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“So what of our match?” she asked, surprised by her own keen disappointment in his refusal of chess.

“One move a day…that match?”

“Yes, that match,” she said. “Do you have so many outstanding matches that you don’t remember? To bring it to your recollection, I have won one game, and you have won one game. That leaves one game to break the tie.”

“I do remember now,” he said, watching her under his eyelids. “Let me see…if our match went to a third game, the last one was to be played blindfolded and in bed.”

“Precisely.” Jemma folded her hands. “I’m so happy that it’s come back to you. I have been training my maid, Brigitte, so she can stand next to the bed and move our pieces appropriately.”

“I did not picture the bedchamber occupied by others than ourselves.”

“Life is positively full of disappointments.”

“Precisely so. I’m sure your maid could use more training. I’d prefer not to play chess for at least another month. Besides, I must return to Fonthill; I didn’t even say goodbye.”

“I feel like an old drunk who’d been sitting on a pub stool next to a man for thirty years, only to be told his comrade has chosen sobriety,” Jemma said, feeling distinctly nettled.

“Chess is better than alcohol…more addictive, more inflammatory, more intelligent.”

She looked at him for a moment, and the edge of her mouth curled up. “You’ll play again.”

“I will trust you to wait for me.”

“I was never very good at waiting for men.” Jemma was startled to hear the words come from her mouth. In one sense, she meant her husband. She waited three years for Elijah to fetch her from Paris when they were young, after she had flung herself across the Channel in a rage. He didn’t visit until the fourth year, and by then it was too late. She had found a lover, and put her marriage behind her.

Villiers’s heavy-lidded eyes dropped. “I, on the other hand, am very good at waiting. For you, Jemma…I would wait quite a long time.”

Jemma woke up. The conversation was happening—perhaps had been happening—on two levels for quite a while and she only now realized it. “Beaumont should be home from Lords within the hour,” she said, watching him. “Will the two of you take your rapprochement from the sickroom to a drawing room?”

Villiers smiled faintly. He didn’t look in the least disappointed by her implicit rejection, which rankled her. Surely he ought to show more response to the invocation of her husband? “Unfortunately, I have a previous engagement. But I wanted your advice. I may have temporarily lost my interest in chess,” he said, “but I am compensating by an increased interest in humanity.”

“You?” she asked, startled.

“Yes. I, the eternal bystander.”

“I always thought you found the affairs of others exhausting and uninteresting. My goodness, Villiers, you’re not planning to reform? I shall be so disappointed if it transpires that the only reason to invite you for an evening is because you lend an air of respectability.”

“It would be a terrible come-down,” he said thoughtfully. “But in truth, I feel no Puritanical leanings.” There was a flare of something deep in his eyes that made her want to smile back, reach out her hand…

“Do ask my advice, then,” she said. “I’m sure I’m capable of wise pronouncements on almost any subject, and yet no one asks for evidence of my wisdom.”

“Beaumont doesn’t come to you with knotty matters of state?”

“Odd, isn’t it?”

“You can mock yourself, Jemma, but he couldn’t find a better mind to consider those affairs.”

Jemma could feel herself growing faintly pink—and she never blushed. Never.

Of course Villiers didn’t miss it. His mouth curled into a mocking smile. “I like blushing,” he said. “Women do entirely too little of it, to my mind.”

“It can be very useful.”

“Useful?”

“There’s nothing more disarming than a woman’s blush.”

“I’ll take your word for it. Most women wear so much face paint that blushing is not an option.”