Chapter Thirty-Seven
Some correspondence from France was waiting for Kate when she returned home later that day from a meeting with the bank. Eagerly, she snatched it up.
Last night had been one of her bad nights.
She’d known that as soon as she woke, late and groggy, and saw the state of her bed.
But then she had seen Celine among the sheets, a crease on her brow even in sleep.
A tired, rumpled, impossibly beautiful angel, come to wrestle some kindness from Kate’s demons after all these years.
She had understood immediately this was why she had slept better and later than usual.
Why no headaches plagued her today. Instead, warmth hummed in her heart.
She didn’t let herself think of the other things that had happened—her hand on Celine, her name in Celine’s mouth—because then warmth turned to raging heat.
She had been so close to taking advantage of Celine, of doing irreparable damage.
But she had mastered herself. She had kept herself in check.
She was in a good mood. She felt lighter than she could ever remember feeling. Things had gone well at the bank, and now this anxiously awaited letter had arrived. She took the stairs two at a time and went to her study to open it.
The day Celine had gone to meet Lord Seaton at the library, she had held Kate’s future in her hands.
She had held it—and protected it. Burnished and improved it.
Kate wanted to show Celine she could do the same.
That the safest place for this important task—finding Louise alive and bringing her to Celine unharmed—was within Kate’s capable hands.
She tore open the letter, hoping it contained good news. She read it through, then sat slowly on the edge of her desk, staring at it without taking anything more in. Her mind spun.
The letter didn’t pertain to her search for Celine’s friend.
It was the result of an earlier investigation into Celine herself, which Kate had set in motion weeks before and since forgotten about.
It had arrived too late to have the impact she had originally intended—a way to break Celine’s hold on her—and so the blow landed squarely on her own heart.
According to this report, Celine had grown up in a village in the southern foothills of the Cévennes, home to a stubborn Protestant remnant. The village, which hadn’t had a name and now never would, had been deserted these past ten years, too poor to support any population.
Quickly Kate folded the letter and put it in her inner breast pocket, as though it were as dangerous as the letter Celine had in her possession and mustn’t fall into the wrong hands. As though it were tender, a bruise, and would hurt if she took it out again.
She couldn’t … couldn’t bring herself to believe it: Celine in the dirt, Celine taking in washing and sewing; Celine, the older sister of two much younger children, or perhaps it had been three, accounts were unclear, but records confirmed her mother had been incarcerated for a period of two years after Celine’s birth for being Protestant.
She thought of Celine’s childish cry: You left me. Her hands began to shake.
Kate had always thought Celine the daughter of a gentleman, fallen into prostitution by one of the usual paths.
But she hadn’t even been anything so grand as the daughter of a labourer.
A peasant! Living in mediaeval poverty in a house that was a single room with a dirt floor.
She couldn’t begin to picture the breadth of Celine’s experiences.
How had that anonymous child in her anonymous village become a woman who understood the goal of Lord Pecke’s bill where none other had?
Who had effortlessly insinuated herself into the highest levels of English society, winning herself the protection of the grand matron Lord Seaton and Her Grace the Duke of Howard?
It seemed that when she was nine or ten, Celine had joined the household of a clockmaker in Paris, whose name she still used.
What must that sudden change have felt like to her?
Was it in being wrenched from all she knew into a loud, bright, modern world that the changes in her had been wrought?
Or had she been born with all those qualities she possessed?
This single bright soul, lovingly fashioned, then thrown carelessly down to earth with all the others. And Kate had found her.
Most of the houses Celine used to frequent with M.
Genet were shut up now, the families fleeing or dead.
But Kate’s agents reported finding accounts of Celine in letters and from other tradesmen who had known M.
Genet. Celine was spoken of as a charming girl who was universally adored, to a degree that marked her out.
What desperation, what ambition, what … circumstances must have driven this small child to ingratiate herself so thoroughly with the adults she encountered? To learn so thoroughly how to be what was most pleasing?
Kate thought of Celine saying exactly what would most please her. I adore you. I love you. I love you. The letter, over Kate’s heart, ached and ached. She covered it with her hand. A soft knock came at the door.
“Enter,” she said.
The door opened, then closed. It took some moments for the silence that followed to penetrate her thoughts. “Well?” she said, and looked up.
Celine stood just inside the door, watching her. She had been so caught up in contemplation of this woman as a child and a young woman, it was almost painful to see her in the flesh. Beautiful and knowing, her witch-green eyes languid.
As though she had never mastered herself, as though no time had passed, she remembered gripping Celine’s waist. She had been pulling Celine to her. They had been going to touch, their bodies coming together. Celine had said, I want.
She pulled herself harshly into check.
She had found this single bright soul, and now it would be her privilege to see it set in the exquisite manner it deserved.
Celine would be a viscountess. Rich beyond imagining.
She would be cherished. Adored. She would belong in the best company, without a single scandalous whisper attached to her name.
Kate would not wreck it. She had more self-control now than when she was twelve.
It seemed for a moment that Celine might say something of great importance, as though she intuited the tenor of Kate’s thoughts. But when at last Celine spoke, it was perfectly ordinary. Domestic, even.
“The dancing instructor, Mr. Forsyth, has arrived,” Celine said. “I was sent to fetch you down.”
Now that she knew what to listen for, she had thought she might detect a hint of Celine’s peasant past in her speech. But there was none, just as Celine’s English was rapidly becoming flawless.
Kate smiled warmly and stood. “Then allow me to escort you downstairs.”
She turned a deaf ear to her heart, the way she would have to an unwanted visitor pounding on the door.