Chapter Twenty-One #2
Royce shook her head and bent to kiss Celine on the cheek. She threw a scornful look over her shoulder at Kate and said, “Have you even bothered to find out who would succeed you, should Wroth’s bill become law?”
Then she was gone. Kate dropped her hands to the desk, letting them take her weight, her heart pounding like she’d just been fighting for her life instead of repeating the old, tawdry sentiments she and Royce had hashed out a dozen times or more between them. Was this what Royce meant by dying?
Celine entered the room, quietly closing the door behind her. And Shaw, who had remained circumspect for the duration of Royce’s visit, rushed to the bookcase and pulled down Debrett’s.
Through the churning in her mind, Kate tried to think through the line of succession. It was women, all the way down. After Royce, it went back to her grandmother’s sister, and down through a line of mothers and daughters. She couldn’t think. She’d never had to. Royce was her heir.
For perhaps a minute, the only sound in the room was the frantic turning of pages. The sound stopped suddenly, and Shaw swore.
“It’s Richard,” he said, throwing the book down between Kate’s hands. “Your title would go to Mr. Richard Marcus Howard, if you were disinherited. He’s the next male relative in line.”
She closed Debrett’s and pushed it aside. “He wouldn’t betray me for the title.”
But even as she said it, she saw Richard again, as she’d first seen him. A small boy sitting in the hallway outside the room where power resided. A small boy who had witnessed his mother’s humiliation at the hands of the Duke of Howard.
Her legs gave out and she sat.
No. This was what Royce did. The only way she knew how to get attention was by destroying things around her—the most precious things. She had wanted to destroy Kate’s friendship with Richard almost as long as it had existed.
Shaw and Celine stood in close conference, Shaw intently whispering, no doubt explaining all that had passed this day.
Kate needed to tell Celine to leave. Royce had got her off track and wasted her time, putting her mind in turmoil into the bargain.
She and Shaw needed to finish drafting their plan, and then begin putting it into action.
She took a deep breath, taking control of herself and cooling the hot confusion.
By the time she was herself again, she looked up to see that Shaw had left and Celine was sitting quietly in the chair across the desk from her, waiting.
She was dressed in a simple day dress and had a shawl pulled over her shoulders, her hair pinned loosely back, a woman at home who hadn’t yet made herself up for outside company.
The expression on her face was becoming familiar to Kate: watchful, intelligent, unpretentious.
“You need to leave,” Kate said. Her voice sounded like she hadn’t used it in days. “Where’s Shaw?”
Celine said nothing, only watching her in that quiet way. Then, at last, “She loves you, you know.”
Of course Kate knew that. Of course she knew. It only made it worse.
She opened her mouth to dismiss Celine again, more firmly this time, when a small, niggling memory came clear in her mind and checked her.
The night of the Johnson rout, Celine had accused Richard of lying about a glass of ratafia.
It was such a small thing, and yet it had obviously made an impression on her.
Had anyone else made the accusation, she would have dismissed it; Richard was honest to a fault. But Celine … saw things other people didn’t.
The situation is more dangerous than you realise.
Kate had thrown herself into defeating Wroth’s Inheritance Bill the only way she knew how: by gathering her might to throw herself against the wall until she made the wall shake.
But Lord Wroth would expect her to respond that way.
It was the same useless, exhausting impulse that had got her nowhere in the fifteen years she’d spent trying to get her mines back.
Until Celine had given one small push and the whole thing had come tumbling down.
It had been her lifelong habit never to rely on anyone else. Even … even with Richard, her closest friend and confidant, she had maintained a cool, necessary distance.
“Celine,” she said, hardly knowing how to say the words. “Will you help me?”
“Yes,” came the sure reply.
She swallowed and looked up. Celine’s eyes were deep and warm, full of a melting kindness. It made no sense that she could need this woman of no birth and no name, who even now threatened to expose the worst of her past. And yet she did. Kate needed her. She realised her hands were shaking.
“Is there any way Royce is right? About Richard?”
Celine had obviously already thought it over and come to her own conclusions. “Lord Wroth wouldn’t have risked introducing a piece of legislation this controversial unless he was certain of success. Can you think of anything you’ve told Richard recently, that might have made you vulnerable?”
She tried to think, but she’d always been so careful. He knew about her spies in Lord Wroth’s mines, but that was irrelevant now. Even the night of the rout, when she’d come so close to telling him what was most damaging to her, she’d cautioned herself and remained silent.
Except—
The hairs rose down the back of her neck and arms. “He knows you’re a prostitute.”
Celine’s eyes widened. Then she looked away and frowned, her deep upper lip pushing out while she bit the lower into her mouth.
At last, she said, “I think there’s a very good chance Royce is right, yes. I am fairly certain I now understand how Lord Wroth means to pass his Inheritance Bill. And he does mean to pass it, and in doing so, take everything from you.”
