Chapter Eighteen
“Leave Richard alone,” Kate said in the carriage. “He can’t give you what you want.”
Celine frowned in thought. “Ratafia,” she said at last, as though it were a perfectly sensible response.
“What?”
“He brought Lady Pecke a glass of ratafia, but she didn’t drink any of it.
He said she’d asked for it, but I wondered if he had manufactured a reason to speak to me.
Look,” Celine said, leaning forward, animated by resolve, “I know he’s taboo.
He’s the only member of your family you can stand to be around, so far as I can tell.
There’s no way you want him chained to me.
I just don’t quite know what to do about it. He’s interested.”
She hated hearing Celine talk like this, as though Celine knew anything about Richard—or about her. She said repressively, “I’ve taken care of it.”
Celine shrugged and turned her gaze to the window. She looked tired.
Kate considered saying nothing more—she discouraged personal conversation with Celine—but it had been bothering her that she couldn’t remember, and Celine was the only one who might. “Did you beg me to save Bastien?”
“Yes,” Celine said warily. “I did.”
“Why?”
Where before Celine had looked tired, she now looked exhausted. Like she needed to sleep for five years. “I wanted to live,” Celine said. “I thought if you took him, you might take me, too.”
The tension she had felt since speaking to Richard relaxed, unexpectedly. It helped, somehow, to hear someone else speak the unforgivable truth aloud, without shying away from it: I wanted to live. I was too desperate to care if he died.
Maybe one day, when she was old and her worldly cares had lost some of their urgency, she would be able to mourn her dead. It was strange to realise if that day came, Celine would be the only other person she knew who might also mourn Bastien.
“It didn’t matter, in the end,” Celine said, then shrugged. “You didn’t take me anyway.”
Had Celine truly thought she might? Celine, the unflinching realist, who had just admitted her own selfish motivations regarding Bastien … Surely, she hadn’t clung on to the fatuous, self-aggrandising fantasy of an English duke taking a little French nobody, a stranger, home with her?
And yet … The hairs rose at the back of Kate’s neck when she realised that she was, this very moment, doing just that. In her carriage, with Celine, going home.
“How did you fare with Lord Burnley?” she asked, turning away from the disturbing thought. “You didn’t cock up too badly, if I may take Lady Pecke’s manner of farewelling me as an indication.”
Celine regarded her, the outrageous mouth falling into a pout. “Do you always expect me to cock things up?”
“Yes.”
Celine made an affronted noise. “Why?”
“You are a mouse—”
“A mouse?!”
“—trying to pass yourself off as a lion. I expect the pride to sniff you out and gobble you up at every moment.”
“You understand,” Celine said, “that my profession has been to please.”
“A mouse may please a lion—”
“May it?”
“—but that doesn’t make it a lion. There is a reason one isn’t considered to truly belong to the upper classes until the distinction has passed down three or four generations.
Believe me, the middle classes try, and will never succeed, because upper class is something one is, not something one does.
Yes, you will cock up. Our best chance of success is a quick engagement, so again I ask: How did you fare with Lord Burnley? ”
“I pleased him,” Celine said acidly. “He made it clear enough he intends to pursue me.”
“Good.” It was good. “I was surprised you went for him.” That wasn’t so good. She hadn’t meant to say it.
“Why?” Celine sounded genuinely puzzled.
“Because—” Because I know what you like. I am what you like. She pressed her teeth together so hard her jaw ached, then looked away, her hand tightening over the head of her cane.
“Because he’s ugly?” Celine said, suddenly sounding amused. “What use have I for a handsome man?”
“You enjoy admiration,” she said, annoyed at feeling she had to defend herself. “You want people to envy you when you enter a room. Lord Burnley doesn’t elicit either of those feelings in the people around him.”
“Is that what I want?”
She shifted uncomfortably. This line of questioning was getting them nowhere.
“You are satisfied, then? You’ll accept him?”
Celine sobered. “Yes.”
