Chapter Forty
Kate sat across from Celine in the carriage.
Celine’s skirts took up most of the available space, but in the dim interior Kate could barely make out Celine herself. She was like a Lady Spring who hadn’t yet arrived in the flesh but had flung out handfuls of flowers before her to herald her imminent arrival.
The flowers were made of white silk, each petal edged in fine silver-and-gold stitching. Scattered among them were other petals fashioned out of tiny mirrors and polished metal. The number of hours and skill that must have gone into its making was staggering.
The flowers had swallowed Kate’s shoes and stockinged legs. With every sway of the carriage, the weight of silk shifted and caressed her, tinkling lightly.
They hadn’t spoken in three days.
No, that wasn’t true. They had spoken. Celine had been civil when they crossed paths, though Celine was often out visiting friends.
She had neither sought out nor avoided Kate’s company.
So why did Kate feel that way? She tamped down a feeling near panic.
She had ignored the pounding fist of her heartbeat, so something worse had come to take its place: a growing pressure.
She somehow knew that when it reached the surface, it would do so violently, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She was going to break something.
Within minutes they would be at Lord Seaton’s house, where the Peckes and Lord Burnley would join them for dinner before the ball. Celine would return home with Kate afterwards, but she would be Lord Burnley’s fiancée.
Kate felt these last, precious minutes running through her fingers, and yet she couldn’t say any of the things she wished to say. The Peckes and their son would give Celine everything she deserved—and letting her go to them was the only gift Kate could lay at Celine’s feet that was worth anything.
Lady Spring began gradually to arrive. The flowers lit first, their colours turning from dusk to blushing cream and gold. On every petal, a dewdrop caught shy glints of light. Lady Spring’s arms turned warm above the long gloves she wore, then her exposed chest, and then her neck.
Celine had come to London with mercenary designs on Kate.
Celine had threatened her, endangered her, forced her back into the ballrooms of her youth, created new political alliances, and thwarted Lord Wroth in his most overt move against her in years.
Celine had come to London, an angel holding the knife.
But tonight, this remarkable interlude in Kate’s life would come to a close.
The golden light at last reached Celine’s face, illuminating her beauty. Lady Spring, all here.
“We have arrived,” Kate said hoarsely.
She drank Celine in. She wanted to hold on to this last, private moment. She wanted to bang on the roof and tell the driver to turn the carriage around. A violent possessiveness took hold of her, fantasies of grasping Celine with her whole body, taking her away, and keeping her.
The sense of urgency increased until her blood was surging with it, a sense that something bad was about to happen, a terrible mistake, and she had to stop it before it was too late.
“Celine, I—”
“Whatever you’re about to say,” Celine said, half risen out of her seat to exit the carriage and not meeting Kate’s eye, “don’t. I don’t want to hear it. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
She sat back, stung. What did Celine imagine she wanted to say, that Celine wouldn’t even hear?
The door opened and Celine moved past her, stepping down onto the driveway of Lord Seaton’s London house. As she came down after, she heard Celine’s quiet gasp.
She didn’t see the lights strung up in trees and trellises, across the front of the house, shining from windows. She didn’t see the row of white-gloved footmen. She only saw Celine’s wide eyes and the galaxy reflected in them. She saw Celine’s dress begin to sparkle.
The carriage moved on, and Celine stood alone on the driveway, gazing up at the house.
The dress crossed over her bosom and fastened at the side, showing almost no petticoat beneath the wide, crossed skirts that fell in stunning volume, trailing almost three feet behind her.
The bodice was brief and tight, and no fichu covered the swell of her breasts; her skin was bare, scored by the geometric loops of a delicate choker.
The green silk of the dress was covered in delicate white netting.
The silk-and-metal flowers clustered around the low shoulders and bodice; petals tumbled down the length of the skirts and caught in the hems in a thick heap.
And each flower was sewn with diamonds that caught the light like morning dew.
There was nothing left of the exhausted vagrant wearing a dirty, cheap dress who had dared to blackmail a duke. Celine was a very beautiful woman, and tonight she was gleaming. Perfect.
Untouchable.
Her gloves were pale green, embroidered with a delicate white band of flowers above the elbow. Upon the forefinger of her left hand she wore Kate’s heavy sapphire ring, a jarring, masculine note.
