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“What do you mean?”
“When I found that my husband had a mistress, I packed up my bags and fled.”
Isidore narrowed her eyes. “I’d kill him first and then flee.”
“That’s always an option, of course,” Jemma said.
“But with the wisdom of hindsight, I think I should have just given Elijah a taste of his own medicine.”
“You should have taken a mistress? Or a—what would the word be?”
“A lover. I have decided in the years since that perhaps had I flaunted a lover before Elijah in the early days of our marriage he might have cared.”
“Why?” Isidore bit her lip. “It doesn’t seem logical, Jemma, though I wish it were true. If the only concern your husband had was to do with his heir, I really don’t see how three years one way or the other would change things.”
“I know much more about men than I did. I was his, when we lived together in London and were first married. Three years later, he’d practically forgotten about me. Men do that. If you allow Simeon to return to Abyssinia and start rootling around looking for another river basin, he’ll forget you.”
Isidore felt tears welling up in her eyes.
“And you don’t want that,” Jemma said gently.
“It’s so awful!” Isidore said, drawing a ragged breath. “I—I—”
“I fell in love with Elijah, who didn’t show any interest in returning the favor. It took me forever to get over it.”
“I’m afraid I never will,” Isidore said shakily. “It’s the most ridiculous thing in the world. It’s just that I love the way he’s taken on the house, and doesn’t even blame his rather hateful mother, or his father, who was a positive criminal! I know he didn’t like the way I dashed into things, but I thought…”
“I expect he’s madly in love with you,” Jemma said consolingly. “Who could not be?”
“I just can’t let him return to Africa,” Isidore said. “And I don’t want to marry anyone else!”
“Then you won’t,” Jemma said. Against all reason, she was smiling. “We’ll arrange it so that he comes to his senses. Do you know that when people are knocked silly by a blow, sometimes a second injury puts them back into a sane mind? That’s what we’ll do.”
“I don’t want Simeon hit on the head,” Isidore said, alarmed.
“We won’t hit him,” Jemma said. “We’ll just do something to throw him out of his complacent frame of mind.”
“What?”
“It’s not a question of what,” Jemma said, smiling. “It’s a question of whom.”
“Then?”
“Villiers.”
Chapter Forty
Revels House
March 26, 1784
Early in the morning
The Duke of Villiers paused before entering the house. If the truth be told, he was remarkably fastidious. Sometimes he embarrassed himself by his dislike of bodily functions. Other men seemed to love sweating and generally rolling around in their own muck. He did not, and a sewer was perfectly emblematic of the sort of bodily process he would prefer to be invisible and certainly inoffensive.
But the butler was waiting, so Villiers climbed the stairs with a sigh. How he had become such a slave to his acquaintances, he didn’t know. Though he had the idea that Elijah would correct him and say, slave to his friends. One cautious sniff within the hallway, and Villiers felt more cheerful.
He turned from handing his cloak to the butler. “I heard tales that Revels House had been conquered by a terrible odor,” he told the butler.
