Chapter Thirty-Four
The dancing instructor was appointed, a Mr. John Forsyth.
He was a priggish gentleman who had a mania for anatomy, correct form, and propriety in young people of both sexes.
Kate, who had volunteered herself as Celine’s partner for the lessons, was vastly amused to find Mr. Forsyth considered her to come under this latter category.
“How old do you think our Mr. Forsyth?” she murmured, as she and Celine promenaded up an imaginary line of couples, their joined hands raised high. “Seventy? Seventy-five?”
They parted, then came back together as part of an imagined group of four, clasping hands in the middle, and skipping—“Elegant feet, if you please!”—in a circle.
“Hush,” Celine murmured, flicking an inscrutable look up from under her lashes. “He’s twenty-eight at the very most.”
They changed direction.
Kate grinned. “You must be mistaken. He called me young lady just now.”
“Proper young persons do not converse in a foreign language,” Mr. Forsyth snapped.
Kate and Celine stepped back from one another and began clapping in time to the tune Shaw was banging out on the pianoforte.
“No clapping, if you please, it is most vulgar.”
“Do you think he’s snippety,” she said at a perfectly normal volume, “because he understands French, or because he doesn’t?”
“Duke,” Celine said repressively, but Kate saw the smile in the jut of her gorgeous upper lip. Celine had been like this for days. Difficult to engage. Distracted. Kate would see that smile full-blown.
“Is he a young man who dreams he is old, or an old man who dreams he is young?”
“You have bastardised the Chinese fable about the man and the butterfly.”
“Forgive me, you are correct. I should have asked, is he a bastard or a butterfly?”
There. The smile slipped loose for a moment before it was brought back under control. Kate wanted to suck that whole lip into her mouth. She wanted Celine alone and under her. Writhing, wet, blushes all the way down her body.
“Stop, stop!” Mr. Forsyth called, and it all came to a jangling halt: the music, the clapping, the conversation, and the heated, inappropriate daydream.
Ever since the day of the outing, Kate hadn’t been able to keep her thoughts out of the gutter.
The feeling Celine was distracted, at some remove, only made Kate’s dangerous fantasies of possessing her more intense.
Mr. Forsyth planted his brow in his hand, as though at a loss.
“We will move on to the next dance,” he said at last. “Apollo turn’d shepherd. ”
Kate snorted.
“Snorting is unladylike,” said Mr. Forsyth. “Form up opposite one another again.”
Kate did as she was told. She was supposed to be in a meeting with the office of the Exchequer, and after that with the prime minister and the home secretary, all of whom were annoyed at being called in during Easter recess.
They were all going to have to wait. There was nothing she would rather do this afternoon, or any afternoon, than be wherever Celine was, doing whatever Celine was doing.
Time was slipping through her hands. It was only ten days until the Demi Lux, when she would be obliged to give Celine into Lord Burnley’s care.
She tried not to think about it too much, because the jealousy she felt when she thought of Burnley proposing to Celine and securing her for his life’s companion was so powerful it sickened her.
A physical nausea that bent her towards violence.
Even while she was in Celine’s company, as now, she felt wretched with longing.
Suddenly she couldn’t stand the polite distance. The weeks of Celine’s convalescence, with all its small intimacies and proofs of trust, had been some of the happiest of her life. She wasn’t going to waste what little time she had left.
She strode forward and took Celine in her arms. Celine startled, an objection forming on her lips even as her eyes deepened.
She should be smiling, laughing. Kate would banish every blot and shadow.
She led Celine into a sudden series of energetic turns, spinning double-time around the room.
Mr. Forsyth squawked loudly about propriety, and Shaw started playing a boisterous country tune, as though this were one of the public houses he and his barrister brother frequented.
The physical exhilaration was impossible to resist, and the caution in Celine’s body gave way to merriment.
She matched Kate step for step. Her lips softened into a smile, then a laugh.
The relief of being close to her and making her happy was intoxicating. She looked well. Her cheeks were filling out and the rosy flush in them was of health, not fever. Her hair was glossy, her eyes sparkling.
This physical vitality had been missing in the week before Celine collapsed, despite all Celine had done and achieved in those early days in London.
Now it was so obviously a hallmark of her as a person, a unique characteristic, that it seemed stupid Kate could have thought she had the full picture of Celine before.
Always, there was something new to see, a new facet of Celine to understand.
Celine wasn’t a painted portrait. She could be known only over time—for best effect, over a lifetime.
What would she be like with the maturity and experience of a woman of fifty?
