love you, Jem.”
He tightened his arms.
Chapter Thirty-six
Games
March 16, 1784 The following evening
J em walked out of Eugenia’s room and his feet turned of their own accord toward Harriet’s bedchamber. Eugenia was well.
She would live. The doctor agreed. She would live.
Mr. Avery was strolling down the corridor. “We’ve missed you at the Game,” he said. “How’s your daughter?”
“Better. Perhaps I can join you tonight.”
“Children are pesky creatures. I’m quite proud of myself for not spawning any. Will Cope join us?”
“Of course.”
Avery accepted that without a blink of an eye.
Jem’s heart sang. Everything could go back to normal now. Except of course it wouldn’t be the same, it would never be the same. He had Harriet now.
He pushed open the door of her chamber without knocking, hoping to find her undressed. Bathing.
She was writing a letter. He knew there was a smile in his eyes, saw it echoed in hers. He came around behind her and pulled Harriet’s hair out of its ribbon.
“I need you,” he said fiercely.
She stood in his arms and turned, silent and sleek.
He pulled her to the edge of the bed, standing before her, so that he could make love to her, and still see her, all her sweet curves and delicious roundness. Harriet had no shyness, no modesty. She lay before him like a gorgeous feast, her legs wrapped around his hips.
Being Harriet, she never really stopped talking. “Deeper,” she said. Her lips, crimson and plump, caught his attention and he bent forward, taking her lips without missing a stroke.
Making love to Harriet was like nothing he could describe.
So he didn’t try, just tugged her out of a nap a few hours later. “Come on, Harry, on your feet.”
She rolled away into the pillow. Her lips were bruised and swollen from his kisses. His body flared and did one of those instant calculations men can do in their sleep. Do it again now, or wait? Wait.
“Put on your breeches,” he said. “The boys are waiting.”
“What boys?”
“The Game,” he said, giving her a kiss just because he could. “They’ve missed us. I promised we’d go tonight.”
She blinked at him. “The Game has kept going? Without you?”
“Of course.”
“And they think we’re going to join them tonight?”
“They think their host and Mr. Cope are going. I told Povy that we’d take the seventh and eighth seats.” Her thighs were irresistible. He ran a hand up her right leg, stopping right where her sweet plumpness began.
She frowned at him and turned away. But that just meant that the curve of her bottom caught his eye.
He ran a hand slowly over her hip. “Have you ever played master and slave girl?” he asked, not expecting a yes. Whoever that gentleman farmer was Harriet married, he didn’t sound like a master.
She gave him a look and sat up. “Are you really telling me that the whole cohort of wastrel Game-playing men are still here and you agreed to meet them tonight?”
He thought she phrased that quite succinctly. “Exactly. Let’s go.”
“Jem, don’t you think—” she started. And then lapsed into silence.
“If you’d rather stay here,” Jem said, having a change of heart, “I’m perfectly willing. I can teach you a lovely game called Master and Slave.”
“Oh, sure,” she said. “I suppose you’re the master and I’m the slave.”
“Other way around,” he said, pulling her legs to the edge of the bed and then falling to his knees. “Command me, O Master.”
He loved her chuckle. It made his heart dance; it made him harder than a rock.
But she was persistent too. “Get up, Jem. You don’t really think that we’re going back to—to the Game this very night?”
“Are you tired of primero?” He got to his feet. “I can go by myself, though they’ll miss you. Povy can easily find someone for the eighth seat.” He wandered over to the fire. “Eugenia had two eggs for supper tonight.”
“That’s wonderful,” she said.
But something was sinking into his mind. He knew that tone. Every man in the world knew that tone.
“Harriet?” he said warily.
She was standing with her arms folded. “You don’t think everything is going to go back to exactly as it was, do you?”
He cleared his throat. “Um.”