Page 17 of The Duke
Miss Everett’s eyes warmed a little, as though she had heard more than Celine intended. “I’ve ordered a bath brought up. It’ll be here momentarily.”
Even as she spoke, the door opened and a full-sized bath came through on the shoulders of two footmen. Celine’s skin felt suddenly parched. Maids trooped in behind and poured water, steaming and fragrant, from copper pails they carried in pairs.
When they had left again, Miss Everett said, “Adele will perform the duties of a lady’s maid for you while you stay under the duke’s roof.”
The red-haired maid curtseyed. She was pretty, with a stylish, sophisticated air that set her apart from the other maids—until she turned her mud-brown eyes on the object of her curiosity or opened her mouth to speak.
“Adele speaks French, though may I suggest, Miss Genet, that you endeavour to improve your English as soon as may be.”
“I am pleasure to help you learn, miss,” Adele said, beaming. Her smile further marred the picture of sophistication, as she was missing one of her canine teeth.
The offer, made with such straightforward kindness, moved Celine. Her English was already quite good. In her early days as a courtesan, her bread-and-butter had been young English gentlemen making their grand tour of the Continent. But Adele couldn’t know that. She reached out and clasped the maid’s hands.
“My sweet Adele,” she said, and gave the girl an impromptu kiss on the back of each hand. Adele’s eyebrows rose nearly all the way to her hairline. Celine winked and switched to English. “I am the excellent student.”
The bath was heaven.
She sank all the way down so the scalding water rose above her breasts, marking a crisp line on her skin below which she turned strawberry-pink. Adele scrubbed her hands and feet, vigorous and thorough. She scrubbed off the harbour and the ship, the road out of Paris, the garret, the rat droppings, the effluvium from Mathilde’s body. She talked the whole time, which helped keep Celine’s mind off the story her body was telling.
Miss Everett, who had been watching with the strict attention of a convent school nun, came forward and inspected Celine’s fingers one by one. “Scrub her again,” she said.
Afterwards, Adele sat Celine forward and methodically washed every inch of her hair, scrubbing her scalp last of all with blunt fingertips. She lathered in sweet-smelling soap, then rinsed it out with fresh water that rushed over Celine, surrounding her, warm and fragrant.
She took a visceral joy in feeling clean. When was the last time she’d really beenclean?
It was Mathilde who used to bully her, Louise, and Marie into carrying pails of water up the five flights of stairs to their garret room to wash. Bodies first, clothes after. Mathilde who resentedand chastised them because they stank worse than a wet dog, and if they didn’t keep clean, disease would come.
Mathilde, who had died.
“Bring her to the dressing room,” Miss Everett said, then disappeared through a door by the fireplace, which Celine had assumed was a closet.
“Dressing room?” she echoed, startled. It was enough to scatter the dark thoughts that had been circling. She had adressing room?
CHAPTER SEVEN
Surely three hours had been more than enough time to make the conniving wretch presentable?
Kate paced the entrance hall. It was a large, classical space, walls and pillars built from marble of a golden hue. The mahogany staircase, wrapping around two sides, was the only thing that saved its elegance from feeling cold.
Finally, a sound alerted her to activity at the top of the staircase, and she turned, knocking her cane impatiently on the stone floor. “In the future, madam, you will not keep me”—she clapped eyes on the woman at the top of the stairs—“waiting.”
Her mouth fell open. A woman came slowly down the stairs, dressed in the first stare of fashion. She was a vision, a fashion plate come to life. She was, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman Kate had ever seen. The white dress was set off with hints of yellow in shoes and gloves, and wrapped across the shoulders and chest was a deep bronze cloak whose ends fluttered among the skirts. Her hands rested inside a large white swansdown muff.
It had the illogicality of a dream: What was this angel doing in Kate’s house? Who had let her in? It was hard to mind when Kate’s whole body pulsed with amazed arousal. Every gorgeous detail was something new she wanted to touch or lick.
The woman’s black hair curled in tender wisps about her face, beneath the brim of a straw bonnet that looked, as she turned the corner of the stairs and came face-on, like the broad halo of a saint. For jewellery, she wore pearl-drop earrings and a simple matching necklace. Her face was delicate; Kate would feel the bone structureif she cupped it in her hands. The woman’s eyebrows were neat, her eyes scrupulously devoid of paint. In their nakedness, those eyes were infinitely bewitching. Large and deep, darkly lashed. They swept up to Kate, then away, and the woman smiled.
It was this movement of the lips that at last oriented Kate in reality. She recognised the mouth. The impossible curve of the upper lip, larger than the lower, which no makeup could neutralise.
It was Celine.Celine.But even as she became certain of this fact, she also couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t reconcile this exquisite, sophisticated beauty with the desperate woman who’d blackmailed her with such perseverance last night. She couldn’t even reconcile her with the eager young woman in Paris.
“Will she do, Your Grace?”
Kate started and looked up. Everett had descended behind Celine, and she hadn’t had a clue. She had neither seen nor heard her valet. Everett was too professional to smirk, but her desire to do so was palpable.
Kate’s eyes returned to Celine of their own accord.
Had she on some level imagined she would be taking the woman in the cheap, torn dress to call on Lady Pecke, the ostrich feather waving sadly from her hair?