Kate went cold. Could Lord Wroth really do it? Could he be so sure of success? Yet she was no longer incredulous of the confidence Celine had in her own reasoning.
“It will begin with accusations of my being a prostitute,” Celine said dispassionately.
Then the luscious mouth twisted. “It’s what you English think of every French woman anyway.
Those decadent French, fluent in love. Every French woman a whore in the making.
It’s the easiest rumour in the world to perpetrate. ”
Her conscience was pricked, and Lord, did she resent it. “Celine,” she said repressively, “in this case it also happens to be true.”
“Yes,” Celine said, and she surprised Kate by laughing, genuine amusement easing the tension out of her face. “Of course, yes. It’s true.”
The laughter and smile made Kate feel impossibly warm. Her eyes lingered on Celine’s mouth. In this mood she could no longer deny that she wanted to touch it.
Celine continued more easily. “They will accuse me of being a prostitute and make vulgar assumptions about the nature of my relationship to you. Your moral character will be questioned in the most forceful terms. This could take a number of forms—the newspapers perhaps, the scandal sheets almost certainly—but to my mind would be most effective coming from Lord Seaton.”
It took a moment to remember Celine had encountered the grand matron of society, Lord Seaton, the day they went shopping on Bond Street, and then to follow the rest of Celine’s reasoning.
Lord Seaton would want to believe the rumours.
She would want to feel her ostracism of Kate all these years had been justified, a sop to the guilty doubts she must sometimes have had.
With great tact, she would let it be known that Kate was forcing a prostitute on society whom she was also debauching in private, and the results would be devastating.
Celine leaned forward. “The simplest method of nipping the rumours in the bud and protecting my good name is to win Lord Seaton’s public approval. It would give Lord Wroth the much harder task of tarnishing her as well, if he is to proceed with his plan.”
“No!” Kate burst out, horrified by images of Celine stopping Lord Seaton in the street.
“My God, no. Promise me you won’t attempt such a thing.
She’s no Lady Pecke, with a kindly nature one may take advantage of.
You saw how she treated a duke in public.
If you dare approach Lord Seaton, she will set you down, and that will do your reputation more damage than a hundred rumours.
We will have done Lord Wroth’s work for him. ”
Celine didn’t look entirely convinced but signalled that she understood.
“But we are getting ahead of ourselves,” Kate said impatiently.
“It doesn’t matter how depraved they think I am, or how embarrassed they are by having entertained you in good faith—none of my peers would disinherit me for it.
We wouldn’t have a nobility left if one were required to be morally pure. ”
“No, of course, that’s only the first assault. First the truth, then the fabrication. Very quickly the rumours will move on to accusations I’m a spy.”
The idea took her completely by surprise, and yet she felt immediately Celine was right. Treason had cast a long shadow over her life.
Celine confirmed it. “Lord Wroth intends to paint you with the brush of treason. Because your aunt died under suspicion of treason—and because I’m a loose woman—it won’t be as difficult as one would hope.”
She felt the first real stab of fear, then. If Celine were correct, the letter in Celine’s possession had just become a hundred times more dangerous. It would prove Lord Wroth’s point beyond doubt—beyond his wildest dreams—and guarantee him victory.
But he hadn’t yet taken any interest in Celine, or approached her.
“By these means, he will turn his bill into a referendum on your moral character, and equate voting against it with sympathy for treason. The issue of inheritance becomes irrelevant.” Celine said succinctly, “It’s going to work.”
It was all so clear and simple, the way Celine put it. Still, Kate said, “Let’s not grant him the victory quite yet. We’re still missing something. Would he really take everything from Lord Vespasian, his daughter and heir, just to get at me? No. We still don’t have the complete picture.”
Celine looked surprised and said, “He will have offered Richard his daughter’s hand.”
It took a moment for this to sink in, and when it did, Kate whispered in amazement, “Bloody hell. So Vespasian Wroth becomes the Duchess of Howard and puts a leash on Richard, taking the title in all but name. Lord Wroth passes the Wroth title to his younger son, and a generation down the line, Lord Wroth’s grandson becomes the Duke of Howard.
He takes both houses and destroys me in the bargain. ”
“Can you still doubt it?” Celine asked gently.
Kate pulled herself away from the awful, seductive rightness of it with some effort.
“But just because something sounds very neat, doesn’t make it true,” she said.
“I cannot believe Richard has thrown me over and put himself so wholly in Lord Wroth’s power.
I will not believe this of him, simply on the word of Royce.
I know you like her, Celine, but she has told worse lies about him in the past.”
Has she? a small, horrid voice asked. Or was she always telling you the truth? But she couldn’t let herself think what it would mean—how very much she’d got wrong—if Royce had been telling the truth.
“Then go,” Celine said simply. “Royce claims Richard is meeting with Lord Wroth as we speak. Richard will either be there, or he won’t.”