Chapter Twenty-Eight
The next time Celine woke it was daylight, and the flowers were different but even more numerous. The duke, occupying the same chair beside the bed, very correctly wore a coat and cravat, and her hair was brushed elegantly back. Her lashes were down, eyes hidden from view.
Celine started up, and cards slid off the bedcover onto the floor, the neat columns of a game of patience falling willy-nilly. The duke started laughing.
“I was winning,” the duke said. “How are you?”
“Poorly,” Celine croaked. “Someone was using my sickbed as a card table.”
The duke’s sculpted lips parted around a gasp. “How rude. I hope you tipped his cards onto the floor.”
Celine looked down at the cards scattered by the duke’s feet, blank white backs and colourful face cards interspersed with number cards. She tried not to smile but was dismayed to find the urge too powerful to resist. She fell back on her pillow and buried the smile inside her elbow.
She heard the duke get up and move about the room. She lowered her arm a fraction and watched.
The duke stood at a side table with her back to Celine, working on something.
She had the ideal proportions to set off a gentleman’s clothing.
Broad in the shoulders for a woman, tapering at the waist. Her legs long and powerful, feet planted with purpose, allowing for the slight sway of her hips as she bent closer to her task.
Her thick, pale hair cut in a V above her high collars.
Even with her back turned, the leashed power in her was unmistakeable, the confidence and unconscious grace of every movement.
Why on earth was she here? It made no more sense today than it had yesterday.
She turned, and Celine ducked back down.
“Come out of hiding and drink your medicine, there’s a good girl,” the duke said.
Celine lowered her elbow and met the duke’s bright, amused eyes. She pulled a face.
“I am not above forcing you to swallow it,” the duke said, sitting, “so don’t even think of spitting it out.”
The medicine was foul. She might indeed have spat it out had it not been for the expression on the duke’s face, which promised the duke would follow through on her threat at the slightest provocation.
Celine swallowed, and her mouth opened on an entirely involuntary “Blergh,” expressing its disgust and, too late, its rejection. She guzzled down the hot tea the duke passed her a moment later and eyed with trepidation the bowl of broth the duke held at the ready.
“How did you know when I would wake up?” she asked, touching the empty teacup to her cheek. The porcelain was warmed through. “The tea’s still warm.”
“I didn’t,” the duke said. “I’ve had the servants bring fresh tea and broth every quarter hour since ten o’clock.”
Wide-eyed, Celine glanced at the clock. It was going on one-thirty.
“I’m sure they … were happy to oblige,” she said faintly.
For the first time, she noticed that between the vases of flowers, plates loaded with sweets had appeared.
Good Lord, when a duke with all the money and resources in the world at her disposal put her mind to looking after someone, it was truly mind-boggling what that duke might do.
The duke frowned, as though the suggestion of servants liking or not liking the tasks they were asked to perform were nonsensical, and held out the first spoon of broth. Celine looked from it to the duke’s serious brow, then gave in with a terrified rush of warmth.
It was even more confusing than last time.
Why was the duke the one mixing her medicine, feeding her broth? Why not send the servants who had cared for Celine during the worst of her illness? Why not call on the services of Lady Pecke, her soon-to-be mother-in-law, for that matter?
The letter, she reminded herself. The duke has a personal motivation to see me well that is unmatched. But the thought wasn’t entirely convincing.
After she had eaten, the duke rang for a bath, entertaining Celine with idle card tricks until it arrived. Then, and only then, did she bow herself out.
A FEW DAYS later, the duke was reading to her. Celine had bathed and eaten, and now was dozing a little while she listened. Sunlight shone down from the high window in dense, sparkling silence. The air was an elixir she took into her resting body. Suddenly, she sat bolt upright.
“This is a dirty novel!”
The duke raised her brows and said in a perplexed voice, “Whatever are you talking about? This one gentleman simply wishes to inspect this other gentleman’s back door, in the manner of a carpenter or a—”
“A sodomite, you wretch.”
The duke began to laugh—lips whose sharp contours had been scraped from clay with the side of a knife, the slow curve that revealed the duke’s teeth: hard and sharp, her canines long, like a fistful of knives. A mouth made for gnashing and devouring.
And close enough that she could lean forward and lick it. And smiling, tender.
