Page 79 of The Duke
At the library, she and Louise swapped hats and cloaks, much to Louise’s delight. Louise wouldn’t be returning to Howard House with her; the young Frenchwoman would prove entirely unsatisfactory as a lady’s maid. (This much, at least, was true.) She would find Louise lodgings this afternoon and pay for it with the generous allowance Kate gave her. What other choice did she have? She had no money of her own. But for now, she left Louise dozing in a shaft of sunlight and made her way to Wroth House.
She approached the pair of footmen standing to attention before the spiked iron gate. She was expected. One of the footmen showed her through.
Inside the passage it was cold, untouched by the warm spring weather. The footman called a greeting through a low doorway halfway along, and as Celine passed, she caught a glimpse of two rough-looking men playing cards in a small room where a fire burned in the hearth.
The passageway opened suddenly into a grassy courtyard, surrounded on every side by more of the utilitarian stone walls and towers of Wroth House.
“This way, miss,” the footman murmured, tripping up a set of smooth, worn steps and ducking through a doorway. Celine found herself in a whitewashed hall with ceilings so high a tree couldhave comfortably grown inside. Rich tapestries covered two of the walls, and the immaculate flagstone floors were carpeted. Despite these furnishings, it was so cold Celine could see her breath; a deep hearth, where three whole deer would once have been roasted side-by-side, was empty. She had the uncanny feeling she’d gone six hundred years back in time.
She passed quickly through the hall on the heels of the footman into a much smaller parlour. For furniture, it had only a desk and one chair. The narrow window—at least six feet deep—had no glass.
At the desk, looking brutish and piratical and somehow even more frightening in the light of day, sat Markham. She looked up and dismissed the footman.
There was nowhere for Celine to sit.
“You got my message,” Markham said.
Celine had forgotten—or memory had blunted—the painful rasp of Markham’s voice.
“I did. You wanted my thanks? You have them, without reserve. Thank you for finding Louise alive.”
A small, disconcerted silence followed, then Markham’s muscular mouth pursed. “I neither want nor require your thanks.”
Celine shrugged. She was grateful.
“Miss Genet, I must be sure you understand fully the danger you are in. I not only know the truth about your past—a past that would mortify the society upon which you have forced yourself—I have brought back a witness to prove it, this friend of yours. In Paris I also obtained more than twenty notarised statements from people who knew you, and knew of or witnessed your trade.”
“That wasn’t necessary. I have no intention of disavowing Louise, or somehow getting rid of her.”
She had been surprised to discover in herself that she wouldn’t pay that price—not for the duke’s future, and not for her own. Louise had been sent to her not as a miracle, but as a warning. But still, Louise had been sent to her.
Markham raised a sceptical brow, as good as to sayI won’t take your word for it.
“What about Lord Seaton?” she asked. The shield she had won for herself. The grand matron of society, who had claimed Celine as her own.
“Don’t hold out any hope from that quarter. If I expose the truth about your past, Lord Seaton will feel the consequences. She lied for you, and perpetrated your sins against society.”
“I see.” She was quiet for a moment, absorbing the confirmation of all that she had feared. “Then what is it you want?”
She felt a ghastly echo, a remembrance of the duke saying those very words to her, not so long ago. There had always been other ways for the fateful echoes and repetitions between her and the duke to play out. Some of those ways ended very badly indeed.
Markham leaned forward on her elbows, her gold rings flashing, her single eye flaring with interest. The proceedings until now, Celine saw, had been delivered with an almost bored pragmatism. Threats and blackmail, all in a day’s work.
This—what Markham wanted from her in return—was different. It was personal.
“The hold you have over the duke is something devastating. She wouldn’t have launched you on society for anything less.”
She had known it was coming, but still her heart sank. It all came back to that bloody letter.
Markham rasped, “I want it.”
Celine turned away and wandered aimlessly to the window, knowing her choices were very limited and none of them good.
“What is the nature of your hold on the duke?” Markham asked, the quivering interest even more pronounced. Here was the bloodhound running down its mark. “What did you discover? It was to do with a French lieutenant, wasn’t it, and her aunt’s act of treason?”
Celine hadn’t forgotten that behind the bloodhound was its master, holding the leash. This was but a weaker reflection of the Earl of Wroth’s unhealthy interest in the duke.
Hedging, she said, “It’s only a letter.”
