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“I expect not.”
“I want what my parents had. In a queer way I’m grateful that you didn’t come home promptly when I was sixteen. I’d been telling myself that I just wanted an acceptable marriage. But now I understand that I was settling for whomever emerged from the desert because I didn’t really have a choice.”
She stood up and walked a quick step to the mantelpiece, turned and looked at him. “I have to thank you, Simeon. I never thought I had any choice, so I didn’t allow myself to think about what I wanted in a marriage.”
“And what do you want?” He had stood as soon as she had. His voice sounded a bit queer, rather stifled, so she peered at him. But he looked exactly the same: passionless, calm Simeon. At least he was polite enough not to break into celebration at her announcement.
“I want to be liked,” she told him, feeling more cheerful by the moment. “I think I’d like to fall in love. Oh, and I want to be courted. Many men have tried, you know.”
“I have no doubt.” His face did look a bit cross.
“Flowers and such,” Isidore told him. “Even jewels, sometimes, if they didn’t yet realize what sort of person I am. I’d like a marriage in which—” She stopped. “Do you suppose it’s too much to hope that my husband will listen to my opinion all of the time?”
“Yes.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Then most of the time. And I’d like all the passion that you don’t want. I don’t wish for a calm and contained life. I’d rather have some adventure.” In fact, Isidiore felt quite cheerful even thinking about it.
Suddenly he was standing just before her. He moved like some sort of predator, but then he didn’t seem to know what he wanted to say.
“Simeon?” she asked.
He didn’t kiss her, even though her knees weakened at the look in his eyes. “I just want you to know that I like you, Isidore.”
She couldn’t think what to answer.
Chapter Twenty-six
Number Four, Gray’s Inn
The Duke of Beaumont’s offices
March 3, 1784
That afternoon
Jemma arrived at Elijah’s offices in the Inns of Court feeling reasonably certain that she looked exquisite. That is to say, she was as certain as a woman could be who had just spent three hours putting on a gown of amber silk embroidered with sprigs of white flowers. Her shoes were trimmed with dark gold braid and finished with a jeweled buckle. She wore her hair up and lightly powdered, with jewels that matched her shoes.
Elijah likely wouldn’t note the details, but a woman feels more confidence when she is perfectly attired from head to toe.
When Jemma had visited Elijah’s offices for the first time, just after their marriage began, it was the middle of the day and the offices had been empty. She had strolled through a series of rooms noting the dark wood paneling and serious portraits of plump men, until she wandered into Elijah’s inner sanctum. This afternoon, the scene was utterly different. She pushed open the door to Elijah’s outer chamber to find it crowded with men shouting at each other.
There was a brief silence as they twisted their necks to look at her, and then the noise erupted again. But she noticed a nervous clerk scuttle into the inner offices after a glance at her, so she stayed where she was.
Before her were two worthy London merchants, or so she would guess from their clothing, arguing with a third man, surely a government official, about what they termed a “nest of pestilence.” Jemma hadn’t figured out where the nest might be located before Elijah’s private secretary appeared, looking harassed.
Mr. Cunningham wove his way through the knots of gentlemen and burst into an apologetic speech the moment he arrived at her side.
“It’s quite all right,” Jemma told him. “I am finding it interesting.”
“It’s Wednesday, Your Grace,” he told her, leading her toward the door from which he had emerged. “I’m afraid that Wednesdays are rather chaotic. Well, as are Tuesdays. And—”
“All other days,” Jemma filled in. “Who are all these gentlemen?”
“Petitioners,” he said. “As you may know, the East India Company has a great many men in its employ whose only business is to inform members of Parliament just what the company would like to have done. There are always more than a few of those in His Grace’s offices, hoping for a word. Lately there have been a great many people offering various solutions to the current wave of depredatory robberies.”
“I’ve read about them,” Jemma said, “but what on earth does Beaumont have to offer to the poor robbed people?”
“Oh, it’s not the victims we bother about,” Mr. Cunningham told her. “It’s how to cope with the criminals once they’re caught that’s on the government’s mind at the moment. We used to banish them all to the colonies, but the American war stopped that.”
“Of course,” Jemma said. “It’s as if the rat-catcher suddenly left town. There’s no one to cope with the rats.”
“We’ve tried settling them in West Africa, and it doesn’t work,” Mr. Cunningham said, weaving his way through a second room just as teeming with gentlemen, if not more so. “We have a great number imprisoned in the hulks, decommissioned warships moored in the Thames, if you can believe it.”
“I expect they attempt to escape daily.” They entered a third room filled with chattering petitioners. “Mr. Cunningham, is there a better time to visit my husband?”
“Oh no, it’s like this from dawn to dusk,” Mr. Cunningham said over his shoulder.
“Goodness. I haven’t visited in years, but I had no idea…”
“Due to the fact that he is favored by Mr. Pitt, but also respected by Mr. Fox, His Grace finds himself in the unenviable position of brokering compromises.”
Finally they reached a room in which resided only a number of weedy-looking men scratching busily at sheets of foolscap. “If you will step this way, Your Grace,” Mr. Cunningham said, “the duke will be happy to greet you in his private chamber.”
Jemma stepped through the door; Mr. Cunningham melted away behind her.
Elijah’s office was beautifully appointed, with a rococo fireplace of just the sort that she most admired, and a lovely group of chairs clustered before it. He was already on his feet, out from behind his desk, and moving toward her. But her heart sank when she saw the look of cool reserve in his eyes.
“We need to speak,” she said. “I am sorry to bother you when you have so many people clamoring for your time.” She could hear a faint roar of voices through the closed door.
“Please,” Elijah said, guiding her to a small sofa.
She raised an eyebrow. “Cherry twill? Very nice.” It looked precisely like the chairs that graced her salon in Paris.
“I admired them in your house,” he said simply. And then: “They made me think of you.”
Jemma didn’t know how to take that. Did she really want her husband to remember her due to a pair of chairs? He sat down opposite her, rather than beside her.
“I received an amusing letter from Roberta, saying that her father is marrying his mermaid,” she said. “I can’t resist the idea of paying her a visit and meeting the mermaid myself. I thought to leave this afternoon or at the latest, tomorrow morning, so I wanted to let you know.”