Chapter Thirty-Nine
Celine stood before Wroth House, a subdued figure in a servant’s hat and cloak.
The grey stone facade that loomed over her was so old it had the texture of hoary dragon hide, marked with slitted windows and bookended by two blunt towers.
Directly before her was the dark maw of the gate—a long stone passage with a workmanlike arch scored by grooves where a portcullis once would have been let down.
In the end, it had been simple to leave Howard House unquestioned and come to Wroth House unobserved.
Before, she had imagined introducing Louise to the duke in the manner of introducing the only kind of family she had left to the woman she loved. But the rude shock of Markham’s involvement had put an end to that. A bucket of cold water to wake her from a fever dream.
In fact, she felt amazed that she could have entertained such an idea. Introduce the dirty, unpleasant, uneducated Louise, fresh from the streets of Paris, to the most powerful woman in Britain? As though such an introduction would be anything other than a mortification to all concerned?
She knew she had felt secure this morning, as though love had made a place for her, but she could no longer recall the feeling. It was an insanity that had passed. She didn’t belong, and Markham knew it.
It might have been simple to leave Howard House unquestioned, but it had not been easy. The price had been the tender feelings of Adele, the red-haired maid who had been so kind, and sweet, and accepting from Celine’s first morning in her new life.
But her new life had been stripped from her, and she couldn’t risk the smallest rumour making its way back to Kate about a French woman visiting her.
Kate and Louise must never meet. And so, she had sought out Mr. Hill, the steward, and apprised him of her plans to hire a new French lady’s maid.
In fact, this very hour she was conducting her first interview and would allow a hopeful young woman to accompany her to the library on a trial basis.
The duke wouldn’t be bothered with news of a potential hire, but it would get back to Adele soon enough.
The tender feelings of one maid would pale in comparison to what was to come, but Celine still felt sick about it.
At the library, she and Louise swapped hats and cloaks, much to Louise’s delight.
Louise wouldn’t be returning to Howard House with her; the young Frenchwoman would prove entirely unsatisfactory as a lady’s maid.
(This much, at least, was true.) She would find Louise lodgings this afternoon and pay for it with the generous allowance Kate gave her.
What other choice did she have? She had no money of her own.
But for now, she left Louise dozing in a shaft of sunlight and made her way to Wroth House.
She approached the pair of footmen standing to attention before the spiked iron gate. She was expected. One of the footmen showed her through.
Inside the passage it was cold, untouched by the warm spring weather. The footman called a greeting through a low doorway halfway along, and as Celine passed, she caught a glimpse of two rough-looking men playing cards in a small room where a fire burned in the hearth.
The passageway opened suddenly into a grassy courtyard, surrounded on every side by more of the utilitarian stone walls and towers of Wroth House.
“This way, miss,” the footman murmured, tripping up a set of smooth, worn steps and ducking through a doorway.
Celine found herself in a whitewashed hall with ceilings so high a tree could have comfortably grown inside.
Rich tapestries covered two of the walls, and the immaculate flagstone floors were carpeted.
Despite these furnishings, it was so cold Celine could see her breath; a deep hearth, where three whole deer would once have been roasted side-by-side, was empty.
She had the uncanny feeling she’d gone six hundred years back in time.
She passed quickly through the hall on the heels of the footman into a much smaller parlour. For furniture, it had only a desk and one chair. The narrow window—at least six feet deep—had no glass.
At the desk, looking brutish and piratical and somehow even more frightening in the light of day, sat Markham. She looked up and dismissed the footman.
There was nowhere for Celine to sit.
“You got my message,” Markham said.
Celine had forgotten—or memory had blunted—the painful rasp of Markham’s voice.
“I did. You wanted my thanks? You have them, without reserve. Thank you for finding Louise alive.”
A small, disconcerted silence followed, then Markham’s muscular mouth pursed. “I neither want nor require your thanks.”
Celine shrugged. She was grateful.
“Miss Genet, I must be sure you understand fully the danger you are in. I not only know the truth about your past—a past that would mortify the society upon which you have forced yourself—I have brought back a witness to prove it, this friend of yours. In Paris I also obtained more than twenty notarised statements from people who knew you, and knew of or witnessed your trade.”
“That wasn’t necessary. I have no intention of disavowing Louise, or somehow getting rid of her.”
She had been surprised to discover in herself that she wouldn’t pay that price—not for the duke’s future, and not for her own. Louise had been sent to her not as a miracle, but as a warning. But still, Louise had been sent to her.
Markham raised a sceptical brow, as good as to say I won’t take your word for it.
“What about Lord Seaton?” she asked. The shield she had won for herself. The grand matron of society, who had claimed Celine as her own.
“Don’t hold out any hope from that quarter. If I expose the truth about your past, Lord Seaton will feel the consequences. She lied for you, and perpetrated your sins against society.”
“I see.” She was quiet for a moment, absorbing the confirmation of all that she had feared. “Then what is it you want?”
She felt a ghastly echo, a remembrance of the duke saying those very words to her, not so long ago. There had always been other ways for the fateful echoes and repetitions between her and the duke to play out. Some of those ways ended very badly indeed.
