Page 9 of A Diamond for a Duke

Adelinda could suffer the consequences of her rash choices, which likely as rain in England would bring shame and censure down upon all their heads.

Jemmah eyed Jules from beneath her lashes. A partial smile yet curved his mouth.

She knew full well how pathetic she appeared to others. Yet to see fellow feeling engraved on the noble planes of his face and glistening in his warm treacle eyes... Well, by cold, lumpy porridge, the injustice of it burgeoned up her tight throat, choking her.

And her dratted tongue—blast the ignoble organ—saw fit to ignore even a scrap of common sense. Her mouth had opened of its own accord, spewing forth her innermost thoughts. Thoughts she took great care to keep buried in the remotest niches of her mind, even from herself at times.

Still, pity was the last thing Jemmah wanted from anyone, most especially from The Sixth Duke of Dandridge, and for him to also find her an object of amusement, pricked hot and ferocious.

Wealthy and powerful, much sought after, and too absurdly handsome for his own good—hers too—made her one-time friend’s mockery all the more unbearable.

He slanted his head, the paler hues ribboning his rich honey-blond hair catching the candles’ light. Cupping his nape, his gaze traveled from her rumpled hair to her too-large slippers, and she wanted to melt into the floor or crawl beneath the side table and hide as she’d done so often as a child.

“You needn’t stare. I’m perfectly aware of my deficiencies, Your Grace.”

Hadn’t they been drilled into her almost daily for years?

When he didn’t answer but continued to regard her with that amused, curious, yet confused expression, her seldom-riled temper chose to snap to attention.

“You, Your Grace, are being rude.”

Brow knitted into three distinct furrows, he finally veered his astute gaze away to contemplate the moon through the window and his familiar reserved bearing descended.

The devil take her loose tongue. She’d offended him.

Why, for all the tea in England, had she’d just insulted a duke?

And not just any duke, but Aunt Theo’s beloved godson, a man more of a son to her than he was to his own mother. Her aunt, the only person in Jemmah’s memory, besides Papa, to show her any compassion or kindness, would not be pleased.

Don’t forget how kind Jules—his grace—used to be to you, as well.

Aunt Theo had always admired Jemmah’s pleasant disposition, and Jemmah would’ve been hard pressed to explain why he’d riled her to the point of insolence.

It must’ve been humiliation-induced anger brought about because he’d felt sorry for her.

Dandridge, the devilishly handsome, wonderful smelling, garbed in the first crack of fashion peer, regarded her with those darkened, hooded eyes and his lips tweaked downward as if she were a pathetic charity case or a poorhouse worker.

He, for whom she’d harbored a secret tendre since the first time he’d joined her beneath a lace-edged tablecloth’s security almost fifteen years ago, when she’d been a five-year-old imp, and he a brawny, mature lad of ten.

More fool she. But her dreams, no matter how trivial or silly or unattainable, were hers to entertain and treasure, and no one could take them from her. If one didn’t have dreams, something to look forward to, then life’s everyday tedium and drudgery, Mama’s harsh criticisms and fault-finding, might steal all vestiges of her joy.

Jemmah mightn’t have much in the way of appearances or possessions, but she had a remnant of pride and a handful of wonderful memories. Still, the realization that Jules pitied her...

Well, her very soul panged with indignation as well as mortification—each as unwelcome as vermin droppings in seedcake or oozing pox sores upon her face.

At least he’d been forced to acknowledge her this time, unlike the half dozen other encounters over the past two years.

In each of those instances, he’d looked straight through her as if she didn’t exist or was something as inconspicuous as tree bark, a pewter cloud in an armor-gray sky, or a fingerprint smudged upon a window.

Present, but invisible to all.

An accurate depiction of Jemmah’s life, truth to tell.

That rather smarted too, for whenever he entered a room, passed her on the street, trotted his magnificent ebony mount down Rotten Row, she’d noticed him straightaway—discretely observing him through lowered lashes, her countenance carefully bland.

She knew her place. Knew she was beneath his touch.

But to gaze upon his somber handsomeness, and recall how infinitely thoughtful he’d always been to her.