Chapter Eight
They pulled up before a brick house with an alarming number of windows. It was the first in a row that bordered a large green square. Grand, and yet … The duke’s London house was fully as big as this whole row, if bent into a horseshoe, within its own extensive gardens.
The duke stepped down from the carriage and then, with a great show of courtesy, offered Celine her hand.
Celine stared at it, nonplussed.
The duke murmured, “Your loving guardian wishes to hand you down from the carriage, little vagrant witch. Do take my hand and show those watching from the window how sincerely I wish for you to go to a good husband.”
She resisted the predictable urge to look for faces in the window and instead took the duke’s hand (firm and impersonal, not particularly warm through two gloves). She felt almost giddy, playing the biddable miss. To biddable misses came offers of marriage.
The duke tucked her hand securely into the crook of her elbow, and together they crossed the moat from street to front door, in which yet more windows murkily appeared.
The duke rapped on the door with the wolf’s head cane—how perfectly ridiculous, she should just go ahead and threaten to blow the lot down.
A servant opened the door with such alacrity that she and the duke nearly fell inside. The servant had a wide, white moustache and pink cheeks. He accepted the duke’s card with a starchy “I shall enquire if my mistress is home.”
The commotion upstairs suggested she was. Something had smashed and was being tidied. Celine’s hand began to warm as the duke’s heat seeped through shirt and jacket and glove. The moustachioed servant returned and showed them upstairs to the parlour.
The room was small but very elegant. The window overlooked the street, and Lady Pecke occupied the chair nearest to it; here was the face at the window.
Celine studied her. She wasn’t good-looking, but like her house, she was elegant.
Celine’s heart began to beat harder. The pleasure houses where she had worked had mimicked this kind of room, and the madames had mimicked this kind of lady. But Lady Pecke was the real thing.
Could she really do this? Could she pass herself off as someone so far above her station, in a country she barely understood?
Beside Lady Pecke was a young woman of a species Celine had never personally encountered: a gently bred English miss who always had enough to eat, and who was innocently unaware people like Celine existed.
The young woman stared at the duke and dropped her embroidery on the floor, its dull thump underscoring the general awkwardness of the moment.
Near it was a wet stain on the carpet and tiny crystals of sugar, where a quick brush hadn’t dislodged them.
It seemed someone had dropped an entire tea service upon learning who had come to call.
“Lady Pecke, a pleasure,” the duke said, nodding her head in brief acknowledgement (the woman was a countess, for God’s sake!).
“May I present my ward, Miss Celine Genet. Miss Genet, our hostess Lady Pecke and…” She gave a brief, uncurious glance at the young woman who had bent to retrieve her embroidery.
“My…” Lady Pecke’s voice petered out. She cleared her throat and tried again with somewhat more success. “My cousin, Miss Finemore. She was good enough to accept my invitation to stay for the season.”
I’ll bet she was, Celine thought enviously. Imagine having the refined Lady Pecke to take one into society! She could feel the duke at her side radiating barely leashed impatience, as out of place in this room as a cliff. She thought a little hysterically, Perhaps Miss Finemore would like to swap?
Lady Pecke said gamely, “Won’t you please have a seat?”
Miss Finemore had recovered herself somewhat (nothing to be done about the adolescent blushes, which persisted). She gave Celine a curious look—an invitation. Celine gathered her courage and sat.
“How do you find London?” Miss Finemore said in a near-whisper.
“Is it to your liking?” Her eyes kept returning to the duke, who stood forbiddingly by the fireplace.
Meeting the Duke of Howard was, without question, the most exciting thing that had happened to Miss Finemore since she arrived in London.
It was going to make her the most sought-after girl among her peers.
And then the Duke of Howard paid us a morning call …
Celine started to get a sense for this English custom she was navigating and how she would use it for her benefit.
She relaxed a bit more, a fish slipping into its element.
Now that she was sitting in conversation with Miss Finemore, one-on-one, it seemed absurd to be scared.
This was only a girl, na?ve and curious, who wanted a taste of life.
People were people no matter where they were, and if there was one thing Celine knew how to do, it was please.
“I have seen only the duke’s house,” she said. “And it is wonderful. Have you seen it?”
KATE NOTICED THE way Celine was sitting, legs turned coquettishly to the side, bosom pushed forward, and said, “Miss Genet, you are sitting in the French mode. Very proper on that side of the Channel, but you should take the present company as your example of English feminine modesty.”
Celine blushed but gave no other outward sign of discomposure. She subtly rearranged herself, then said with a laugh, “I have so much to learn!”
Hurriedly, Kate spoke again, in case Celine took it into her head to attempt conversation. “Lovely weather we’re having.”
“Oh, yes,” Lady Pecke replied. Her hands were clenched in her skirts. “Lovely.”
“Lovely,” the young cousin echoed faintly.
There was no way Celine could stand up to proper scrutiny, she was luridly out of place in high society.
Despite Celine’s clothes looking in every way superior to the countess and her cousin, this fact felt very obvious all of a sudden.
Surely Lady Pecke would only need to look at Celine, and she would know.
And then Kate would never get the letter back.
