Chapter 3 #2
“I doubt you do.” She drew a breath, tasting cedar and heat and the faintest trace of orange. It made her mind wander, and she dragged it back. “I have come to propose an exchange.”
“What sort of exchange?”
“You will give me money.” She kept her hands still, though they wished to twist in her cloak. “And I will give you my silence.”
He did not start. He did not bluster. He smiled a little, as if a riddle had arranged itself neatly into its solution. “You are direct. It suits you.”
His ease unsettled her. It lured her toward anger, and she could not afford anger.
“I am not here to suit you.”
“Then to suit whom? Yourself?” He cocked his head. “Or another?”
“That is not your affair to manage.”
He took another step closer, shrinking the space in which she might breathe. The green of his eyes was darker tonight. “What amount will buy your silence?”
She thought long about an amount that would purchase a carriage, a year’s rent in a northern town, food on a small table, and safety.
The number sounded thin in the air between them. “One thousand pounds.”
He did not flinch. “A bold request from a hooded stranger.”
It would be a drop in the bucket for you.
“A fair one.”
“Perhaps,” he conceded, as if he weighed fairness and found it equal. “Yet I will ask the obvious question. To what purpose?”
“The purpose is mine.”
“Then we are at odds,” he said. “I am generous, but I am not a fool. Why should I put a heavy purse in a lady’s hand when she will not tell me the reason?”
“Because you won’t have to worry about scandal if you do, and you will very much need to worry about it if you do not.”
He let out a low laugh, seeming very amused. “You mistake the scale, my dear lady. My reputation can silence more than you can shout. I can purchase the Times and the gossip sheets outright. I can invite the publisher to supper. I can deny everything and be believed, because I am never careless.”
“You were last night.”
He inclined his head. “Indeed, I was. Which is why we are speaking like partners and not enemies. Yet I do not buy riddles.”
He waited. She refused to speak.
The quiet between them took on a pulse.
“Very well,” he said, after a small beat. The amusement faded from his voice. “You need money. I need assurance. I will make you a fair deal. I will pay you, and in return, you will give me seven nights.”
Gwen froze, her throat tightening.
“Seven nights,” he repeated, calm as a tutor setting a lesson. “My terms yield to your silence. Your silence yields to my terms.”
For a heartbeat, Gwen had the unreasonable sensation that the floor had tilted. The firelight blurred, then sharpened. She held herself very still, as if stillness could tame her astonishment.
It had been a taunt, nothing more. It had to be. A test of her mettle. He could not have imagined that she would actually agree. And how satisfying would it be to watch the sharp jolt of surprise unsettle him. The thought of it, even, made her almost grin. Almost.
“Seven nights,” she repeated, and heard how flat the words sounded because she had scraped them clean of every trace of emotion. “You cannot be serious.”
“I am entirely serious.” He reached for the decanter and poured, but did not drink. “I do not play when the stakes are high.”
“You think this is a game?”
“I think it’s an arrangement.” He set the glass aside. “You wish to move me to generosity without telling me why. I wish to avoid gossip without being commanded by it. There is a price that will satisfy both.”
She tasted copper. She tasted humiliation and fury and fear. She kept all of it behind her teeth.
“You expect me to agree?”
“I expect you to weigh your needs against your scruples,” he corrected, too evenly to be accused of cruelty. “We are not discussing you on an auction block. We are discussing a private agreement that injures no one. You arrived tonight, cloaked and nameless. You chose secrecy. So did I.”
“Do not feign altruism,” she scoffed. “You pay to keep yourself comfortable.”
“And you will get what you came for,” he said. “Money, sufficient for a purpose you do not want to share with me. Your silence purchased honestly. And in return, I take the pleasure I have already interrupted once on your account. It is perfectly tidy.”
Gwen thought of Howard’s hand rising. She thought of her mother’s breath hitching like torn silk. She thought of William far away, writing Latin verbs while their mother bartered dignity for peace. She thought of the rumors she had sown, the protection they had bought, the contempt they had earned.
He will never keep his promise, the part of her that knew men like Howard whispered. He will hurt you. He will laugh when you bleed.
The Duke was watching her. He had the face of a man who had never once doubted that decisions would fall where he wished them to.
“You hesitate,” he noted. “Wise. Hesitation prevents tragedies. Consider this as well. If you choose to test your threat, you will fail. The papers like a story, but they like a villain even more. They like a clean line between the two. I can trample such lines with the weight of my name. I will do it without apology. Your story will collapse in a day.”
Her stomach churned.
“On the other hand,” he continued, “you can turn your mischief to profit. You secure the money. I secure your silence. You walk away after seven nights with money and the knowledge that you have paid for your purpose with your own will, not with a lie told to a printer.”
She hated that he made sense. She hated that his voice remained low and even and devoid of triumph.
He was not goading her. He was not cruel. He was not Howard. He was an entirely different breed of danger.
“What would these nights require?” she asked, and heard how her voice had steadied, as if she had braced her palm on a table and found it unshaken.
“Not obedience,” he replied, surprising her. “Agreement. Privacy. Punctuality. You will come when I send for you. You will leave when I ask you to. You will speak to no one. In return, I will be what I always am—careful, clean, finished after seven.”
“Finished,” she repeated. “You keep count?”
“Always.”
“Are these all in a row, or just seven whenever you require?”
“Whenever I require. My rules.”
She closed her eyes for a breath. She saw the little cottage in the north that she had invented to survive the nights when Howard prowled and slammed doors.
She saw her mother pouring tea in a kitchen of their own, where no man placed a hand on her wrist to correct the height of the teapot.
She saw a lad on a Christmas visit smiling because his mother smiled.
She opened her eyes. “Very well.”
The Duke’s gaze sharpened. “You accept?”
“I do.”
“Say it,” he said, not rudely, but with a quiet demand that felt like the closing line of a contract. “Say the terms.”
“I accept,” she declared. “Seven nights in exchange for the amount I have named.”
“You will have the money. Half at the outset, half on the seventh night.” He studied her, then added, as if struck by a thought that did not entirely please him, “You will not be harmed.”
The words touched her differently than she had expected. Heat rose behind her eyes. She blinked it away before it could become a tear. “I am not afraid of you anyway.”
He looked faintly amused. “Prudent women might disagree.”
She would not ask what had made his voice lower on the word harm. She did not wish to know. She wished to wrap up their encounter and depart with her bargain clenched in both hands.
The Duke stepped closer. She did not retreat. He lifted his hand as if to grasp the hem of her hood.
“Your name,” he demanded. “I will have it now.”
“Not yet,” she replied. “Not until I have the first half.”
“You do not trust me.”
“Trust is a luxury,” she said. “I cannot afford it.”
He paused, something like approval flashing in his eyes. “Very well. Remove the hood and look at me properly.”
She considered refusing. It would be childish to persist in mystery when she had already bartered so much.
Slowly, she lifted both hands to the ribbons at her throat. The hood fell back.
Light struck her cheekbones, and she stood bare to his gaze.
He took her in. Recognition, brief and certain, flickered in his eyes. “Ah… It’s you.”
She felt heat climb her neck as his eyes roamed over her. For a moment, she felt almost foolish, standing before a man whose presence unsettled her more than his offer. Her breath hitched, a soft betraying note, and she prayed he had not heard it.
“We are done for the night. Send the money tomorrow. Send the time for the first night.”
His mouth curved. “The night is still young.”
“I will not begin until I have the money in my hand.” She curtsied, precise and polite. “Good evening, Your Grace.”
“Lady Gwendoline,” she heard him say to her back as she retreated to the corridor and out of Greystone House into the cold, crisp night.