Chapter Twelve
Kate couldn’t remember the last time she’d walked down Bond Street. She did none of her own shopping and thought the street’s other purpose—to see and be seen—an inefficient route to a very limited kind of power.
It was crowded, dusty, and did nothing to convince her she’d been missing out.
The fashionable young debutante walking by her side, however, peered enthusiastically in every window and entered every other shop.
They’d been into a bookshop, two haberdashers, a jeweller, a shoemaker, and most recently, an oculist, where Celine had insisted on having her eyes tested, as though doing so were a Vauxhall amusement.
Kate’s four footmen were becoming weighed down with packages, and they were only a third of the way up the street.
Kate’s presence frightened the shopkeepers half to death. It seemed to amuse Celine.
Celine entered a third haberdasher and Kate must follow.
She must stand and watch Celine try on hat after hat, each more gorgeous than the last. Heat rose through her body.
She thought again, and more specifically, about what Celine’s face would feel like between her hands.
The bone structure, sheathed in warm silk.
The delicate pulse of blood. She imagined tipping Celine’s face up towards hers, and how the eyes would reluctantly follow, appearing from beneath the hat’s brim.
The shopgirls held bolts of material up to Celine, unwinding and draping this colour and that texture over her. Celine looked as though she were born to spend money and would soon die of happiness. The material was shapeless until one of the shopgirls tugged just so.
Warmth became searing heat. It alerted Kate all at once to what she was feeling, and she exerted herself to suppress it.
“Are you hoping to beggar me?” she said. “There can be no other reason to buy that colour, it’s dreadful on you.”
Celine shook her head and smiled (a smile that, because of the way her top lip overlapped the bottom, pulled down rather than up). “And that is a lie I will not believe.”
She proceeded to buy the whole bolt, which was passed into the embrace of one of Kate’s footmen.
If Kate had been hoping for room to breathe outside on the footpath, she was disappointed: It was ostrich feathers as far as the eye could see. She moved out into the slow foot traffic, then looked sharply down. Celine had taken her arm.
Celine was looking elsewhere, however, craning her head around.
It seemed to Kate—not for the first time that morning—that Celine was looking for someone in particular.
Suddenly Celine’s attention was caught. Kate looked but could discover nothing of interest. Celine continued transfixed for some moments, then she twisted around to look up at Kate.
Her eyes appeared from beneath the brim of her hat, shining with discovery. She whispered, “The Bond Street roll.”
Kate looked again and saw a group of young men passing by, walking in the preposterous manner that had come into fashion: an exaggerated strut with shoulders forward, hands hanging in apathetic counterbalance to the active hips.
Where Celine had heard of such a silly, specific thing, she couldn’t begin to imagine. She found she was smiling.
They continued up the street at a sedate pace, the sun and noise and even the dust somehow conspiring to be enjoyable, and then abruptly stopped again, the path blocked by a woman coming the other way—elderly, turbaned, and sharp of eye and nose.
Kate suppressed a groan. That’s what you got for frittering away the morning on Bond Street. “Lord Seaton,” she said, inclining her head.
The old woman’s colour heightened and she looked fixedly past Kate’s shoulder, her mouth in a hard line. The ostrich feathers in her turban seemed to quiver with outrage.
Had she been alone, Kate would have held her ground and forced Lord Seaton to walk around her.
Not wanting to draw undue attention to Celine, however, she stepped out of the path, keeping Celine behind her.
Lord Seaton swept past without a single sign of acknowledgement—a shocking and unmistakeable snub.
“My goodness,” Celine said fervently when the whole retinue had passed, “who or rather what was that? I like her. I love her.”
“Of course you do,” Kate muttered, and continued up the street at a clip. Celine skipped to catch up to her, and then—confound it—took her arm again.
Celine said breathlessly, “What’s the history there? Why wouldn’t she acknowledge you? It shows very good taste, in my opinion, but it’s rather daring, isn’t it, cutting a duke in public?”
Kate didn’t want to answer—she didn’t want Celine Genet to know any more than was strictly necessary. But she also needed Celine to understand why she must be careful not to catch the particular notice of Lord Seaton.
