Chapter Thirty-Eight
Celine was busy. When she wasn’t in one of the endless dress fittings overseen by Margot, she was chasing down Shaw for information, or dancing with the duke, or keeping up her correspondence that had, frankly, grown a little out of hand (the spectacles had arrived, at last).
In the evenings she sat up late, gossiping in English with Adele.
But busier still was her mind, formulating its plan.
There was a war in Kate Howard between love and fear, and Celine intended to give love a reason to win. The duke had once tried to kiss her, despite her insalubrious past and standing, and despite a terrible blackmail, which proved the duke could overcome any qualm—given enough inducement.
The obvious place to start was the letter.
Not as a means of forcing the duke into marriage—the very idea was disturbing. But as a gift. As her dowry. A sweet bribe to take what the duke already wanted.
She had a physical advantage as well. The duke wanted her every bit as much as she wanted the duke, a raw attraction she could use.
After some thought, she decided to make her bid for the duke at Lord Seaton’s ball: a perfect setting.
It was the event of the season, and she was to be the guest of honour.
She would look ravishing. The entire evening would be a persuasive argument: I can belong here with you, in your world.
See how they celebrate and adore me? Make me your wife.
She put down her pen, abandoning the letter she’d been writing, and brushed her lips. They were sensitive, as though she had spent three whole days kissing Kate. Her lips, all animal, wanted to kiss.
She stood with a curse, the chair juddering across the floor. She took her unfinished cup of tea and nursed it, staring down into the fire.
She had been writing to Lord Burnley, telling him in the gentlest possible language that she could not receive his addresses at the ball.
But the closer the ball came, the harder it was to concentrate on anything other than the event she felt certain was also drawing closer.
She and Kate, promised to one another. The duke promising to be hers for a lifetime.
The kissing, afterwards. And not only kissing.
She couldn’t explain her certainty. It was as though after seeing the true shape of the duke’s hesitations, the whole picture had begun to come clear, going back to the night they’d first met.
But the picture didn’t only encompass the past—it went before her as well.
There was an inevitability to it, a weight, and she knew how the events of the ball would unfold.
The night would be a seduction, from start to finish.
The duke would be struck speechless by the gown she and Margot had dreamed up, for which the duke’s own evening dress would be a perfect match.
The first unconscious collusion. She would sit beside the duke in the carriage and flirt with her, touch her, make the necessity of parting when the carriage arrived at Lord Seaton’s house a pleasurable pain.
During dinner the duke would be seated by her, and she would give the duke the first taste of what it would be like, socially, to have Celine Genet for a wife.
And then the minuet: the slow, maddening dance in and out of each other’s orbit, barely touching before they must part again.
She shivered, imagining what the duke would do when the duke first saw her in brilliant candlelight.
She thought there was a fairly good chance the duke would kiss her then and there, onlookers be damned, propriety be damned.
And as soon as the duke could get her in private, the duke would propose. Marry me, be mine, I love you.
A knock startled her out of her furious soothsaying.
She blinked, coming back to her sitting room and the pale, dreary light of an ordinary day.
The less handsome footman came to stand just inside the door.
“A woman’s asking for an audience, miss.
” There was something sceptical in his voice. “She says you’re expecting her.”
It was early in the day for visitors, and she couldn’t think who it might be. Perhaps Lady Florence Morton had grown impatient with their correspondence and decided to storm the castle? Celine wouldn’t put it past her. She waved the footman on, and he admitted the visitor.
Celine’s cup dropped to the carpet from nerveless fingers. The tea would stain, she thought distantly. She would have to ask someone to treat it as soon as possible, or the stain would never come out.
The woman who had entered was tall, pale, and very thin.
Her hair was scraped back into a bun, and she clutched a knotted cloth before her that likely held all her worldly possessions.
She looked extremely unwell. No wonder the footman had been sceptical.
Her eyes were fixed on Celine, dark and resentful.
Is this what I looked like? The thought was incredibly painful.
“Louise,” she whispered.
She didn’t quite know how it happened, but a moment later Louise had dropped her bundle and they were in the centre of the room, in each other’s arms. Louise’s arms were thin and strong, and Celine buried her face in Louise’s neck.
She tried to get even closer as she sobbed and held the woman she’d thought was dead.
Somehow, against all the odds, Louise had survived.
The world had thrown her away, and she’d refused to die.
A distant part of Celine thought, incredulous, You didn’t even like her.
But she was deep in the experience of her body, the warm, shuddering happiness.
The tears and the vulnerable laughter when at last they looked at each other and Louise ran her thumb beneath Celine’s eye, and more tears rushed in.
