Page 38 of The Duke
The duke, Kate’s aunt, had been cruel about it. She’d laughed at the presumption of this small, obscure woman and her sickly-looking son trying to gain some consequence through her.Not like you, she’d said, raining warm approval down on Kate.My brave, strapping Howard girls.
But her aunt was dead, and the Howard girls had come to nothing: a murderer, a wastrel, and a corpse.
Kate brought her forehead to Richard’s. They were almost exactly of a height. “No,” she said again, even more gently.
“Thenwhy?”
She turned away from him, groaning. “You can’t tell anyone else, I mean it. Swear to me you won’t.”
“I swear it,” he said, bemused.
She rubbed a hand down her face and said with a small, wretched laugh, “She’s a prostitute.”
“Shewhat?”
“Is a prostitute.”
“Christ. How— What—” The last of the fight went out of him,and he dropped into an armchair. He swore several times in a shaky voice. Then, a spark of incredulous humour returning, “Well, you’ve already sworn me to secrecy. You’d best tell me the rest of it.”
She smoked the last of her cheroot, prevaricating. When she’d smoked it to the stub, she disposed of the end and sighed. “Three years ago, I went to Paris. It was foolish, I didn’t know how bold the revolutionaries had become. She saved my life.” Saying the words, she blushed suddenly, an unpleasant sensation. She made herself continue. “She wanted a life, in return.” She spread her hands, indicating the two of them. Mayfair. London. “This life.”
Was she speaking lies, or truth? The two felt uncomfortably entwined.
“Kate, this is…” Richard shook his head and tried again, a little hoarse. “My God, aprostitute!” For a moment, they both simply absorbed the enormity of it. He didn’t question her judgement or list all the reasons it was a catastrophically bad idea, and she loved him for it. Then: “Why did you go to Paris? You didn’t tell me you went.”
“I went—”
Careful.
Even now, alone with the last real family she had left, she couldn’t let herself go. She wrestled with it, tried to overcome this worst part of herself, and failed.
“I had a friend, Bastien du Ponte,” she said at last. “I hoped to spirit him out of the country before he was guillotined. I was too late. He was already in gaol when I arrived.” It was a distasteful lie. She hadn’t tried to save him. She hadn’t even considered it.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Leave Richard alone,” Kate said in the carriage. “He can’t give you what you want.”
Celine frowned in thought. “Ratafia,” she said at last, as though it were a perfectly sensible response.
“What?”
“He brought Lady Pecke a glass of ratafia, but she didn’t drink any of it. He said she’d asked for it, but I wondered if he had manufactured a reason to speak to me. Look,” Celine said, leaning forward, animated by resolve, “I know he’s taboo. He’s the only member of your family you can stand to be around, so far as I can tell. There’s no way you want him chained to me. I just don’t quite know what to do about it. He’s interested.”
She hated hearing Celine talk like this, as though Celine knew anything about Richard—or about her. She said repressively, “I’ve taken care of it.”
Celine shrugged and turned her gaze to the window. She looked tired.
Kate considered saying nothing more—she discouraged personal conversation with Celine—but it had been bothering her that she couldn’t remember, and Celine was the only one who might. “Did you beg me to save Bastien?”
“Yes,” Celine said warily. “I did.”
“Why?”
Where before Celine had looked tired, she now looked exhausted. Like she needed to sleep for five years. “I wanted to live,” Celine said. “I thought if you took him, you might take me, too.”
The tension she had felt since speaking to Richard relaxed, unexpectedly. It helped, somehow, to hear someone else speak the unforgivable truth aloud, without shying away from it:I wanted to live. I was too desperate to care if he died.
Maybe one day, when she was old and her worldly cares had lost some of their urgency, she would be able to mourn her dead. It was strange to realise if that day came, Celine would be the only other person she knew who might also mourn Bastien.
