Page 29 of The Duke
She felt a surge of irritation. This was Royce’s favourite grindstone, and it was wildly misguided. “What could he even say, at this point?” She pressed her lips together, determined to leave it there. But suddenly she couldn’t leave it be, it was imperative she address it. “Furthermore, he’s done nothing but defend you to me, and promote the idea of reconciliation. Just as he always has, even when you spat on him in public.”
“He’s a cheat and a liar.”
Richard was the most painfully honest person of Kate’s acquaintance. As Royce would know if she put her jealousy aside for one minute in his company. For a time, Kate had hoped Royce and Richard would become friends, but that time had long since passed.
“Said the cheat and the liar. Sit up.”
Royce glared at her. Then, subtly, spread her knees wider, threwher head back, lips parting suggestively. Her voice slurring only a bit, she said, “Is this what you wanted? Would you have kept me with you instead of sending me off to Switzerland if I’d just offered? I would’ve been such a good little girl for you, Kate.”
She heard Celine’s grunt of distress even as her own flesh violently recoiled from the suggestion. But that was what Royce wanted. A reaction. Any reaction. The worst reaction.
As though Royce hadn’t spoken, she said, “What did you want? Money?”
Royce slumped back and said belligerently, “Of course. I need a hundred and thirty thousand.”
A muffled gasp from Celine. Kate was not even remotely surprised.
“No,” she said. “Anything else?”
“They’ll kill me this time, you heartless bitch!”
“Good. One less thing I have to worry about. Now drink your coffee, pay your bill, and sleep it off somewhere no one can step on you by accident.”
Royce looked up at her, black eyes full of pure hatred. Nothing left of the clever, loving little girl Royce had been. Nothing but rage and ruin.
This was what happened to the people Kate loved.
This was what happened when you broke the world.
She leaned forward to pour coffee into Royce’s cup, battening down the powerful feelings. She said again, “Drink.”
Royce made a great show of standing, then ambled over to Celine, who sat very still in the seat between them. Royce put one hand lazily around the back of Celine’s neck.
Kate tensed, but didn’t dare move.
In that very unusual French Royce spoke—a rough dialect Kate couldn’t always understand—she said to Celine, “I’m sure it would have worked if I’d done it your way. It was sweet of you to try.”
And then she was gone.
The visceral sense of threat Kate experienced when Royce came near her eased, as though a great dark bird had been perched onher back, its weight nearly crushing her into the ground, its cruel talons scoring her bones as they found purchase—and with a heaving, twinned flap, it had departed.
Leaving only her and Celine.The Bond Street roll.Of course.
Celine looked down into her gloved hands. Her expression was turned inward, serious and thoughtful.
“You invited her?” Kate said in a terrible voice. “I told you to stay away from her.”
Celine’s expression grew unhappy. She glanced up at Kate, then away. “I got it wrong. I wasn’t listening to what she was telling me.” She took a deep breath. “I think Lord Royston has been drinking since she left your house last night. She told me being there, in that house, felt like dying.”
Like dying.
She had intended to give Celine the thorough scolding she deserved for interfering in things she didn’t understand, but the words knocked her off course.
She hadn’t realised… She hadn’t thought Royce felt that way. She’d sent Royce away—as far as she’d dared, all the way to Switzerland. Royce hadn’t had to see what was left. She hadn’t had to watch the charred ruin of their childhood home be picked apart and carted off until nothing was left. She hadn’t seen the bodies come out.
She’d thought…
Royce had made the most of being in Europe. She’d had an adolescence free of the responsibilities that had fallen to Kate; she’d lost herself in a hedonistic exploration of the continent.
