Page 13 of The Duke
“So long as I can live.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The next morning, Kate went to the club, looking for Richard. If there was anyone who could point her to the eligible bachelors, it was he. She knew no one as avidly abreast of town gossip.
Her swift approach through the sitting room caught Richard’s peripheral attention, and he began to rise from his place by the fire, blushing with surprise.
She waved him back and sat in the armchair opposite.
“Apologies,” he said, seating himself after a hesitation. He folded the newspaper he’d been reading and put it aside. “I would have left your seat free, had I known you were coming.”
“Don’t be absurd. Cousin…” She leaned forward, elbows on knees. “I have need of your particular knowledge.”
She had left Paris three years ago, sure it would never follow her here. Sure what she’d done and felt with Celine would stay across the Channel, never to be thought of, never to be repeated. Within the terror of Robespierre’s Paris, a personal act of carnage.
She hadn’t slept last night. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her own part in bringing on this crisis. Telling Celine about the existence of a letter. Losing control. She had racked her brain but couldn’t think of a single other time she’d let herself off the leash like that, before or since. She couldn’t make sense of it. It was uncharacteristic. Inconsistent. The consequences of it, catastrophic. What could she have been thinking?
Below that was the thrumming awareness of what Celine hadunearthed: The old secret. The old threat. The unforgivable act. Not dead, but here.
Richard plucked at the upholstered armrest. “You aren’t in the habit of drinking your coffee at the club.”
She let out an annoyed breath and prodded his foot with her own. “It is of no note to me where you sit. Stop being so prissy.”
He leaned back into the chair, crossing one leg over the other—an elaborate show of making himself at home. He raised his brows at her—Happy?—and a small smile tugged on her lips.
Becoming serious again, he opened his hands and said simply, “What do you need?”
The unquestioning show of loyalty soothed her in some indefinable way, working against the thrashing panic she’d been fending off since last night. Quieting it. She would find Celine a husband, and the letter would be returned to her. It was simple.
“I need a list of the five most eligible bachelors who are in town this season,” she said. “Though, if you can, narrow it down to the single best candidate.”
Richard’s mouth dropped open. “Good God, you aren’t thinking ofmarrying?”
He needn’t look quite so horrified. She had no intention of ever marrying, as he well knew, but she wasn’t as bad as all that, surely. “No, of course not.”
His face loosened with relief, and then he coloured a little and gave an embarrassed cough. “Not that you aren’t… I mean if you everwantedto…”
“Relax, man, you have the wrong end of the stick. There’s a young woman I wish to introduce into society—” Richard choked on the mouthful of coffee he’d just taken, with some cause. Kate hadn’t attended a ball in at least ten years. “Indeed. You grasp the problem. I wish to see her married as quickly as possible, to someone suitable.”
“I… don’t even know where to begin. Who is this young woman?”
“No one you know. A French orphan, recently come into my care.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it. She saw him decide not to pursue that line of questioning. “Is she young? Beautiful? What of her dowry?”
WasCeline beautiful? She had evidently once thought so, given how thoroughly she’d fucked up in Paris, but it was difficult to remember seeing Celine that way, with her appearance last night superseding any older, feebler recollection. Grimy, thin, unkempt. The stamp of poverty all over her. And yet her fingers, her mouth, the unmistakeable way she moved had been viscerally familiar.
It was disturbing when Celine was, to all purposes, a stranger. A dirty stranger in a cheap dress who had insinuated herself into Kate’s home. A stranger who spoke informally—tu—to Kate, who was a duke. Her skin prickled with unease.
“She’s young, she’s the ward of a duke, and I’m settling twenty thousand on her.” Then, with gentle irony, in response to Richard’s raised brows, “Does itmatterif she’s beautiful?”
“I…,” he said. “Twenty thousand is a handsome sum.”
Not handsome at all. Compliant. “Yes. Now the names of potential suitors, if you please. I wish to be rid of her.”
Something in her tone caught his attention and he peered intently at her. He knew her entirely too well. “This orphan…,” he said slowly. “If there’s something more to the connection, if she has presumed on you in some way… You are going to extraordinary lengths for someone I’ve never heard you speak of.”
He was already halfway to the truth. For a moment, it felt possible to tell him. To confide in him, rely on him. Already, at just the hint something might be wrong, his hackles were half-raised on her behalf. But she had grown up malformed by betrayal.
