Page 95 of The Duke
She leapt down from the carriage before it had fully stopped in front of Westminster Palace and took the stairs two at a time. As she came to the top of the first flight, she saw a figure leaning in a corner of the landing, hands in pockets, looking up towards the Lords Chamber with an unreadable expression. The figure turned as Kate’s boots slowed—then straightened, hands releasing.
Markham.
This was no innocent servant who depended on Kate for her livelihood and was a third Kate’s weight. This time, Kate let the full violence of what she was feeling into her fist, and this time, her fist landed.
She used to fantasise about bringing the Wroth bastard out of the shadows and turning their fight into a good, clean physical contest. She had imagined punching Markham would be as brutal to her as it was to Markham, like punching granite. She had looked forward to it.
The reality was nothing like that. Markham saw her coming but seemed totally unprepared for the assault. Markham’s body made no resistance and her single eye widened in a curiously vulnerable expression, as though until the very moment the punch landed, she hadn’t thought Kate would hit her.
Kate grasped Markham’s collars, and the bastard swayed in her grip. Blood poured from her nose.
“Where is she?” Kate roared, shaking her. “What did you do to her, you worthless bastard?”
For one more moment the eye was fixed on her with dazed and naked shock, and then all at once Markham seemed to rouse andcome back to herself. The eye thinned into a look of pure loathing. Markham spat blood into her face, pushing her off.
She stumbled back a few paces, nearly tripping onto the steps. Shaw caught her elbow.
“You can take it out on me all you like,” Markham rasped, “it won’t change the fact that she’s the one who betrayed you, not me. I guess it really fucking hurt.” She gave a slow smile that smeared blood across her teeth.
Kate shook Shaw off.Betrayed you. She’s the one who—
“My father,” Markham said, “wanted to wait for you, before he read the letter aloud to the lords. I suppose he wants to see the look on your face.” Another bloody smile. “Yes, just like that.”
She’s the one who…She tried to recall Celine accepting her proposal and couldn’t.She’s the one who betrayed you.
“Tell me what you have done to her,” Kate said, “or I swear I will dedicate the rest of my life to making you suffer.”
“Only the rest of it?” Markham asked negligently. Then she laughed. “My God, it’s almost too good. You really have no idea what’s happened! You wrote a letter, Kate, to your friend Bastien du Ponte. It was treason, and it killed your family.”
She felt as if all her skin constricted at once. Celine had given Lord Wroththe letter?
“This morning your little fraud, Miss Celine Genet, had it sent over to”—a brief, frustrated glance up the stairs—“to my father. She was only too happy to work with us against you. I will hear the contents soon, too. He has promised to give it to me when he’s done.”
The letter. Of course it had been the letter. That calamity would follow what had happened last night was inevitable. Why hadn’t she been ready for it?
Celine had given the letter to Lord Wroth…
Celine had betrayed her in the most brutal, effective way possible. Of course. Ofcourse. It was no more than what she had always known would follow from the kind of intimacy she and Celine had shared. In a way, itwasintimacy, as she understood it.
Such betrayals, such setbacks she had experienced in her life—they were the losses that had defined her. Yet this time, neither icy distance nor hatred would come to her aid. She had no protection against the devastation she felt. She could only love Celine.
It’s going to hurt a lot more than that, Celine had promised her the night she turned up in London.
Kate had thought everything had changed since then. She had thought anger and hatred had fallen away. It was breathtaking. Only someone of Celine’s calibre could have planned out such a careful revenge and would have the nerve to see it through.
And nothing had made Celine’s revenge sweeter, she was sure, than her private admissions of love. She thought of herself begging Celine for mercy at the ball; she thought of herself, head on a soft pillow, spilling every sordid detail of her childhood. She took out her handkerchief and wiped her face clean.
“What does she mean, treason?” Shaw asked urgently from her elbow. “Duke?”
“Just what it sounds like,” Kate said, without inflection.
The colour left Shaw’s face. “We need to go now,” he said. “The debate in Lords will already have started. If there’s anything you can do to stop what is about to happen—do it.”
And so, she went to face the punishment Celine had deemed fit.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Shaw, entering the Painted Chamber at her heels, muttered, “Bloody hell.”
