Page 82 of The Duke
She grasped Celine’s upper arm. “Celine—”
Celine twirled away from her, face raised and laughing, and said, “Oh, it takes my breath away!”
She looked up and saw they had crossed into the entrance hall, preceded by two footmen and Lord Seaton’s obsequious butler. Above them, four chandeliers hung, with easily two hundred candles apiece. Mirrors twice as tall as Kate lined the walls, making it feel as though they’d stepped inside one of Brewster’s kaleidoscopes.
Later, the hall would become so full it would take two hours or more to climb the double staircase at the other end of the room and be received. The line would quickly extend out into the driveway and annoyed yells would be heard as drivers attempted to manoeuvre through the growing crowd. But for now, it was an empty, gleaming space, pregnant with possibility.
Celine refused to hear her. And what was it she wished to say with such urgency, anyway?
Through a door at the far end, a man entered the hall. Kate’s heart banged uneasily, and her right hand clenched into a fist. Unconsciously, she stepped in front of Celine. It was Lord Burnley. The moment had come to do as she had promised, and let Celine go.
Every instinct screamed at her to take Celine’s hand in hers andrun.
But her instincts were all towards violence and domination and jealous possessiveness. That wasn’t love. Love was paying attention to what would make Celine happy, and doing it. No matter how impossible.
Lord Burnley walked towards them with easy confidence—damn him,damnhim—and smiled perhaps a little more broadly than was polite. He was blushing, an understandable response to Celine’s beauty. “My dear,” he said, “how wonderful to see you again. How wonderful.”
Flowers slithered over Kate’s shoe as Celine went to Lord Burnley and took his hand in greeting. Companionably, the couple walked ahead. In contrast to the loaded silence in the carriage, conversation seeming to spring effortlessly between them—the natural, anxious enquiries after her health on his part, the warm assurances on hers—and it was done.
Without a last look, without a last word, Kate had given Celine away. She knew she had to. It was what she had come here to do, and yet she wondered for the first time whether she had paid attention to any of the right things.
LORD SEATON HADnever been in favour of the match with Burnley, and so it was at Kate’s own insistence that Burnley and his parents had joined them for dinner. She was a bloody fool.
Burnley sat beside Celine, who had the place of honour near the head of the table. The pair never seemed at a loss, never running out of something to say. The Peckes sat across from them and showed Celine every consideration; it was easy to see what Celine’s family life would be like. Even the shy cousin, Miss Finemore, had her place in the conversation. Burnley made Celine laugh and Kate had some difficulty not standing up and throwing her glass across the room.
Sothiswas to be her future? Sitting down the table from Celine Farnsworth-Baxter, Lady Burnley, unable to hear her conversation or engage her attention?
She was so enraged by the whole thing, it wasn’t until someone addressed her that she became aware the seat beside her had been empty till now.
“Sorry I’m late,” Lord Brooke said, then sat. “I had to get a blasted hackney, and my links boy absconded.”
Lord Brooke was a statuesque woman, as tall and broad as Kate, but with an entirely feminine roundness. She had flawless skin, dark hair, and an impressive beauty mark above the left-hand corner of her lips.
She was wearing a ball gown she must have found in a long-abandoned room of her London house. The stiff corset gave her an impressive single bosom, and the skirts fell over hoops.
“It’s the Ten Thousand Lights, Brooke,” Kate said dryly. “You couldn’t’ve disbursed funds for a dress?”
At school Brooke had once tried, after a late-night dunking in the Thames, to ally herself with Kate because of their similar circumstances. The fifteen-year-old Kate had made it clear she allied herself with no one.
“Fuck off, Howard,” Brooke said. She took a large gulp of wine and tucked into her dinner.
Kate had the sudden, unwelcome thought that Brooke had been in danger of losing everything, too, because of the great enmity between the Howards and the Wroths. Kate hadn’t spared a thought for her, or any of the other female lords, Lord Seaton least of all. She looked around the table, and for the first time really took in who else had been invited to dinner. Besides her own party and the Peckes’, three female lords were present: Lord Seaton’s old crony Lord Luxcombe, Lord Isley, and Lord Brooke.
It dawned on her that Lord Seaton hadn’t been swayed to their side by Celine’s considerable charm alone. By making Celine her guest of honour—and by inviting these lords to dinner—Lord Seaton was sending Lord Wroth a message.
The effrontery of his Inheritance Bill would not be allowed to stand.
AS THE GUESTof honour, Celine stood on the receiving line with Lord Seaton, and as Celine’s guardian, Kate did as well. After they were married, it would fall to Burnley to receive guests with Celine, but for now, Kate superseded him, and she felt no small pleasure in seeing the back of Celine’s future husband, who had gone in to find his mother a seat by the fire.
Down in the entrance hall, the gleaming silence of their arrival had long since been banished. It was a comprehensive squeeze, moving very slowly towards the top of the stairs. The noise rose and fell with a roar like the ocean, and candles glittered in the depths of the huge mirrors, where other crowds, just as large, were gathered.
Celine never flagged or faltered. In fact, Kate thought with no small desperation, had there been a task devised specifically to show Celine off, this was it.
Her fine instinct for people allowed her to address each with personal interest. Her charm and energy made her infinitely likeable. Each guest was made to feel the night wouldn’t have been quite complete without them, and so dazed were they by having Celine’s full attention for those few minutes, none greeted Kate afterward with the usual fear and awe.
It was difficult not to feel she and Celine were receiving guests together as more than ward and guardian. It was made even more difficult by the way Everett had dressed them both. Kate knew they were a pair so perfectly matched, so perfectly dressed, they must almost look like fairy folk who had emerged from the mirror-assemblies downstairs, come in alien splendour to preside over the evening. Celine’s beauty would be the gold standard after tonight, the unattainable goal of every young woman here.
But she knew Celine in a way no one else did. She knew where Celine had been born, what she had come from, what difficulties she had endured and overcome. She knew Celine was never just one thing—that she was incredibly kind and could also be merciless, playful, and serious, interesting in a way other people weren’t.
