Page 52 of The Duke
But what came, when Lord Seaton was at last able to speak, was not the explosion everyone was clearly dreading. With her gaze full of cold intelligence, she said, “Tell me, does Richard Howard stand to inherit the dukedom?”
It was so unexpected, Celine lost her footing for a moment.Richard?What didRichardhave to do with anything?
And then her brain caught up, and everything shifted awfully. If Lord Seaton hadn’t heard about the bill, she’d had no reason to invite Celine to the library. And if she hadn’t invited Celine to the library, she shouldn’t have been able to guess who Celine was. Unless someone had already brought Celine to her attention. Young. Short. French. Perhaps Richard had even called her beautiful.
Certainly, he had called her a whore. He had told Lord Seaton who and what she was.
And of course,Richardhad invited Celine to the library, to approach Lord Seaton uninvited and be publicly humiliated.
But all was not lost, if she could just keep her head. Richard had underestimated Lord Seaton’s intelligence, and by interfering he had given himself away.
She pulled herself together by force, keeping the tremble from her voice. “Yes, Mr. Howard would inherit.”
“I disapprove of Kate Howard in the strongest terms,” Lord Seaton said.
Celine said carefully, “A fact of which Mr. Howard is aware.”
This gave rise to a more thoughtful pause as Lord Seaton regarded her.
She hadn’t been publicly humiliated—yet. Instead, it seemed she had caught Lord Seaton’s interest. Perhaps, in her own way, Lord Seaton was even grateful. No one else had dared tell her what Lord Wroth had set in motion, despite the awful implications to her own title. She would have heard about it soon enough—but not before she had laid the groundwork for her own downfall.
That, too, Lord Seaton had clearly now grasped.
“Miss Genet,” the grand matriarch said at last—an imperious proclamation that was heard throughout the silent reading room, “you will be so good as to take tea with me.”
Then she turned with as much gravity and import as a ship changing course on the high seas. The reading room erupted into sounds of furious amazement. What was happening? Was Lord Seaton really taking tea with a debutante? A debutante nobody knew, who had dared to approach herwithout an introduction?
When the tea arrived, Celine did the honours. With great sweetness she enquired after Lord Seaton’s preference for sugar and cream, called the footman back to have the curtain adjusted, and made flattering observations about London.
Lord Seaton’s shrewd, haughty gaze acquired an amused texture that suggested she knew she was being indulged but was enjoying it anyway. Celine was satisfied to see the last signs of Lord Seaton’s extreme agitation ease away.
“Now,” she said, smiling, “you have heard quite enough from me. My Lord, may I suppose you visited my home country in your youth? I can barely remember France as it was in more peaceful times. Isn’t that sad? I long to hear about grapes growing fat in the undisturbed sunshine.”
She lifted her cup and took a small sip.
“Yes,” Lord Seaton said in her grand, stiff tones, “my mother’s family came over from France. Oh, many generations ago, but we made a habit of travelling back. We still own a large estate on the Mediterranean coast, near Cassis.”
“There, I knew it must be so!” Celine exclaimed. “I have never been to the Azure Coast. You must describe it to me—every detail.”
A footman arrived with the sweetmeats Lord Seaton had wanted fetched from Fortnum and Mason—candied ginger, almonds, and macarons—and Celine settled in to listen to the old woman’s reminiscences. Running from waves at the beach as a child. Filling baskets of crabs. The herbs growing so hot in summer that when the scullery maids picked them the air would seem to turn green. Her first taste of wine, sitting on her favourite aunt’s lap. She had spat it out, right onto her aunt’s pristine skirts, and her aunt had laughed and laughed till Lord Seaton thought she might tumble off her lap and onto the floor.
Celine had in fact grown up very near Cassis, and it was beyond strange to listen to these stories.
She laughed and exclaimed, showing nothing of the way each anecdote landed against the door to that long-ago place. How the girl in the cupboard shivered and shied away from discovery.
A number of older women—they weren’t the first—came over for an introduction to the delightful young Miss Genet. After they’d gone, Celine sent for more tea.
Lord Seaton paused and stared into her empty cup. Footmen had begun drawing the curtains against the oncoming evening and lighting lamps. Many of the people who had been their first audience had left, and new library patrons had since arrived, gawping anew at the debutante taking tea with the grand matron.
Lord Seaton placed her cup down and said, “My dear, you have indulged me long enough. I require an accounting, and there is no more putting it off.”
Behind Lord Seaton, a young woman who had been idly looking down into the street started, then called to her friends, who crowded round the window with her, half inside the curtains, giggling.
“You deftly suggested earlier,” the lord went on, “that what Mr. Howard told me was nothing but a malicious lie told for his own benefit. While I applaud your quick wit, I don’t believe you.”
Well, she had known Lord Seaton was clever.
“If you are among us under the false pretences he suggested, you must tell me now. Who are you really?”
