Chapter Thirteen
A counter ran along the back of the sweet shop, behind which wooden drawers covered the wall from floor to ceiling.
At intervals one of these was opened, and sweets were scooped out into crinkling paper packages.
The shop clerks used a sliding ladder to reach the higher drawers.
The bell over the door rang foot traffic in and out of the shop, and shoppers and clerks murmured to one another.
The bow window on the far side of the door was piled with an artful display of sweets, but within the curve of the near window was a single table, for seeing and being seen.
Kate had chosen it expressly for that purpose.
Had she taken Royce and Celine to the private parlour at the back of the shop, the gossips would have Celine ravished and ruined by six o’clock.
She considered the figure inelegantly sprawled over the chair opposite. Royce’s coat was half off, dragging along the floor. Her heavy lids were closed, and her mouth sagged loosely, given over to a drunken stupor. The mark on her cheek was beginning to swell and darken.
A familiar despair filled Kate.
Eleanor had died. But sometimes, what had become of Royce felt worse.
The three Howard cousins had grown up together in the Duke of Howard’s house, under their aunt’s rule.
Eleanor, the heir, who had been slight and plain, and thought the mind superior to the body.
Kate, the child of a disgraced younger brother, who used her more powerful body and more forceful personality to try to gain an edge against Eleanor.
Royce, the child of the duke’s youngest brother and the Marquess of Royston—a woman who had let Royce have very little to do with the Howards before her death when Royce was five.
Charismatic, mercurial, Aunt Anne had raised them. She had been so proud of them, her Howard girls. She had constantly pushed them to be better, often by encouraging them to compete against each other.
Royce had been a gregarious child, always laughing, always getting into scrapes. She had followed Kate around like a disciple, a highly effective lieutenant in all Kate’s undertakings, giving her the advantage of two to one.
This wreck of a woman was what was left. Gambler, coward, liar. Royce would say anything to get what she wanted. And there was nothing Kate could do to pull Royce out of her headlong rush towards self-annihilation. She had tried.
“Sit up,” she bit out, her voice so cold it burned.
Royce started, her eyes widening blearily. She rolled over and raised her middle finger at Kate. “Has Saint Richard been badmouthing me again?”
She felt a surge of irritation. This was Royce’s favourite grindstone, and it was wildly misguided.
“What could he even say, at this point?” She pressed her lips together, determined to leave it there.
But suddenly she couldn’t leave it be, it was imperative she address it.
“Furthermore, he’s done nothing but defend you to me, and promote the idea of reconciliation.
Just as he always has, even when you spat on him in public. ”
“He’s a cheat and a liar.”
Richard was the most painfully honest person of Kate’s acquaintance. As Royce would know if she put her jealousy aside for one minute in his company. For a time, Kate had hoped Royce and Richard would become friends, but that time had long since passed.
“Said the cheat and the liar. Sit up.”
Royce glared at her. Then, subtly, spread her knees wider, threw her head back, lips parting suggestively.
Her voice slurring only a bit, she said, “Is this what you wanted? Would you have kept me with you instead of sending me off to Switzerland if I’d just offered?
I would’ve been such a good little girl for you, Kate. ”
She heard Celine’s grunt of distress even as her own flesh violently recoiled from the suggestion. But that was what Royce wanted. A reaction. Any reaction. The worst reaction.
As though Royce hadn’t spoken, she said, “What did you want? Money?”
Royce slumped back and said belligerently, “Of course. I need a hundred and thirty thousand.”
A muffled gasp from Celine. Kate was not even remotely surprised.
“No,” she said. “Anything else?”
“They’ll kill me this time, you heartless bitch!”
“Good. One less thing I have to worry about. Now drink your coffee, pay your bill, and sleep it off somewhere no one can step on you by accident.”
Royce looked up at her, black eyes full of pure hatred. Nothing left of the clever, loving little girl Royce had been. Nothing but rage and ruin.
This was what happened to the people Kate loved.
This was what happened when you broke the world.
She leaned forward to pour coffee into Royce’s cup, battening down the powerful feelings. She said again, “Drink.”
Royce made a great show of standing, then ambled over to Celine, who sat very still in the seat between them. Royce put one hand lazily around the back of Celine’s neck.
Kate tensed, but didn’t dare move.
In that very unusual French Royce spoke—a rough dialect Kate couldn’t always understand—she said to Celine, “I’m sure it would have worked if I’d done it your way. It was sweet of you to try.”
And then she was gone.
The visceral sense of threat Kate experienced when Royce came near her eased, as though a great dark bird had been perched on her back, its weight nearly crushing her into the ground, its cruel talons scoring her bones as they found purchase—and with a heaving, twinned flap, it had departed.
Leaving only her and Celine. The Bond Street roll. Of course.
Celine looked down into her gloved hands. Her expression was turned inward, serious and thoughtful.
“You invited her?” Kate said in a terrible voice. “I told you to stay away from her.”
Celine’s expression grew unhappy. She glanced up at Kate, then away. “I got it wrong. I wasn’t listening to what she was telling me.” She took a deep breath. “I think Lord Royston has been drinking since she left your house last night. She told me being there, in that house, felt like dying.”
Like dying.
She had intended to give Celine the thorough scolding she deserved for interfering in things she didn’t understand, but the words knocked her off course.
She hadn’t realised … She hadn’t thought Royce felt that way.
She’d sent Royce away—as far as she’d dared, all the way to Switzerland.
Royce hadn’t had to see what was left. She hadn’t had to watch the charred ruin of their childhood home be picked apart and carted off until nothing was left. She hadn’t seen the bodies come out.
She’d thought …
Royce had made the most of being in Europe. She’d had an adolescence free of the responsibilities that had fallen to Kate; she’d lost herself in a hedonistic exploration of the continent.
She’d lost herself.
“Next time I tell you someone is dangerous,” Kate said thickly, “you will listen.”
She didn’t know what rejoinder she expected (You can’t tell me what to do) but Celine merely studied her and hummed, a sound of sympathetic understanding. It was a hair-raising sound. What could this immoral wretch possibly think she knew about the Duke of Howard?
“Well?”
Celine said, “I already said I got it wrong,” and stuck her tongue out.
It shocked a laugh out of Kate. Good God, such bad grace in conceding she might not know all there was to know at twenty-four bloody years old! This peevish, erotic young woman was who Burnley would breakfast with every morning for the rest of his life.
The thought sobered Kate. She looked at her watch and stood. “We’d best get you home before the hour gets any later. Bond Street is no place for a young woman in the evening.”
Celine’s brows went up. “Robbers? Your footmen can see them off.”
“No,” Kate said, then stopped short. She found herself at a loss. It was a stupid thing to be embarrassed about, however, so she made herself say, “Prostitutes. The prostitutes come out in the evening.”
Which made Celine laugh and laugh and laugh.