She reached out and turned his hand over. “Perhaps you could be the one to change my mind,” she said, tracing a path on his palm with her finger. “That is, I would be pleased, but you are Roberta’s fiancé, and the bonds between friends are stronger than those between lovers, in my opinion.”
“I have few friends. The closest friend of my life was your husband, and that many years ago.”
She glanced at him, but he was staring at her fingers on his hand. “I know that you were close once…”
“In the way of boys and small animals. Without thought for the future nor our differing personalities. But still, I find I have a fragment of honor left in me. I am not the person to show Beaumont’s wife that the body is greater than the mind, and games of chess pale next to games in bed.” He took her hand and kissed it, and there was something so sad in his eyes that she didn’t even mind the fact she had been turned down.
Though that had never happened before.
“Why don’t you speak to him?” she asked impulsively. “Elijah needs friends. He needs someone to tell him to slow down, to drag him away from his work.”
His smile was rueful. “He and I are centuries apart, in personality and taste. In all honesty, and without offense, I wouldn’t wish to be particular friends with the Duke of Beaumont now. If it were a matter of being fourteen again, and playing a game of chess by the river…that I do miss. But those days are gone.”
“I have no wish to be fourteen again.”
“Life was simpler. I do not let myself entertain regrets nor think about mistakes. My father always said, and he was right, that regret is a useless practice. But I find that in my thirties, regrets chase me down the street sometimes. It’s not so easy to shrug them away.”
He was talking about Benjamin, perhaps. She thought about whether to mention his suicide too long, because Villiers asked her, “What do you regret, Oh Duchess?”
That made her grin. “So many things!”
“Such as?”
“The absurd Italian hat I bought yesterday in Bond Street with Roberta.”
“Ah, Roberta.”
His eyelids dropped and she couldn’t see his expression. “Your fiancée,” she prompted.
“A charming young lady.”
“I gather,” she said wryly, “that the dew is off the rose, for you.”
“Yet another regret.” He sighed. “They are like bad dreams; once you allow one, they come as thick and fast as leaves in autumn.”
“She will make you an excellent wife.”
“I did it to make you angry.” He raised her hand and put one kiss in her palm, and then replaced it on the table, all without looking at her. “I admit with some shame: You won our first game of chess.”
She shook her head at him. “You asked someone to marry you out of pique?”
“Are you suggesting that I take this game too seriously?”
She found herself laughing, and then he joined in.
“One never knows,” he said a moment later. “There’s many a slip between an engagement and the church.”
“She loves you, you know.”
“Or something of that nature,” he agreed.
“It would take an act of God,” Jemma said. “But I think she will be the making of you, Villiers. Perhaps you will have the real marriage that I can only imagine.”
“Unfortunately, I cannot imagine such a thing,” he said with some disdain. “I shall pray for an act of God.” He was at the door when he turned and said, “I have had many lovers, Jemma.”