That was that, then. She was aware of not feeling as happy as she should have.
She expected it to be the end of the conversation, but Celine seemed to have woken up a bit, in the mood for a chat. “He told me about his father’s bill. A clever, mercenary piece of legislation.”
“Good God, don’t you start! I’ve heard about nothing but this ridiculous nonsense all evening.”
“I wouldn’t call it ridiculous. Radical, perhaps. I’m surprised you’re so dismissive of it, given the implications it has for the mines you and Lord Wroth have been fighting over.”
Her troubled mind sharpened into a single, startled point of focus, which she turned on Celine. “What did you just say?”
“The mines you and Lord Wroth are fighting over—”
“What I am asking,” she bit out, her voice like ice, “is how you know anything about it.” It was a fight of more than a decade’s standing, and she wanted Celine nowhere near it. It was far too serious, far too important, to let this malicious imp get her hands on it.
Celine maintained remarkable poise under scrutiny. “I have been eating breakfast with your secretary, Mr. Shaw.”
What? She was going to murder Shaw.
“He’s very grumpy about this ongoing feud between yourself and Lord Wroth, and claims—”
“You have a knife at my throat, Miss Genet, but you will refrain from inserting yourself into my private business. You remember what happened the last time you ignored my warning.” Royce rampaging down Bond Street was nothing to the damage Celine could do if she got it into her head to interfere in this matter.
What had Shaw been thinking? He was Celine’s greatest detractor. Why had he told her so much?
She thought of all the people who worried about Celine, who seemed to care for her mere minutes after meeting her, and had a sinking feeling she knew why.
Celine opened her mouth, hesitated, and seemed to think better of it. She looked out the window on her side of the carriage, and the minutes passed in silence. Now that her good humour had dimmed, there was something drawn and unhealthy about her stillness. Something distinctly unhappy.
What on earth made you think Lord Pecke’s bill could have any effect on the mines?
It was an extraordinary claim! The two things had nothing to do with each other.
She wouldn’t ask. If she engaged Celine in any way beyond what was necessary, she would be giving chaos and spite free rein. What made you think—
She took off her hat and ran her thumbs around the brim’s soft edge. Looked out the window as they passed a group of women lounging in the mouth of an alleyway, one of them cursing out a stray dog. What made you—
“What made you think of my argument with Lord Wroth over the mines?”
Celine’s eyes flickered warily over to her. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not my business, as you say.”
“Then tell me. If it doesn’t matter.”
Celine looked out the window again. “If I understand correctly, though Lord Wroth has the right to operate the mines, the actual legal ownership has been unresolved for some fifteen years?”
It was the only victory she’d been able to win against him, and it was grimly inadequate: Though he lawfully operated the mines, he didn’t quite own them yet. But then, neither did she. “I don’t see what any of this has to do with Lord Pecke’s bill.”
Celine lifted her head in a startled motion and stared at Kate. “You haven’t read the bill.”
At the mere thought, the twitching boredom came over her that accompanied any of Lord Pecke’s social causes. “I congratulate myself on not having done so. If one were obliged to read every bill Lord Pecke produced, one would not have leave to die until a hundred and fifty.”
Celine gave a small, incredulous laugh. “My God, he would have slipped it right by you, if he were able to get anything passed, and he even tried to get you to help him do it. The wily old goat.”
Her hackles rose all at once. She sensed some danger she didn’t understand.
“He intends to fund his bill,” Celine said with distinct relish, “by giving the parish union the legal right to seize any lands or works that have been under legal contest for a minimum period of fifteen years and two months. Lord Burnley thought it an entertaining anecdote to illustrate his father’s eccentricities. ”
“But…” Her mind went entirely blank. “But fifteen years and two months is the exact period my mines have been under contest.”
Celine shook her head, laughing. Distinctly laughing at. “Yes. I believe that’s the whole point. Lord Pecke has his eye on those very lucrative mines, and has invented a far-fetched method for snatching them from you and Lord Wroth both.”
