Page 2 of The Duke
What was she supposed to do?
She stared down at the broken ceramic. She had wanted to scale the dizzying heights of the French court. She had wanted to be feted and adored. She had wanted to drink champagne for breakfast, wearing nothing but diamonds.
She had been as great an idiot as Bastien, and with fewer excuses.
She had set her cap at a world that no longer existed.
At last, she met herself, as though for an assignation in this dark hallway. No noise to drown her out, no adoring glance to make her more beautiful than she was. Just the daughter of a quiet Protestant mother. The daughter of a sadistic clockmaker. The pieces of her never to be made whole.
“What am I supposed to do?” she whispered, her throat raw.
She thought, with a sudden, feverish yearning towards life, that there might be something in Bastien’s study she could use to save herself. He had no more use for any of it. She strode quickly down the hallway and through his bedroom, then ducked beneath the low lintel into his wood-panelled study. She pushed the door closed behind her, taking care that it made no sound. It wasn’t until she turned, her long train swishing across the floor, that she realised a stranger was sitting in the chair at Bastien’s desk.
He looked like someone of consequence—a lord, she thought with an illicit thrill—immaculately put together. He had a severe, patrician face, though he wore his hair longer than the Roman statues he otherwise resembled. Shorter at the back, his hair hung in thick, straight locks over one eye and kissed his angular cheek. Hair so pale, it was nearly white. His cravat was stuck with a diamond pin, and his coat was beautifully cut from light grey superfine wool. He was ten years older than her, or a little less.
He radiated power, and seemed unconcerned by the rudeness of sitting at another man’s private desk, as though any chair he sat in conferred to him the authority of a throne. His elbow rested on the wide, curved arm of the chair, and between his thumb and middle finger, he held a glass of brandy on which all his frowning attention was turned.
He looked up. Celine felt caught out for a long, breathless moment. His eyes were so eerily pale they could have been the pearlescent eyes of a drowned god.
The anxieties that had driven her hushed; the sense of danger hanging over her receded; all the world went snow-quiet.
“We mustn’t meet like this, My Lord,” she said flirtatiously, falling back on her craft. “An aristocrat and a whore. There is no place in this cruel world for our love. We know well enough how it will end.”
“Oh?” the lord said. The sound of his voice made her, inexplicably, shudder through her whole body. It was a voice of authority, lacking any affectation. Was she afraid of him?
“You know,” she said more cautiously. “You, dead, bleedingpoetically into the earth. Me, dead, robbed of the child you never knew I carried.”
“At least we can be sure she will grow up virtuous and pure,” the lord said, his hard lips softening, “unlike her wicked parents. That is the fate of such children, is it not?” His French was excellent but not quite native when she put it together with his English clothes and features. He risked a great deal being here, with all his wealth on show.
Her pulse picked up. Perhaps here was her solution, this powerful English lord. Perhaps her mother’s god had been listening after all.
She shifted her body to show herself off and slowly smiled. “Our daughter will be a saint, and that’s the least we can expect of her. Her reward, naturally, will be marriage to a good man.”
“Haveyouever met a good man?” he said.
“It would not be for me to marry him, if I had.”
“Ah. You are a bad woman.” An appreciative smirk, and then: “I enjoyed your secretive entrance. The door didn’t even click.”
She blushed violently, and downstairs a street organ cranked to life with an accelerating run of notes. She managed a self-deprecating laugh. “I would have paid more attention to the turns, if I’d known I had an audience.” She cast her eyes coquettishly down, then looked up at the lord through her lashes. Stared, if truth be known. She was captivated by him and didn’t know why. Perhaps itwasfear—the still, focused attention of prey.
His eyes seemed not only pale but bright, like light shining on snow. Like each passing moment was caught within their prism.
In all honesty, she felt… immoderate. She wanted to get her hands on that cool, ironic mouth and open it, plunder it. If she could just crack it open, treasure might fall out. Downstairs the music achieved pace and the “War Song for the Army of the Rhine” emerged, melodic and vulgar.
He said, “Bastien is very proud of having acquired Celine Genet, and having the funds to maintain her. That’s you, I think?”
“What makes you say so? Have you heard she’s very beautiful?”
A slight depression of the corners of his lips that wasn’t quite a smile.
She took a step closer. “Or that a man may circle her waist with his hands?”
“Rumour, surely,” he said, but his eyes were fixed, for the first time, somewhere other than her face.Got you, she thought. Men were so easy.
He said lightly, “A woman’s hands couldn’t manage it?”
She wasn’t sure why, but the inoffensive words made her pause. Uneasily, she said, “What areyoudoing in Bastien’s study?”