Kate swallowed. With sudden clarity, she understood why she had once given it to Celine. She felt a dangerous conviction Celine still wore it for the same reason.
It wasn’t only the ring that agitated her. Everett had dressed Celine as though to say, This one, you idiot. This one is yours, and you hers.
Until she’d seen Celine come downstairs fully dressed, she hadn’t understood why her own pale green stockings were embroidered with a band of white willow. Why her cream waistcoat was embroidered with leaves picked out in gold and silver.
Celine had come tonight to accept another man’s addresses, yet Everett had dressed Celine as Kate’s match in every way.
She silently cursed Everett for an interfering baggage, even as the pressure within her, the knowing, surged. The way she and Celine looked made for each other told her she was here, triumphant, with her love on her arm. It was impossible to believe she was here to give her love away to another.
She grasped Celine’s upper arm. “Celine—”
Celine twirled away from her, face raised and laughing, and said, “Oh, it takes my breath away!”
She looked up and saw they had crossed into the entrance hall, preceded by two footmen and Lord Seaton’s obsequious butler.
Above them, four chandeliers hung, with easily two hundred candles apiece.
Mirrors twice as tall as Kate lined the walls, making it feel as though they’d stepped inside one of Brewster’s kaleidoscopes.
Later, the hall would become so full it would take two hours or more to climb the double staircase at the other end of the room and be received.
The line would quickly extend out into the driveway and annoyed yells would be heard as drivers attempted to manoeuvre through the growing crowd.
But for now, it was an empty, gleaming space, pregnant with possibility.
Celine refused to hear her. And what was it she wished to say with such urgency, anyway?
Through a door at the far end, a man entered the hall. Kate’s heart banged uneasily, and her right hand clenched into a fist. Unconsciously, she stepped in front of Celine. It was Lord Burnley. The moment had come to do as she had promised, and let Celine go.
Every instinct screamed at her to take Celine’s hand in hers and run.
But her instincts were all towards violence and domination and jealous possessiveness. That wasn’t love. Love was paying attention to what would make Celine happy, and doing it. No matter how impossible.
Lord Burnley walked towards them with easy confidence—damn him, damn him—and smiled perhaps a little more broadly than was polite. He was blushing, an understandable response to Celine’s beauty. “My dear,” he said, “how wonderful to see you again. How wonderful.”
Flowers slithered over Kate’s shoe as Celine went to Lord Burnley and took his hand in greeting.
Companionably, the couple walked ahead. In contrast to the loaded silence in the carriage, conversation seeming to spring effortlessly between them—the natural, anxious enquiries after her health on his part, the warm assurances on hers—and it was done.
Without a last look, without a last word, Kate had given Celine away. She knew she had to. It was what she had come here to do, and yet she wondered for the first time whether she had paid attention to any of the right things.
LORD SEATON HAD never been in favour of the match with Burnley, and so it was at Kate’s own insistence that Burnley and his parents had joined them for dinner. She was a bloody fool.
Burnley sat beside Celine, who had the place of honour near the head of the table.
The pair never seemed at a loss, never running out of something to say.
The Peckes sat across from them and showed Celine every consideration; it was easy to see what Celine’s family life would be like.
Even the shy cousin, Miss Finemore, had her place in the conversation.
Burnley made Celine laugh and Kate had some difficulty not standing up and throwing her glass across the room.
So this was to be her future? Sitting down the table from Celine Farnsworth-Baxter, Lady Burnley, unable to hear her conversation or engage her attention?
She was so enraged by the whole thing, it wasn’t until someone addressed her that she became aware the seat beside her had been empty till now.
“Sorry I’m late,” Lord Brooke said, then sat. “I had to get a blasted hackney, and my links boy absconded.”
Lord Brooke was a statuesque woman, as tall and broad as Kate, but with an entirely feminine roundness. She had flawless skin, dark hair, and an impressive beauty mark above the left-hand corner of her lips.
She was wearing a ball gown she must have found in a long-abandoned room of her London house. The stiff corset gave her an impressive single bosom, and the skirts fell over hoops.
“It’s the Ten Thousand Lights, Brooke,” Kate said dryly. “You couldn’t’ve disbursed funds for a dress?”