Page 36 of A Diamond for a Duke

Boils and bunions.

Attired in a lovely emerald green and peach gown—new and expensive if she wasn’t mistaken—Adelinda hung on the arm of an attractive man Jemmah didn’t recognize.

Where had Adelinda come by monies to purchase a gown of such high quality?

And who was this newest admirer? Another of Adelinda’s unsuitable swains, no doubt.

He might be handsome, but something unnerving, dark and oily, shadowed his soulless eyes.

From the languid way his gaze slid over Jemmah before something more than polite interest sharpened his features, she’d bet all the buttons in France he wasn’t a respectable sort. In fact, he made her want to race home, dive beneath the bedcovering, and pull them over her head to block his leering gaze.

Adelinda’s perusal of Jemmah was no less thorough, but the look in her eye could never be described as appreciative or cordial.

“Miss Dament. Perkins.” Jules still possessively cradled Jemmah’s elbow, and he gave the new arrivals a distinctly cool and the briefest possible greeting.

Not friends, then.

“Dandridge.” Perkins’s equally frosty acknowledgement confirmed her suspicion. The smile Perkins then bestowed on Adelinda didn’t quite reach his shrewd eyes. “Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

Mouth pinched in displeasure, Adelinda raised an annoyed brow.

“My sister, Jemmah. Jemmah, Mr. Samuel Perkins. He owns a club on Kings Street,” she said all smug superiority.

The last was declared as if he maintained a private suite at Buckingham Palace.

“So, Adelinda, this is the younger sister you’ve told me so much about.”

I’ll wager she has.

Perkins’s lascivious chuckle sent Jemmah’s skin scuttling, and unnerved by the predatory glint in his eye, she edged nearer to Jules.

His palm tightened on her arm the merest bit before he looped her hand through his elbow, the movement drawing her closer.

“You misled me, my dear Adelinda,” Perkins said with another slippery upward twist of his mouth. “Your sister’s a diamond of the first water if I ever saw one.”

He dares address Adelinda by her given name?

Appearing like she’d been served amphibians or reptiles for supper, Adelinda managed a sickly smile.

“I’ve nearly convinced Mama to permit you to return home, Jemmah. If you put off your grand airs. After all, you cannot expect to take advantage of Aunt Theo’s benevolence indefinitely.”

Still the same spiteful Adelinda, though granted, a trio of weeks was hardly time enough to change one’s character.

It was long enough to fall more profoundly, marvelously in love with Jules.

“I won’t be returning, Adelinda. Of that you may rest assured.”

Jemmah sent Jules a secretive glance, but her sister saw it.

Adelinda stepped closer, her perceptive gaze narrowed. “If you think—”

“Dandridge, darling. I thought I saw you from across the way.”

Oh, for all the kippers in Kensington.

Two misses determined to trap Jules in their webs, and this one with the audacity to call him darling in public?

Momentary uncertainty skipped about the tattered edges of Jemmah’s composure.