She couldn’t stand it. She grabbed one of her pillows and began beating the duke with it, which only made the duke laugh more, arms held above her head.
“Stop,” the duke cried, and then more calmly, “Stop, Celine, I don’t wish to see you overtax yourself.”
Celine sat back in a huff. “You won’t let me go farther than the garden, and that for no more than twenty minutes—”
“You did nearly swoon the first time, to be fair. Only my arm kept you from—”
“You won’t let me eat the sweets Lord Seaton sent. Indeed, while we’re on the topic, you won’t let Lord Seaton visit me—”
“I have told you, the bridge is drawn up.”
She felt, but would never admit to, the warm security of knowing she need see no one and go nowhere until Lord Seaton’s ball in three weeks.
“The castle walls are secure while I recover, yes, you have said, but perhaps if you would let me eat anything more substantial than— One cannot subsist on tea and broth and pornography alone, you know.”
The duke laughed and closed the book. “I simply wanted to remind you there are still some small pleasures worth living for.”
Well, that was sobering. “Was it as bad as all that?”
The duke’s face changed. “There was a day or two,” she said carefully, “when you were rather poorly. It … displeased me.”
Celine shivered, thinking of Mathilde’s body on the floor, of the way a body died.
She wondered suddenly what had happened to the other two women who had lived with them in the garret room, Louise and Marie, and couldn’t think why the question hadn’t occurred to her before.
The last time she saw them, Marie had been offering herself to the undertaker, begging him to take Mathilde’s corpse away.
Mathilde had been dead two days already, going on three.
She could see the two women so clearly, like the image had been right there this whole time, close, waiting for her to look. They’d been pale and exhausted. Drawn and almost skeletal. Looked like you’d catch something if you touched them. And still, the undertaker had been interested.
Celine had walked out the door then and there with nothing but a coat, a letter, and the Duke of Howard’s ring.
Louise and Marie hadn’t possessed any such treasures. There had been no path of escape for them. One or both would be dead by now.
The duke was holding her hand and gently rubbing it.
Celine was warm. She was safe. She was in London, in a room full of flowers, and sweets she wasn’t allowed to eat, with an English duke who hadn’t left her side in days.
“Don’t cry,” the duke said quietly, “my dear little friend, don’t cry.
You will make the gentlemen and their interesting back door feel so awfully wretched. ”
She smiled through her tears and pushed the duke’s shoulder. Her hand lingered. Such warm strength. She felt it beside her when they took their daily turn about the garden. Strength she could rely on. Lean on.
A warm hand came suddenly around hers. The duke lifted Celine’s hand away, then pressed her face into it for a moment, eyes closed.
Not a kiss, but enough to make Celine think, stunned, The duke tried to kiss me.
It came back to her. Standing in the green parlour downstairs, the duke’s feral eyes locked on hers, the duke’s mouth pressing a passionate kiss into her palm.
Her scalp constricted sharply. The duke’s eyes met hers for a bare moment before looking away. The duke folded Celine’s hand neatly into a fist and put it down on the covers. Prim and proper, like a butler folding napkins.
“Perhaps I can find something a little more improving for the mind,” the duke said mildly, standing, “and less liable to make you cry. I’ll go down to the library and return shortly.”
“No,” Celine said, her voice coming out a mere rasp.
The duke’s eyes were hooded, suddenly unreadable.
Celine cleared her throat and tried again.
“No, don’t bring another novel. You may invite Mr. Shaw to join you in my room and discuss the matters that need your attention.
I assume he will suffer an aneurysm if you make him wait any longer? ”
The duke seemed to freeze, giving no response.
“Forgive me, will you require Miss Everett as well?” Celine asked. “She’s welcome to join you.”
Slowly, colour infused the duke’s high cheeks. “Thank you, Celine,” she said, not meeting Celine’s eye. Ghostly remembrance brushed over Celine’s skin. “I should have known you would— That is, it’s very like you to realise what must be done. I’ll call for Shaw now.”
Shaw, predictably, was ready with a stack of correspondence and folders enough to require four footmen to carry them all in.
The small writing desk disappeared. Miss Everett insisted the duke was due a haircut.
Mr. Hill required an audience regarding some household business, and the housekeeper came soon after.
And so, Celine’s bedroom became the most crowded room in the house, where all the day’s business was conducted.