Page 16 of The Duke
For the past year she had lived like a rat, her degradation total. This morning, she had woken in the house of a duke. The signs were all about her in the happy, well-fed servants and the high, clean windows and the logs of wood in the fire. Such stupid, gorgeous, excessive luxury.
Shehad given herself these things.
A tall, pale maid with red hair came directly to the bed and began arranging the pillows so that she might sit comfortably upright. Lavender wafted behind her, the scent so clean and fresh she could’ve been put whole through the ironing press that morning.
Unbidden, Celine thought of waking up in Dieppe three mornings ago. Down by the harbour, her cheek pressed into hard stone. She’d realised slowly that someone had taken her coat from her while she slept, and she hadn’t even woken. Corpses lay like that—on stone, poured out and uncaring. She’d sat up, heart thumping, dizzy until the seaside stink slapped her awake. Shewasn’t the only one in that alley waiting for her chance to board a ship; others sat quietly talking, or sleeping, or dead.
She’d paid the last of her money to be hidden inside a coil of rope. In it, she could see nothing but thin strips of light, which lit the hairy edges of the rope. No horizon to give context to the sudden lurch and drop and rise of her body. Nothing to smell but hemp and rot.
She’d tried not to think anymore—I want you to launch me on society and help me make an excellent marriage—about what she was sailing towards, what she would say, how she would even get an audience with the duke. Instead, she’d thought about how her mother used to hide coins inside balls of spun wool.
She wouldn’t have survived another night in Dieppe, but she hadn’t been sure she would survive the trip across the Channel, either.
No thought could have been more unwelcome.
She allowed the English maid to help her upright and drank in sunlight. She had come for everything she could get, and she wasn’t going to spoil it with dark thoughts. She would suck down every last sweet drop, and then grind the dry remainder between her teeth and swallow that down as well.
A tray was placed across her lap, and then it became impossible to thinkanything.
Upon it were pastries topped with fruit (pregnant apricots, glistening pears, jewelled raspberries); thick slices of warm bread with slabs of butter; a bowl of porridge with a spool of honey on top; and a cup as delicate as eggshell, into which a stream of coffee was being poured.
She looked up at the maid who was pouring the coffee and found herself the subject of that maid’s quite open regard. It was the redheaded girl, whose fantastical colouring was somewhat spoiled by a pair of mud-brown eyes. “Good morning, miss,” the maid said in rickety French. “Eat please.”
Celine tore the bread between her fingers, and as the body pulled apart, it released the loamy scent of fermentation. Life.
She stared at it, this golden, giving thing she held within her hands, and didn’t know if she could do something this intense in front of other people. Putting life into her body. Devouring it. Making herself part of the world again.
She bit into the bread. Closed her eyes.
It was too overwhelming to be something she enjoyed. She could only endure it. She could only feel her heartbeats tearing up her chest, like an animal scrabbling up the bank of a river that had tried to drown it. Happiness drowning out her mouth, her mind.
“Coffee?”
She gasped, dragged her eyes open, and nodded. The smell was one pleasure, the taste and temperature another, but as great was the pleasure of holding fine china, touching her lips to the delicate blue edge.
So silly and frivolous.
She stuffed more food in her mouth, trying to push down the wail rising with some force up her throat. While she ate, the maid chatted brightly, mixing English words into her French with a seeming lack of self-consciousness. Celine listened, absorbing the harmless talk the same way she had absorbed the carpet and the coffee and the tall, quiet ceilings.
“I worked here since seven years,” the maid was saying, “when I first left home. You very lucky to be guesting here. I won’t work for anyone else. Her Grace is a very good one, always generous and kind.”
She thought of the duke last night, her eyes like shards of ice, saying,You will live to regret this very much indeed.
Generous and kind? This naïve girl had no idea who she worked for. Not only was the duke not generous and kind, she had let her childhood friend Bastien go to the guillotine. She had ravished Celine, then left her to die.
“I’ll have more coffee, please,” she cut in, suddenly glutted on the maid’s happy nonsense. What had the duke said about Bastien, instead of saving him?I’m glad someone’s going to shut him up permanently.
She shivered.
The sooner she never had to think about the duke again, the better.
She had just bitten into the apricot pastry when a knock sounded on the door—No, not yet—and a moment later a fat, soberly dressed young woman walked in.
She was dressed in a man’s breeches, stockings, waistcoat, and coat. Her brass buckles shone, and her hair was pulled back neatly into a ponytail, tied with a green velvet ribbon. In the face of this self-possessed servant, Celine felt suddenly at a disadvantage, like the sweet apricot in her mouth had made her vulnerable to attack.
“I’m Miss Everett, Her Grace’s valet,” the woman said. Her French was native, but she pronounced her name in the English manner. It had the effect of a single word in a sentence written at the opposite slant to the rest. “You will accompany Her Grace to call on an acquaintance this morning, and she has asked me to see to your toilet. Has everything been to your liking?”
Making social calls? Already? That was good. That was very good. My God, the blackmail wasworking. She washed the sweetness down with coffee and said with great understatement, “Quite.”