“My God!” she exclaimed, too shocked to bite it back, though Celine was still laughing at her.
“The absolute temerity of the man! What? Take my mines to pay for his drivel? And he had the gall to spend all evening—four fucking hours—selling me on workhouses and outdoor charity? I will see the bill buried, and Lord Pecke with it.”
Celine suddenly stopped laughing and sat forward, her hands pressing into the front of the seat. “What? No.” She sounded annoyed. Impatient. “You must see that it passes into law. Lord Pecke can’t do it without you.”
It was her turn to stare. “Have you taken all leave of your senses?”
“You have been trying for fifteen years to take the mines from Lord Wroth. So do it.”
“There is the small matter,” she ground out, “of it also putting the mines beyond my reach.” Had Celine been the smartest person in whatever swamp she’d crawled out of? It was the only way to account for her constant belief she was right.
“But you’re not fighting for the mines because you want to own them,” Celine said as though it were nothing, as though it were self-evident. “You want the miners and their families looked after, and they will be. You get what you want. Lord Wroth doesn’t.”
Kate felt her heart thump. In the inner hush that followed, she felt it thump again.
Days ago at the club, Richard had said to her, Listening to you, one would almost think you cared about the children in those mines. He’d sounded so bitter, because it hadn’t for a moment occurred to him that she might.
Richard didn’t know her motivations. Shaw didn’t know them.
“How,” she said hoarsely, “could you possibly think you know that?”
Celine raised her brows a little and said, “The ghost of the maid you had killed came and whispered it in my ear.”
Kate sat back as though a hand were pressing firmly against her sternum, holding her in place as understanding dawned.
Someone had told Celine the truth about Bessy Simms, the maid Kate had sent to the countryside to see out her pregnancy.
She’d known someone would, eventually. She’d counted on Celine feeling stupid about it.
But someone had told Celine the truth, and from that, Celine had extrapolated … a different truth.
Her heart thumped.
“You don’t need the money,” Celine said with a dry glance at the rich interior furnishings of the carriage.
She seemed mercifully unaware of the effect her words were having.
“Let the parish unions have it. Lord Burnley says his father has worked over many years to install a bishop up north who is bullheaded and scrupulous and will see the work done. The church will help you keep Lord Wroth in check, of course.”
Celine was right … My God, Celine was right. The bill had been in committee going on two years, and evidently no one had yet put together what Lord Pecke was really angling for.
What Celine had understood in a single evening’s conversation.
Lord Pecke couldn’t get the bill passed, but Kate could.
The church could. Celine had already thought ahead and understood that too: The church’s interest in the matter was crucial.
If the Archbishop of York saw the chance to put Kate’s lucrative mines in his pocket, he would do it.
He would put his shoulder behind the thin legal veneer and push.
The mines wouldn’t belong to her anymore, but they wouldn’t belong to Lord Wroth, either. And the workers would no longer answer to him or be at his mercy. The profit from their labour would be put into helping the indigent, the sick, the homeless, apportioned by the parish union.
Her people, whom she had failed and continued to fail for fifteen years, watching helplessly as Lord Wroth abused them. She had thrown everything she had at him for fifteen years, trying to make amends.
Celine leaned her forehead against the window and closed her eyes as though she’d lost interest in the conversation. Kate could feel the blood pumping through her body, the heat of it shimmering before her eyes.
Celine Genet was only twenty-four years old, and she had managed to get herself across the sea to another country and ensconce herself in the house of a duke, whom she had firmly under her thumb. Celine was well on her way to getting everything she wanted.
And somehow, until this moment, Kate had missed how extraordinary that was. How entirely remarkable. Not one in a thousand desperate young women could have done it. Not one in ten thousand.
Horrified, she recognised the hot feeling in her chest for what it was. Not only anger. Not only resistance.
Before, there had been physical attraction that could be put aside. This was more dangerous by far.
And Kate could not put it aside.