“The Earl of Seaton is a powerful person, particularly in the social sphere. She can ruin a girl’s future with a glance or secure it with a compliment.
Where Lord Seaton leads, others follow. She is conservative, prudish.
When my aunt was accused of treason, she cut the whole family and hasn’t deigned to acknowledge me since.
It would be eccentric in anyone else, but she has the moral standing to carry it off.
” Just one more ripple her childhood mistake had sent out into the world.
She glanced down at Celine, expecting Celine would be thoroughly enjoying herself. Instead, she looked sober and thoughtful.
She pressed her advantage. “I say this not because I enjoy speaking of such things, but because you must understand she will not look kindly on any ward of mine.”
“I understand,” Celine said, and oddly, Kate believed her.
She realised with some surprise that she wished to continue speaking with Celine—though she couldn’t imagine on what topic.
She tried to suppress the urge, just as she had with the hot tide of attraction she’d felt in the haberdasher.
To her amazement, she realised she wasn’t going to succeed.
She reached desperately for another way to stave off conversation.
“Are you hungry?” she said.
“Well, yes,” Celine said. “Starving.”
Celine’s surprise at this modest show of consideration spoke volumes about her opinion of Kate.
Ignoring the immature wish to change Celine’s mind about her, Kate sent one of the footmen to acquire a couple of sticky buns, and another for a chair and parasol.
She stood silently by while Celine ate both buns, one after the other.
The sun played over Celine’s hat and shoulders whenever the footman’s attention wavered.
Kate was aware of feeling uncomfortable and even a little foolish.
She was aware of feeling something close to pleasure.
She had some notice of disaster descending on them. A handful of seconds, maybe.
CELINE LICKED HER sticky fingers and wondered if anyone had ever felt so happy.
Compared to the soaring stone arcades of the Palais Royal, Bond Street was not particularly grand.
It looked more like the high street of a well-to-do country town.
But Celine had only frequented the Palais Royal as wares to be bought.
She had never been one of the pedestrian shoppers, looking with delight into windows, knowing if something she saw there took her fancy, she could enter the shop and buy it.
More—the shopkeepers would fall over themselves to sell it to her. It was a duke who escorted her today, as it had been a duke who owned the entire Palais Royal.
A pristine handkerchief appeared beneath her nose, and she accepted it, absentmindedly wiping her fingers while she watched a boy make his dog jump for treats in the street, and only belatedly realised it was the duke who had offered it to her.
She stared first at the handkerchief, suspecting some trick, and then, bewildered, at the duke.
The duke was looking away down the street, frowning.
Celine heard the disturbance, then, as it drew closer: sharp yells and whinnies, the crash of an overturned cart, and something splintering.
She stood. A rider was driving her horse much too fast down the busy street, with no consideration for those in her path. It was Lord Royston, and she was making directly for the duke and Celine.
Celine’s first blank feeling was the annoyance of a competent planner whose instructions had been ignored.
She had told Lord Royston to encounter them by accident and to be on her best behaviour.
The duke would have acknowledged Lord Royston and even allowed her to accompany them up the street rather than risk a public altercation.
Then the possibility of real trouble began to dawn on her.
Lord Royston pulled her horse to an abrupt halt, its hooves skidding and sending up clouds of dust from the road.
The boy and his dog, who had been playing bare inches away, dashed off.
Lord Royston was wearing the same clothes she’d had on last night, now rather worse for wear.
Her coat was slung over her shoulders, her billowing shirtsleeves were on scandalous display, and she wore no hat.
Her hair streamed, long and dishevelled, over her shoulders, and the dripping topaz and pearls at her ear clacked together as she swayed to dismount.
Halfway down, her boot caught in the stirrup and she fell the rest of the way, landing on her back with her leg above her. She lay in the dirt, laughing. Her horse snorted in irritation and dragged her two paces before one of the duke’s footmen leapt forward to catch its bridle.
Celine stared down at the dusty English marquess pathetically contorting herself to disengage her heel—so different to the urbane aristocrat she’d spoken to last night—and realised with a queasy tilt that she’d got it wrong.
She’d been so thrilled to find someone who hated the duke as much as she did that she hadn’t really applied herself to thinking beyond what gratified her.
