Desperate Duchesses by Eloisa James

in one of the lightning quick hugs Harriet remembered so wel . “You are as beautiful as ever, but so thin, Harriet. And the black .”
    “Wel , you do remember…”
    “But it’s been almost two years since Benjamin died, hasn’t it?” Jemma pul ed back. “Did you get my note after his funeral?”
    Harriet nodded. “And I had your lovely note from Florence too, with the drawings.”
    “Wel , it had been a year,” Jemma twinkled at her. “I personal y think that David has a lovely physique although perhaps slightly, shal we say, under-endowed?”

    Harriet laughed a bit hol owly. “Only you would notice.”
    “Nonsense. It’s enough to make one eye Italian males in a most suspicious manner, I assure you. After al , it might wel be a national trait.”
    “What were you doing with that portrait?” Harriet asked.
    “Ghastly thing. I stared at it al the way through luncheon and then promised myself that I would take it off the wal directly.”
    Harriet glanced at it, but couldn’t see that it was particularly depressing; it depicted a man asleep on a bed while a woman stood next to him with a flask of wine.
    “Look more closely,” Jemma said. “Do you see her knife?”
    Sure enough, hidden in the folds of her skirt was the wicked, curved tip of a knife. And on close observation, the woman’s face was rather disturbing.
    “The house is bestrewed by versions of Judith and Holofernes. I would ask Beaumont about his mother’s penchant for the subject, but I’m terrified of his likely answer. In this one, she’s about to saw his head off. If you’d like to see the event itself, that is hanging in the grand salon in the west wing. The aftermath—i.e., his head apart from his body—appears in various versions al over the house.”
    Harriet blinked. “How—how—” and closed her mouth.
    “I gather you don’t know the Dowager Duchess of Beaumont,” Jemma continued blithely. “Let’s go upstairs, shal we? We can have some tea in my rooms.”
    “Why, this is quite lovely,” Harriet said a moment later. The wal s were white with pale green trim, and painted al over with little sprays of blossoms. “Did Beaumont have the room made over for your return?”
    “Of course he didn’t,” Jemma said. “I sent a man from Paris two months ago, as soon as I decided to return to London.
    My mother-in-law had this room very grand in gold-and-white. Natural y I had to have al new furnishings. I am so fond of French panniers, you know. I wouldn’t have been able to fit into the chairs designed thirty years ago.”
    Harriet paused beside a smal marble chess table. It was set out with a game in progress. “You haven’t given up your chess.”
    “Do you remember enough of the game to see where I am? I’m playing white, and my queen is in a veritable nest of pawns. I’m almost certainly beaten.” Jemma dropped into a comfortably wide chair, her panniers effortlessly compressing under her silk skirt.
    Harriet sighed. It had always been so, even when they were young girls growing up on adjoining estates. She and Jemma would go for picnics, and she would come back having been bitten by stinging ants, with her hair down her back. Jemma would traipse back to the house wearing a posy of daisies and every hair in place. Sure enough, when she lowered herself cautiously into the chair opposite Jemma, her right-side hoop sprang into the air like a huge blister. She forced it into place.
    “I’ve missed you,” Jemma said, stretching out her legs. “I love Paris, as you must know. But I missed you.”
    Harriet smiled, a rueful smile. She’d lived a country mouse’s life for the past few years. “You have been in Paris, ” she said. “You needn’t tel me flummery like that. Those are the most gorgeous little slippers, by the way.”
    “Paris is ful of Frenchwomen. They are nice slippers, aren’t they? I like the embroidery. I have them in three different shades.”
    “The fact that Paris is ful of Frenchwomen