Page 10 of The Duke
“Where is he?” She threw the question over her shoulder as she divested herself of coat, hat, and gloves. “The library?” If Mr. Murray had been able to make copies of everything, she would go to her solicitors directly after speaking with him.
“He, Your Grace?”
She stopped and turned. Mr. Hill was tall and stooped, with hanging cheeks, like a candle long out of the box, melted with use.
“My guest isn’t a gentleman,” she said, disappointed.
He blinked, then gravely bowed his head. “Forgive the misunderstanding, Your Grace. No. She is a young woman, the daughter of your late friend, Mr. Robert Jennet.”
“Who?” She was irritated now, having come home for nothing. Mr. Hill was usually a much better judge of what did and didn’t require her personal attention. “I know no one by that name. She’s a confidence artist or an idiot, man, get rid of her!”
Mr. Hill looked concerned. “Indeed, I thought the same at first. And the young woman herself, if you’ll forgive me, looks rather… vulgar. I mistook her for a woman of the night, and sent her packing. But she insisted again that her father had been a very good friend to you and produced your ring as evidence, which I recognised at once. The gold ring with the square-cut sapphire, Your Grace, which your most noble aunt gifted you at your christening.”
Kate, who had already dismissed the unwelcome visitor as a charlatan, was pulled violently to attention. She had no difficulty remembering on whose finger she had last seen her sapphire ring.
“Did you say her father’s name was Jennet?”Genet.
“I did, Your Grace.”
No, be sensible. It was impossible. It couldn’t be her, here, in London. There wasn’t a chance that woman had kept Kate’s ring all these years, with Paris in such upheaval. She would have long since sold it.
Somehow, the ring had found its way back to England and intothe hands of a lowlife schemer. Kate would personally retrieve it, then see the wretch whipped for impertinence. She began to warm to the idea.
“Where is she?”
“In the study, Your Grace. It seemed the most discreet choice.”
“Good man.”
As she made her way upstairs, the ring preoccupied her. It was so long now since she’d given it away, she couldn’t think what had motivated her to do so. She had certainly regretted it since. She shook her head, marvelling at the vagaries that had brought it back into her possession.
She pushed open the study door. A woman stood inside. She turned.
Celine Genet had such presence that one forgot she wasn’t very tall. Her black hair was messily pinned, with two depleted feathers waving from its mass. She wore not travelling clothes but a cheap evening gown with a plunging neckline that almost distracted the eye from the dirty hem and the torn lace at her breast. Almost.
She ran a finger along her lip, bringing Kate’s reluctant gaze to her face. A wanton, mocking mouth. Heavy-lidded green eyes blazing with hatred. Upon the finger at her lip was Kate’s ring, sapphire, set in gold.
“Well met, my love,” Celine said, and smiled.
CHAPTER FOUR
Celine hadn’t planned to ever see the duke again, but over a span of years, her choices had inexorably whittled down to just two: the duke, or death. She had swallowed her pride in the end and chosen to live.
It was even more unpleasant than she had anticipated.
The duke strode into the room, larger than Celine remembered and almost humming with vitality. Everything about her was a shock. Her eyes. Her hair. The muscled, elegant way she moved. Indefinably, she had matured in the intervening years.
The moment she recognised Celine, her whole body stilled and her eyes flared bright with emotion.
Celine knew better than to expect anything from the duke, and yet, hatefully, her heart leapt in response. She smothered the feeling even as the duke’s eyes cooled, and the duke’s mouth hardened with distaste. She looked at Celine as at a stranger. No, worse—as at a tramp come intolerably into her home.
“I assume you’re here for money,” the duke said in French, without greeting. “There are lists you can enrol in. I’ll see your name is added without undue delay. I believe the going rate is about a shilling a day, which is more than you’d earn sweeping out fireplaces.”
Searing contempt wiped Celine’s heart clean. Of course the duke thought she had come begging. As if she were stupid enough to throw herself on the duke’s mercy a second time.
“In a way, I am here for money,” she said, “but it’s going to hurt a lot more than that.”
The duke frowned, not understanding. She couldn’t conceive of someone so far beneath her being able to hurt her.