Or the empathetic compromises of a woman of eighty, looking ahead to her final years?
But here she was in Kate’s arms, still young and full of energy, still with so much life ahead of her.
Kate slowed their movement, sliding her hand up to cup the back of Celine’s head. She leaned down and whispered, “Celine. I’m so glad you’re still here.” The simple truth seared through her. “Thank you for not dying.”
She felt a swooning heaviness enter Celine’s body.
She moved quickly back before Celine could feel the tension and heat that would give her own shameful response away and spun Celine out beneath her arm, then stepped back with a flourishing bow.
She had promised herself she would give Celine the world—and this time she was going to deliver the world intact, carefully, without breaking anything.
Celine stumbled back a little, her skirts swaying around her. She was red-cheeked and breathing hard.
The sight filled Kate with guilty concern. Had she been pushing Celine too hard?
Celine fell suddenly into a curtsey so that Kate could no longer read the expression on her face. When she straightened, she looked composed, her cheeks returned to their normal, healthy colour.
Kate breathed a sigh of relief. “Shall I ask Mr. Forsyth’s opinion of debutantes dancing the waltz?” she asked in a light, teasing tone. She was strong enough to do this. “I’m sure he shall have something rational to say on the matter.”
“So long,” Celine rejoined pertly, “as you also ask him whether a debutante may ever lead.”
CELINE WAS IN agony. Celine was going out of her goddamn mind. An afternoon in the duke’s arms, basking in her playful attention, was torture. And she was still no closer to knowing whether a future with the duke was possible.
After days of deep thought and careful observation, she had come to two conclusions.
The first was that the duke was not immune to her.
In fact, she had come to believe the duke felt something close to her own infatuation and had even let herself cautiously imagine this had been the reason the duke nursed her through her illness.
The second was that there was a powerful obstacle that kept the duke from pursuing her.
There was an invisible line between them beyond which the duke refused to step: like when the duke had uttered those insane words, Thank you for not dying, and she had not been able to help moving towards the duke—and the duke had pulled back.
Most likely the obstacle was the letter. Not only Celine’s possession of it, but that Celine had threatened the duke with it. Certainly, she would never forgive such a thing. How could she dream the duke might one day trust her, or freely love her?
“Celine.” The way the duke spoke her name—the sudden change in her tone from playful to private—pulled her out of her reverie.
The duke’s gloved hand was on her bare arm. Her body was sensitised from an afternoon in the duke’s company, but for all it sent thrills through her, the touch was impersonal, and the duke’s eyes were dark and sober.
“Some correspondence came for me this morning, I wanted to tell you. I’m so sorry, I—”
And suddenly, she knew. The heat leached out of the afternoon.
“They’re dead, aren’t they? Louise and Marie. They died as well.” She didn’t even know why she’d asked the duke to look. Of course they were dead. She’d left them nearly two months ago in Paris, arguing with the undertaker over Mathilde’s corpse, and things would only have worsened for them since.
The duke said, “I have the testimony of the man who buried Marie, and her landlady’s testimony as well. The description and circumstances match what you told me.”
Landlady was clearly a polite euphemism. She looked down and saw her gloves lying on the floor. She must have pulled them off. “And Louise?”
“The gravedigger mentions a second woman the landlady wanted him to bury, but she couldn’t afford to pay him for both. The landlady herself only mentions one. I’ll write again.”
There was no use. The second body would be Louise. Celine hadn’t even particularly liked either of the women. “No, don’t—”
“Celine,” the duke said very gently, and clasped her hand. “I’ll write again.”
She looked up, unable to speak.
The truth was that she should be dead as well. It had been almost certain, except for the ring she’d never sold and the letter she’d kept hidden. With those two artefacts, she had bought herself a stay of execution—and she would be able to live out the rest of her days in luxury.
Except, she thought, looking up at the duke, tall and powerful and intent, it was all for nothing. She no longer wanted everything she had bought for herself. She only wanted this.
The duke took Celine’s face lightly in her hands, stroking, searching. “My dear little friend, what is it? Is something more troubling you?”
Please have me, she thought senselessly, the words moving through her whole body.
Please have me. Please. Her heart was breaking with longing.
She very nearly spoke then, but a deep, calm voice within urged caution.
She didn’t yet understand the obstacle in her path.
It might be impossible for the duke to hear what was in her heart.
She had done nothing to prepare the way.
If she spoke of marriage now, and the duke was horrified, or cold, or sorry, or embarrassed, she wouldn’t get her chance back.
“It’s nothing,” she said, and forced a smile to her lips. “I am well.”