Page 27
“And you were there, in embroidery and lace…”
“The picture of a proper English duke. No one else on board had a fifth of the clothes I did. And yet I had forsaken my waistcoat.” He opened his eyes very wide. “No waistcoat, Jemma.”
“I appreciate the seriousness of your sacrifice,” she said, laughing.
“It was twilight and the air lay on the river—for we were on a river wider than I’ve seen in England—the air lay on that river like a fat whore on a six-penny bed.”
Jemma snorted.
He looked at her innocently. “Did I say something amiss?”
He was potent…he was so potent in this mood. Wicked and sly and funny. “No,” she said. “Please continue.”
“Every time I reached out my hand to move one of the pieces, drops of sweat ran down my arm.”
“And yet Cosway was not discomforted in the least?”
“Have you met him?”
Jemma shook her head.
“I think it would be fair to say that he’s my opposite. No powder. His skin is brown from the sun, of course and he’s muscled to a degree that is vastly ungentlemanly. But I think it’s the great tumble of inky black hair, unpowdered and not even tied back, that truly marks him. One can easily imagine him fighting off four or five savages at once.”
“You could do that,” Jemma said loyally.
“I’m not such a fool as to ever put myself in that situation,” Villiers said. “As I recall, he wore short trousers that barely reached his knee along with a tunic-like affair, but at some point he removed that and had the boys dunk it in the river. They returned it to him wet. He appeared to be quite comfortable.”
“Unfair!” Jemma said.
“Did I mention that he was barefoot?”
“No. And you?”
“Boots. Sturdy English boots made for an exploring Englishman, out to gather useful knowledge of the world’s fauna and flora.”
“You came home,” Jemma guessed.
“I forsook all the chess games I might have won in the palaces of the great pashas…I succumbed to the heat.”
“Or perhaps,” Jemma said wickedly, “to your insistence on dressing like a duke.”
“It has occurred to me since. Vanity, thy name is Villiers. Do read his letter.”
Jemma had forgotten about it. There was no formal salutation.
Villiers,
I’m having a devil of a time since my return. Would you do me the honor of paying me a visit? There seems to be some disapproval of my ideas. You are, to my mind, the person best suited in the world to advise me on matters of precedence and respectability.
Jemma chuckled.
“I gather you’ve reached the part when he talks about my ability to arbitrate standards of respectability,” Villiers said.
“I was just thinking of you, all booted and laced, on board that ship.”
“The letter continues.”
My mother assures me that I stand to blacken the title of Cosway throughout England for the next hundred years. If you could pay me a visit at Revels House, I would be most grateful.