“I thought you were dead,” she said at last. “Marie is dead, did you know? How have you survived? I’ll call for food.
You must be starving. Tea, as well. My God, Louise.
” She held Louise’s face and looked at her.
It was almost frightening how familiar she was.
Celine knew her smell, knew the tightness around her eyes that meant Louise was going to start taking issue with all sorts of annoying little details no one had any control over.
She knew her. “Forgive me, I—I hardly know what I’m saying. Come, sit. I’ll ring for food.”
Louise sat, dirty and tired, almost swaying.
Celine rang for tea and food—too much food, she knew, even as she ordered it.
She was remembering her first breakfast in this house.
The idea that she had once been like Louise—closer to death than life in a way that was strongly off-putting—kept coming back to frighten her.
And yet the duke had seen her like this.
The duke knew her like this, and still loved her.
She sat beside Louise and clasped her hand. “You’ll stay here with me, of course. You can go out for work when you’re ready, or spend the rest of your days idle on my coin. I don’t care. Just say you’ll stay.”
Louise nodded and squeezed her hand back.
The footmen brought in tea, cakes, sandwiches, soup, and a meat pie. The more handsome footman stole curious glances at their tearstained faces.
She poured herself a fresh hot cup of tea and went to stand by the window to allow Louise the privacy she herself had longed for the first few times she ate a proper meal.
Down below, the gardener moved slowly along the border hedge with his shears, and beyond, the river was restored to its noisy flow.
Louise’s arrival felt like a blessing, like a sign. It was the only thing she could have wished for to make her happiness more perfect. Her blessed good fortune would now be shared. She could offer Louise safe harbour, as no one had been free to offer it to her.
“You can taste that the butter they used in this pastry had already started to turn,” Louise said peevishly. “It’s sour and lingers in the mouth.”
Celine broke into a smile. How she preferred a world with Louise’s unpleasantness in it!
She returned and sat with Louise. “I’ll let the pastry chef know.” She wouldn’t. “Here, have the soup instead.” She couldn’t help touching Louise again, stroking her hair. Louise pushed her head into the caress and for a moment, they were silent.
“Was it the duke’s agent who found you?” Celine asked. The duke had said she would keep looking until they knew for sure whether Louise was dead, though Celine had been convinced it was pointless. Gratitude squeezed painfully into her heart.
Louise nodded, and fresh tears began to fall from her eyes.
“The woman who found me was real rough around the edges, she scared me. At first I thought she wanted a fuck and I was so grateful. That was two days ago.” Louise looked away sharply, as though the idea of two days ago was too painful to share. Celine squeezed her hand.
Louise frowned suddenly, then looked up at Celine with exhausted eyes. “She didn’t work for a duke, though. She was a friend of yours.”
Likely the duke had kept her own name out of it, not wishing to arouse any more interest than necessary. “It’s not important. Here, I’ll pour you some tea, and then I’ll ring for a bath and have a room prepared for you.”
Louise gripped her hand. “No, but your friend said you would wish to thank her in person. She insisted. She wouldn’t shut up about it, even when I was vomiting into the Channel.”
“Don’t worry about it. The duke will pay enough for all the thanks in the world.”
“Celine, stop being difficult! She didn’t want to be paid.
She found me as a favour to you, and all she asked in return was that you thank her.
” Louise stood and said in a thin, shrill voice, “Shall I go back to the harbour? Find return passage on my back? It’s obvious you don’t want me here.
You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve been through, what it cost me to come here, but you can’t even stir yourself to give a measly little word of thanks! ”
Celine went cold, as Louise’s miraculous appearance took on an altogether more sinister cast. If the duke’s agent in Paris hadn’t found Louise, then who had? “What was the name of this friend?”
Louise sat again, limp and listless. “Oh, what was it? I can’t be expected to remember. I was so sick on the way over, Celine, so sick.”
She was real rough around the edges, she scared me.
“It wasn’t…” But it was, she already knew it was. “The name wasn’t Markham, was it?”
“Yes!” Louise said in a relieved rush of air. “That was it. Markham found me. You always treat what I say with such suspicion, but you see, you do know her after all. You will thank her, won’t you? You won’t make a liar out of me? I told her you would.”
She thought, stupidly, of the duke. The tender and playful care the duke had shown her during her convalescence, how the duke had spun her round and round the ballroom, making her laugh, the arguments, the nightmares, their one glorious trip to the countryside.
How they had held hands in bed while the duke told Celine what she’d never told anyone. How that was all done now.
“Yes, Louise,” she said. “Don’t fret. Of course I will.”
Twenty minutes later, as she was leaving, she stopped to throw her letter to Lord Burnley into the fire.