That is the worst person in London. Nobody could be more dangerous to your fledgling reputation.
“Help Her Lordship to her feet,” the duke said, her voice grim. The subtle ease that had entered her manner through the morning had vanished.
Lord Royston, possessed by a contrary spirit, struggled against the two footmen who tried to help her.
“Borrow Cupid’s wings,” she said as she came upright.
She put her boot into the bottom of a footman.
“And soar with them above a common bound.” And pushed.
She began to chase after the other footman, who started up like a hare, but she was brought to an abrupt halt.
The footman made his escape. Lord Royston looked down to where the metal tip of the duke’s cane pressed into her chest.
When she looked up, her face blazed, and she lifted her arms wide. “A happy coincidence, cousin! I came to see you yesterday, but perhaps nobody told you. I waited.”
By this time, a small crowd had stopped to watch. It was the opposite of how Celine had hoped this meeting would unfold.
“Go home,” the duke said coolly. “You will regret this when you have sobered.”
Lord Royston stared at the duke and then began, helplessly, to laugh. “But how shall I find such a puny regret,” she said, “among the wreckage of twenty years?”
Celine’s queasiness worsened.
“Royce,” the duke said. “Go home.”
It maddened Lord Royston, who spun suddenly away from the immobilising cane and pulled a young woman into her arms, who had the unlucky fortune of being nearest among the spectators.
“You aren’t sorry to see me, are you?” Lord Royston said, and pressed a demanding kiss onto the girl’s unwilling mouth.
The girl couldn’t have been much older than seventeen. Her body was rigid, her hands in their embroidered gloves held out from her body, her hat knocked askew from red hair that had been prettily coiled and pinned in innocent expectation of a day out on Bond Street.
Celine was horrified. She hadn’t meant to unleash this destructive impulse.
The girl’s father was a huge, fat man and Celine wondered suddenly whether Lord Royston hadn’t picked the girl at random, but instead very much on purpose, hoping to be pummelled into the ground and spared further consciousness.
If so, her hopes were disappointed. The man’s face was red, in agony, but he held himself back.
He didn’t dare lay hands on a marquess in public.
Only one person present had the power to check Lord Royston.
Lord Royston grabbed for the girl’s skirt and went to put her hand under it, as though, having done this unforgivable thing in public, she must go the whole way.
“Unhand her,” the duke said, “you unspayed dog.”
When Lord Royston didn’t immediately do as she was told, the duke grabbed the back of her collar and yanked her bodily away. Freed, the young woman flew to her father.
As Lord Royston completed the unsteady turn that brought her back to the duke, the duke slapped her hard across the face, holding nothing back.
Once, and then again. For all that Celine had expected the duke to relish hurting the people around her, she saw the duke took no pleasure in it.
She understood suddenly it was not violence born of outrage, but of necessity.
By delivering her cousin an immediate punishment before all those who had witnessed her depravity, the duke was mitigating some of the harm to the young woman’s reputation.
We grew up together, Lord Royston had said, under the total power of that woman.
Only now, too late, Celine was beginning to grasp how much she didn’t know about the Howard cousins. In the immediate, violent response of the older cousin to the misbehaviour of the younger, there were layers, mirrorings, echoes she didn’t understand.
It seemed to calm Lord Royston, however, as though she had found solid ground she recognised. She stumbled back and sat on Celine’s abandoned seat, looking dazed.
“Wait here,” the duke bit off. Then she went to the young woman and with a degree of courtesy Celine hadn’t known she possessed said, “Please accept my apologies. The fault for this wretched event lies entirely with my cousin. No person of sound mind and character could think badly of you for it. Should any knave do so, you may send him to me.”
The girl blinked tearfully from her father’s chest and nodded.
“See her home at once,” the duke said to the girl’s father, “and tell her mother I shall call to ask after her this evening. I will bring the direction of my solicitors, who will pay whatever compensation you ask. Now, if you would be so good as to accept the escort of two of my footmen.”
The man demurred, looking grateful and wretched.
The duke turned back. Her face was a mask of cold fury. “You,” she said, “follow me.”
Neither Celine nor Lord Royston dared utter a word as they obeyed.