Page 15

“Might you address me as Jules, or Dandridge if you prefer, when we are alone? Please?”

He quirked his mouth boyishly, and she couldn’t resist an answering bend of her lips.

It had always been so. She was clay, soft and malleable, in his hands.

“Precious, Jemmah, perhaps you’d prefer a ride in Hyde Park tomorrow?”

Heaven and hiccups, no.

It would never do for Jules to pay his address to her at home, and a ride would likely be reported as well. Mama wasn’t above locking Jemmah in her chamber to assure Adelinda received his undivided attention.

Good thing he wasn’t as besotted as most men by her sister’s exquisiteness.

When Adelinda did finally marry—for certain her beauty would snare some unfortunate fellow—how long would it be before her sulks and vile tongue obscured her bewitching beauty and the poor sot regretted his choice?

Still, Jemmah could no more deny Jules’s tempting request than she could ignore the impossibility of his calling on her.

The scraping and frenetic whispering at the door had finally ceased, but her alarm increased.

She mustn’t be found, here alone with him.

No telling what Mama would do.

Jemmah speared an anxious glance to the other doors.

“It’s impossible. Mama won’t allow you to call upon me. She had hoped Adelinda would attract your notice, and she’ll be furious if you show any interest in me.”

“Yes, so I became acutely aware, earlier this evening. However, Adelinda isn’t the Dament sister who fascinates me. I’ve always preferred the one with gold and amber streaks glinting in her hair and eyes so pale blue, I lose myself in their color each time I look into them.” He grazed his thumb across her lower lip. “And she has the most tempting mouth, soft, honey sweet, with lips I cannot wait to sample again.”

He swept his mouth across hers.

Tender, fleeting, a silent promise.

Joy, and perhaps the minutest amount of triumph that he preferred her—plain and unremarkable Jemmah—over Adelinda’s exquisiteness, sang through her veins. A jaunty celebratory tune. And for the first time in the veriest of times, a spark of hope ignited deep in her spirit.

For once, she believed Papa’s assurances that she was lovely in her own way, and that someday she’d find the man who gazed at her through love-filled eyes and found her beautiful.

“Do you know what the Dandridge motto is, Jemmah?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“In adversity, the faith.” Jules’s touched his lips to hers again. “I shall find a way, if you want me to.”

Her stomach flopped over again, and the air left her lungs on a fluttering breath.

Thundering hogs’ hoof beats when he looked at her like that—like she was the most precious of jewels, his gaze reverent, yet also slightly hooded—although logic screeched “No,” her desperate heart whispered, “Yes.”

Yes. Yes. Yes.

If this was her chance for happiness, no matter how brief or implausible, she damn well—yes, damn well!—had every intention of grasping it.

“My aunt invited me for tea tomorrow.”

Comprehension dawned on Jules’s face, and she entertained another, small victorious smile.

“Ah, I do believe Theo mentioned something of that nature to me as well. I find I am quite available at that hour.”

He lifted Jemmah’s hand, and rather than brush his lips across her bare knuckles, he turned it over and grazed her wrist.