Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
"Ineed your help with something."
Peggy turned from the window where she had been arranging the curtain.
She looked at Theodore. Her eyes widened.
Theodore adjusted his cuffs, his reflection in the hallway mirror as cold and polished as a marble bust. He had stayed up all night thinking.
He had to do something. The rumors regarding Emily were gaining a jagged edge that could draw blood if left unchecked.
“My help, Your Grace?” Peggy asked, with her eyes still very much widened.
. "I have heard a great deal about your particular set of skills,” Theodore explained. “They say that if a secret exists in London, you’ve heard it."
Peggy’s mouth opened slightly, a flush creeping up her neck. "Your Grace, I... I wouldn't call it gossip."
"I would," Theodore said. "I mean it as a compliment.
There is a rumor about the Duchess. I imagine you have heard it.
This particular one suggests that Frederick is not my ward but the Duchess's own child from before our marriage.
" He said it plainly, without any drama around it.
"It is false. You know it is false. I know it is false.
The people saying it do not know what Frederick actually is, and I intend to change that. "
Peggy’s eyes went wide, her pupils dilating until they were nearly all black. She let out a small, strangled gasp, her hand flying to her throat.
Theodore had thought about this. He had thought about it for several days, since the ball. He had considered his options with the thoroughness he brought to anything that required a solution.
His first instinct had been to handle it the way he handled most threats to things that mattered to him, which was directly, loudly, and with the full weight of his name and his connections brought to bear on it until the thing in question simply ceased to exist. He had contacts in the important drawing rooms in London.
He had favors owed to him by people whose opinions shaped the ton's collective understanding of events.
He could, if he chose to, make the rumor disappear with a few well-placed conversations, and it would be gone within a fortnight, and nobody would be able to say exactly how.
But that approach had a cost. It drew attention to the thing it was trying to extinguish. People noticed when powerful men moved to silence something. They asked why, and the asking was sometimes more damaging than the original rumor itself.
The best way to kill a rumor, he had concluded, was not to silence it but to replace it. To give people something else to say. Something true. Something that left no room for the other version because the other version had nowhere left to stand.
For that, he needed someone who understood how information moved through a household and out into the wider world.
“What do you want me to do, Your Grace?” Peggy asked quietly, instinctively scanning the hallway.
"I want you to tell the truth,” he said and straightened his back.
“Frederick Cluett is the son of Anne Pierce and Thomas Cluett.
Anne Pierce was the Duchess's sister. She eloped with Thomas Cluett eight years ago and was disowned by the Pierce family for it.
She died earlier this year. Her husband died too.
The Duchess took Frederick in because he was her nephew and had no one else.
That is the whole of it. There is nothing scandalous in it.
There is nothing hidden in it. It is simply the story of a woman taking care of her sister's child because her sister cannot. "
Peggy was very still.
"That story," Theodore said. "It is considerably more interesting than the one currently circulating.
It is also true, which gives it a durability that the other version does not have.
" He looked at her directly. "I need it told. I need it to spread as though it were a secret that no one else should know. That way, people will believe it to be true. Because it would sound like gossip.”
Peggy looked at him, her fingers twisting nervously in the fabric of her apron.
"Your Grace," she began, her voice small and wavering.
"I will do as you ask, of course. But...
are you quite sure? People will still be talking.
They will talk about the Duchess, and they will certainly talk about you. "
"I know that," Theodore said.
"It may not stop entirely," Peggy said. "The talk."
"I am not trying to stop people talking," Theodore said.
"People will always talk. I have never lost a single night of sleep over what people say about me, and I do not intend to start.
What I want is for them to be talking about the truth.
That is all. If they are going to discuss my wife and my household, then they are going to do it with accurate information.
" He paused. " A woman who corresponded in secret with a sister her family had disowned.
Who went and found that sister's child when there was nobody else to go.
Who brought him here and fought for him?
" He looked at the window. "That is not a scandal.
That is the kind of story people want to tell.
Give them that version, and they will not want the other one anymore because the other one is simply less interesting. "
Peggy smiled slowly as her head lowered. "I understand, Your Grace," Peggy said. "I shall make sure the story travels through the servants' hall and into the ears of every lady’s maid in Mayfair. I’ll be delighted to do it for the Duchess."
"Good," Theodore said.
"Will there be anything else, Your Grace?"
"No," he said. "That is all."
She curtsied. "Your Grace," she said quietly, and turned to walk away.
Theodore made his way down the hall. From the drawing room down the corridor, he could hear the first sounds of arrival.
Voices. The particular cadence of Christopher saying something that made Rose laugh.
The higher sound of children being redirected from somewhere they had decided to go. The party is assembling itself.
The gathering had come about simply enough.
Alistair had written the week before to say that he and Yvette were in the county, that Christopher and Rose were expected from Thornwall by Friday, and that it seemed a waste for four people who were already this close to Carrowell not to spend an evening together.
Theodore had agreed immediately. It was a small thing, drinks and dinner and the easy company of people who had known each other long enough to require no performance from anyone, and he had thought, when he arranged it, that it would do Emily good.
She had been at Carrowell for weeks now and had spent most of them learning the estate, managing the household, and taking care of Frederick.
Yvette and Rose were her friends, proper friends, the kind she did not have to compose herself for, and he had thought she deserved an evening of that.
As he continued down the hall, his thoughts involuntarily drifted back to that night in the library.
For the past five days, he had been a ghost in his own home, carefully orchestrating his schedule to ensure he was never left alone with his wife.
It was a tactical retreat, cowardly, perhaps, but necessary.
Thinking about it now sent a sharp, involuntary shiver down his spine.
He could still feel the phantom heat of her fingertip tracing his lower lip, the way her silk robe had shimmered in the amber candlelight, and the terrifying softness of her palm against his cheek.
He was a man who had navigated the most treacherous salons in Europe; he was used to the calculated flirtations of the ton and the heavy-lidded attention of seasoned socialites.
Such things should not have moved him. They certainly shouldn't have left him feeling entirely paralyzed, suspended in the palm of her hand.
In that moment in the library, he had felt a catastrophic loss of control. He, who prided himself on being the architect of every situation, had found himself utterly undone by a woman he had married as a matter of necessity. The realization was as addictive as it was dangerous.
He had spent the last week gathering the scattered pieces of his composure, convincing himself that the intimacy had been a byproduct of the late hour and the shared stress of the rumors.
He needed to be the Duke; he needed to be the strategist who could kill a scandal with a whisper.
He could not be a man who lost his breath every time a specific woman entered the room.
Stepping out into the east hallway, he adjusted his cuffs one last time, steeling himself.
He would have to face her tonight, amidst the glitter and the guests, and he would have to do it without letting anyone, especially Emily, see that he was still trembling from a touch that had happened half a week ago.
He heard Frederick before he saw him.
The boy came through the drawing room door at a speed that suggested he had been watching for Theodore's arrival and had been waiting.
He covered the distance between them in approximately four steps, and Theodore caught him without thinking, the way he had been catching him for weeks now, and held him against his side.
"You are here," Frederick said, with satisfied certainty.
"I am here," Theodore agreed. "Are you having a good time?"
Frederick pulled back slightly to look at him. "There are children," he said.
"I had heard there might be."
"Two of them," Frederick said. "A boy and a girl. The boy is called Edmund. He does not know very much yet, but he is trying." He considered this charitably. "The girl is called Beatrice, and she is older, and she knows a lot, but she is not annoying about it." He paused. "They are nice to me."
Theodore looked at him and beamed. "I am glad," he said.
"Can we play together? Later? After dinner?"