Markham leaned forward on her elbows, her gold rings flashing, her single eye flaring with interest. The proceedings until now, Celine saw, had been delivered with an almost bored pragmatism. Threats and blackmail, all in a day’s work.
This—what Markham wanted from her in return—was different. It was personal.
“The hold you have over the duke is something devastating. She wouldn’t have launched you on society for anything less.”
She had known it was coming, but still her heart sank. It all came back to that bloody letter.
Markham rasped, “I want it.”
Celine turned away and wandered aimlessly to the window, knowing her choices were very limited and none of them good.
“What is the nature of your hold on the duke?” Markham asked, the quivering interest even more pronounced. Here was the bloodhound running down its mark. “What did you discover? It was to do with a French lieutenant, wasn’t it, and her aunt’s act of treason?”
Celine hadn’t forgotten that behind the bloodhound was its master, holding the leash. This was but a weaker reflection of the Earl of Wroth’s unhealthy interest in the duke.
Hedging, she said, “It’s only a letter.”
Markham had stood. There was a zealous light in her eye.
“A letter? I was astonished to come across the name Bastien du Ponte in Paris, in relation to yourself. He was a childhood friend of Kate Howard’s.
She did it, didn’t she? She framed her aunt for treason, and this letter you found among du Ponte’s things proves it. ”
Celine tried not to let Markham see how the accuracy of this guess startled her. It seemed Lord Wroth knew far more about the duke’s past than the duke realised. Enough to suspect the shape of events. And the moment Celine handed Markham the letter, Lord Wroth would know for sure.
This malice was what the duke had always feared from Celine—a fear that had given Celine everything she asked for.
Suddenly, though she knew better, she asked, “What if I refuse?” Idiot. There was no escape that way.
Without batting an eyelid, Markham said, “Lord Vespasian Wroth will take your friend from the library, straight to tea with the Prince of Wales.”
The casual admission that she had been watched and followed, that Markham knew where Louise was, made her blood run cold. It was a reminder that while she faced this crisis alone, Markham had all the power and resources of the Wroth family behind her.
Markham went on. “The Duke of Howard and Lord Seaton will both be socially ruined and shortly afterwards I will accuse you of spying, the duke of treason, and come Tuesday, my father’s bill will pass its second reading in the House of Lords. The result is the same.”
An awful silence descended. She could hear the blood beating in her ears. It was the plan they had thwarted when she won over Lord Seaton. With Louise as proof of Celine’s past, Lord Wroth now had the means to see it through.
Markham’s voice dropped to a growl. “There is no saving the duke from what is coming for her, Miss Genet. It is a reckoning that has been owed for a long time. The only person you can save is yourself.”
Celine didn’t need to be told that. She had spent a lifetime saving herself.
“I can’t give you the letter,” Celine said, “until I have what I want from the duke.”
The words tasted like ash in her mouth.
“Miss Genet, you are in no position to make demands!”
“I disagree. You have the very real power to expose and ruin me socially, but if I give you what you are asking for, you will use it to destroy the duke. In which case I am also left with nothing.” She said acerbically, “Perhaps I would rather annoy you, if I’m to be ruined either way.”
Markham sat back down and waved impatiently, her goal in sight. “You shall have the thirty thousand pounds I once promised you, you have my word.”
Celine scoffed. “It is marriage I want, not money. I thought you would have realised that by now.”
“Then I will—” Markham began, but Celine raised her hand.
She looked Markham up and down, then said with the merest hint of a sneer, “Marry a bastard? No, I don’t think so.”
A dark blush suffused those high cheeks, and Markham ground her jaw. Through her teeth she said, “That was not the offer I was going to make.”
“You’ve heard rumours of my forthcoming engagement,” Celine said, all at once dropping the petty game of baiting Markham.
That was the impulse of a broken heart. “Let me have my debut. Let me have the Demi Lux. Lord Burnley is to offer for me at the ball, and once I am engaged to him, my future is assured. Then, whatever you do to the duke cannot touch me.”
Her mind was still furiously working, trying to find some other solution, some other way of getting them all out of the trap unharmed.
But she had already thought through every possibility and understood, clear-eyed, that this was the only path forward for her if she didn’t want to lose everything.
If she wanted to keep Louise. If she wanted a life that sustained her.
Markham had outplayed her, and there was no possible future without harm.
Markham sat back, studying her from that single hooded eye. It was a look Celine had received many times in her life: Markham had expected this to be easier.
“As I have said, my father’s bill is being read in Parliament on Tuesday, the morning after Lord Seaton’s ball,” Markham said. “I need the letter before the lords convene. It doesn’t leave much of a window.”
With the shocking revelation of the letter, Lord Wroth’s Inheritance Bill would pass its second reading, and quickly afterwards its third, becoming law. The duke would lose everything.
“Let’s be romantic about it,” Celine said, “and say I’ll bring it to you at first light.”
She could see Markham wanted to threaten her again, to force the issue. But she’d made herself clear: If her only choices were ruin, she would choose to keep the letter.
Markham’s powerful jaw worked. At last, she spoke. “Go to the Demi Lux,” she said, “and receive your proposal. Then bring me that goddamn letter.”