Page 28 of The Duke
It maddened Lord Royston, who spun suddenly away from the immobilising cane and pulled a young woman into her arms, who had the unlucky fortune of being nearest among the spectators. “Youaren’t sorry to see me, are you?” Lord Royston said, and pressed a demanding kiss onto the girl’s unwilling mouth.
The girl couldn’t have been much older than seventeen. Her body was rigid, her hands in their embroidered gloves held out from her body, her hat knocked askew from red hair that had been prettily coiled and pinned in innocent expectation of a day out on Bond Street.
Celine was horrified. She hadn’t meant to unleash this destructive impulse.
The girl’s father was a huge, fat man and Celine wondered suddenly whether Lord Royston hadn’t picked the girl at random, but instead very much on purpose, hoping to be pummelled into the ground and spared further consciousness. If so, her hopes were disappointed. The man’s face was red, in agony, but he held himself back. He didn’t dare lay hands on a marquess in public.
Only one person present had the power to check Lord Royston.
Lord Royston grabbed for the girl’s skirt and went to put her hand under it, as though, having done this unforgivable thing in public, she must go the whole way.
“Unhand her,” the duke said, “you unspayed dog.”
When Lord Royston didn’t immediately do as she was told, the duke grabbed the back of her collar and yanked her bodily away. Freed, the young woman flew to her father.
As Lord Royston completed the unsteady turn that brought her back to the duke, the duke slapped her hard across the face, holding nothing back. Once, and then again. For all that Celine had expected the duke to relish hurting the people around her, she saw the duke took no pleasure in it. She understood suddenly it was not violence born of outrage, but of necessity. By delivering her cousin an immediate punishment before all those who had witnessed her depravity, the duke was mitigating some of the harm to the young woman’s reputation.
We grew up together, Lord Royston had said,under the total power of that woman.
Only now, too late, Celine was beginning to grasp how much she didn’t know about the Howard cousins. In the immediate, violentresponse of the older cousin to the misbehaviour of the younger, there were layers, mirrorings, echoes she didn’t understand.
It seemed to calm Lord Royston, however, as though she had found solid ground she recognised. She stumbled back and sat on Celine’s abandoned seat, looking dazed.
“Wait here,” the duke bit off. Then she went to the young woman and with a degree of courtesy Celine hadn’t known she possessed said, “Please accept my apologies. The fault for this wretched event lies entirely with my cousin. No person of sound mind and character could think badly of you for it. Should any knave do so, you may send him to me.”
The girl blinked tearfully from her father’s chest and nodded.
“See her home at once,” the duke said to the girl’s father, “and tell her mother I shall call to ask after her this evening. I will bring the direction of my solicitors, who will pay whatever compensation you ask. Now, if you would be so good as to accept the escort of two of my footmen.”
The man demurred, looking grateful and wretched.
The duke turned back. Her face was a mask of cold fury. “You,” she said, “follow me.”
Neither Celine nor Lord Royston dared utter a word as they obeyed.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A counter ran along the back of the sweet shop, behind which wooden drawers covered the wall from floor to ceiling. At intervals one of these was opened, and sweets were scooped out into crinkling paper packages. The shop clerks used a sliding ladder to reach the higher drawers. The bell over the door rang foot traffic in and out of the shop, and shoppers and clerks murmured to one another.
The bow window on the far side of the door was piled with an artful display of sweets, but within the curve of the near window was a single table, for seeing and being seen. Kate had chosen it expressly for that purpose. Had she taken Royce and Celine to the private parlour at the back of the shop, the gossips would have Celine ravished and ruined by six o’clock.
She considered the figure inelegantly sprawled over the chair opposite. Royce’s coat was half off, dragging along the floor. Her heavy lids were closed, and her mouth sagged loosely, given over to a drunken stupor. The mark on her cheek was beginning to swell and darken.
A familiar despair filled Kate.
Eleanor had died. But sometimes, what had become of Royce felt worse.
The three Howard cousins had grown up together in the Duke of Howard’s house, under their aunt’s rule. Eleanor, the heir, who had been slight and plain, and thought the mind superior to the body. Kate, the child of a disgraced younger brother, who used her more powerful body and more forceful personality to try togain an edge against Eleanor. Royce, the child of the duke’s youngest brother and the Marquess of Royston—a woman who had let Royce have very little to do with the Howards before her death when Royce was five.
Charismatic, mercurial, Aunt Anne had raised them. She had been so proud of them, her Howard girls. She had constantly pushed them to be better, often by encouraging them to compete against each other.
Royce had been a gregarious child, always laughing, always getting into scrapes. She had followed Kate around like a disciple, a highly effective lieutenant in all Kate’s undertakings, giving her the advantage of two to one.
This wreck of a woman was what was left. Gambler, coward, liar. Royce would say anything to get what she wanted. And there was nothing Kate could do to pull Royce out of her headlong rush towards self-annihilation. She had tried.
“Sit up,” she bit out, her voice so cold it burned.
Royce started, her eyes widening blearily. She rolled over and raised her middle finger at Kate. “Has Saint Richard been badmouthing me again?”