“The…” Damn, she’d already covered the weather. What else did one speak of in polite company? “The leaves have begun to sprout. Also … lovely.”
“Indeed,” Lady Pecke said, smiling as though on painful reflex. “Indeed.”
“Lovely,” came the girl’s faint echo.
Celine looked as though she were about to speak again, and Kate cast desperately about for any other topic she might touch upon. The opera? She hadn’t been in an age. Hunting? An unsuitable topic for the young lady.
She decided that would do for small talk.
“I have been hoping to make the acquaintance of your son, Lord Burnley. Will he be following his father into Parliament?” If he was anything at all like Lord Pecke, she fervently hoped not.
At the mention of her son, some of the tension left Lady Pecke’s body, and her smile softened.
“I believe he will, eventually. But first he wishes to be accepted to the bar, and spend some years championing those least able to champion themselves. He doesn’t believe he can understand what needs to be legislated until he can understand the needs of the poor, the meek, the unloved. ”
He shared his father’s do-gooder tendencies, in other words.
It seemed to be a disease that infected the entire family.
Celine, however, looked as though it were the most wonderful thing she’d ever heard, her eyes shining.
As though she just couldn’t wait to become a member of the righteous Farnsworth-Baxter family.
The little hypocrite.
“And is Lord Burnley home?” Kate said, a little more forcefully than she intended.
Lady Pecke blushed, evidently pleased at a duke’s interest in her son.
Pleasure turned to surprise, then understanding.
She looked once in Celine’s direction, then away again.
Very carefully, as though aware just how much might hang in the balance, she said, “I am sorry to say he won’t be joining us this morning.
However…” A delicate pause. “As Your Grace has been so kind as to express an interest in making his acquaintance, I shall venture to tell you he is engaged to attend Mrs. Johnson’s rout two nights hence… ” Another delicate pause.
“Miss Genet and I shall be in attendance as well. You may tell Lord Burnley I look forward to making his acquaintance.” Lady Pecke would enquire and discover from all the usual sources what Celine’s dowry was.
Her goal achieved, Kate had no desire to stay and chat any longer.
Before she could make her excuses, however, her worst fears were realised: After a brief ruckus out in the hallway, the parlour door flew open and admitted Lord Pecke.
He looked like her steward Mr. Hill’s less tidy twin, with white, flyaway side whiskers and a bald head splotched over with the marks of age.
He was quite literally rubbing his hands together as he advanced on her.
She could see his thoughts plain as day in his lively old eyes. A captive audience! The Duke of Howard in his own parlour, with nowhere to go!
“Ah, Duke, the very person I wished to speak to! Lady Pecke will entertain your young lady for a minute or two, won’t you my dear, while I show the duke some interesting figures I have recently commissioned on dental care among the poor.”
She said coldly, “I was told you wouldn’t be home.”
Without showing the least sign of offence, he waved this off. “I was supposed to be in committee all day, but the chair, Mr. Plummer, fell ill.”
She seethed at this stupid bad luck. The first morning call she had paid in ten years and Mister bloody Plummer had to choose today to fall ill!
Before she could give the plain refusal she had no qualms giving, however, Celine said quickly, “Dental care is so important. I am happy to wait. Lady Pecke will take care of me, I am sure.”
“Good, good, yes, excellent.” Lord Pecke was already making his way out the door and looked back impatiently. “Come on then, Duke. I don’t have all day.”
She glared murderously at Celine. She was as loath to be alone with Lord Pecke as she was to leave Celine in the company of Lady Pecke.
The longer Celine was left alone with a countess, the more likely she would expose her ignorance and common habits.
Oblivious of the danger, Celine returned the look with sweet, wide-eyed innocence.
As if that mouth didn’t give her away.
Kate had no choice but to follow Lord Pecke through the immaculate house and into a library of such chaos it momentarily distracted her. It took Pecke some minutes to unearth his desk.
As he did, he regaled her with his fever dreams: Tax the peerage! Give the working poor the administration of their own workhouses! A royal commission into the wages and working conditions of (of all things) governesses!
This was followed, once he found the bits of paper he was after, by the dry recitation of figures, facts, and obstacles regarding dental care, a topic Kate had never closely considered but which she now knew to be mind-numbing.
She staved off a lunatic turn by imagining all the things she would do to Celine, once she had the letter back.
When at last she returned to the parlour, her foul mood worsened when she saw that Celine was—How?—laughing with the ladies, drawn cosily about a table that had acquired a steaming teapot and cake, which Lady Pecke had begun to cut into wedges.
“Marvellous,” Lord Pecke said, dragging over a chair to join the party. “Marvellous, slice of cake just what a chap wants, eh, Duke?”
“Miss Genet and I,” Kate said with impressive restraint, “must take our leave. Immediately.”
Lady Pecke cast a concerned glance at Celine—personal concern, Kate perceived at once, with amazement, concern because Celine was pale and had obviously not been well.
As though she had made some internal decision—do-gooder—Lady Pecke impulsively wrapped a slice of cake and pressed it on Celine, who at first prettily demurred but then accepted the gift.
Only five more weeks, Kate reminded herself. This hell was finite.