Chapter Forty-Two
The ball of Ten Thousand Lights, for Celine, was a perfect monster made of dream and nightmare meeting.
She wished the night would never end. It was the realisation of all her planning, and still nothing had prepared her for the glittering splendour of the ton, or the thrill of the ton’s adoring attention. May the sun be pinned in dark space and never bring light across the horizon again.
And yet …
It was agony being always across the room from the duke, unable to hear or talk to or touch her.
It was agony to feel Markham’s attention always upon her, always watching from that one cold eye.
Always reminding Celine what must be done, and that she couldn’t stop the new day’s approach, and that happiness was only possible in the narrowest of terms.
“Is it true you know the,” Miss Finemore said, then mouthed, Marquess of Royston?
“Didn’t you see them dancing together earlier?” said Lady Florence Morton impatiently. She had claimed the seat nearest Celine, as Celine’s particular friend. “The marquess is her guardian’s cousin. Of course they know one another.”
Another debutante burst out, “I can’t think what possessed Lord Seaton to invite Lord Royston, I heard she ravished a girl in broad daylight just the other day, and now the girl is dying of a wasting disease. Or at least, Mama says she ought, if she has any sense of propriety.”
“Will she come over here, do you think?” Miss Finemore squeaked.
“Not when she’s dying,” the debutante said blankly, “no.”
“Not the girl,” said Miss Finemore. “The Rake.” She pronounced the word with an unmistakeable capital R.
A quick scan of the room told Celine that Royce was nowhere to be seen. At a guess, she was in the garden deflowering something.
Across the room, yet another mama with blushing daughter in tow had approached the Duke of Howard to make introductions.
The attention had been incessant, never abating the whole night, fans and giggles all vying for a shot at the unmarried duke.
The duke had not, thus far, taken Celine’s suggestion on board and danced with any of them.
“Lord Royston is scandalous,” Florence said, “it is true, but in my opinion the truly unforgivable lapse was allowing that—that bastard through the doors.” Florence sounded truly rattled, which drew Celine’s attention back to the conversation and her friend’s expression. She took Florence’s hand.
“Markham didn’t do anything to you, did she, Florence?” she asked, trying not to give away the extent of her concern.
Florence went a mortified pink and said, “She asked me to dance. Have you ever heard anything more absurd? I barely knew what to say.”
Celine’s hand tightened involuntarily. Had Markham grown bored and decided to prey on her friends? “I hope you turned her down?”
“My goodness, naturally I turned her down. No young woman could wish to dance with her.” Florence’s colour heightened. “It would be … deranged.”
Celine stroked her hand. “Well done, Florence,” she said warmly. “You did just as you ought. Promise me you won’t allow Markham near you again.”
Florence looked a little startled at Celine’s vehemence and said, “Of course. You have my word.”
“Good.” Celine said. “Now, did none of you realise I was there on Bond Street the day Lord Royston misbehaved?”
The girls all gasped and listened avidly to her account, which painted Lord Royston as somewhat less of a scoundrel, the girl as entirely less compromised, and the duke as every inch the hero she had been.
Thinking of her, Celine looked over to the duke and felt suddenly as though she’d been caught, suspended in the burning heart of a star. The duke had been looking at her. The duke was looking at her still.
She couldn’t remember what she had been saying. The rest of the room seemed to fall away. Only the duke existed, her eyes holding Celine’s with a spiritual claiming.
“Miss Genet, might I beg a word? Miss Genet?”
Her name. That was her name. She wrenched herself away and saw the gentleman she’d expected and dreaded all evening.
Lord Burnley. She made herself take him in and focus.
She was shaking. She had come where she didn’t belong and inserted herself into a world that wouldn’t have her.
It was impossible. There was no point wishing it were otherwise.
This was not her reality. The small, sparse room she had rented for Louise, where she visited her every day—that was her reality.
It was time.
“Of course, My Lord. Shall we retire somewhere more private?” She felt the duke’s gaze follow her from the room; Markham’s, too.
The room Lord Burnley found for them wasn’t far from the festivities, and he left the door open. She felt a flush of guilt. It had been necessary to keep him in the dark, but it was one of many things she regretted.
“My Lord,” she said, turning, and startled when she found him closer than she’d expected.
“My dear,” he said, availing himself of her hand. He kissed the back of it through her glove, his eyes closing for a moment. “I am sure what I have to say will come as no surprise to you.”
“No indeed,” she said gently, and covered his hand with her own. “And were I free to accept, you must believe I should do so happily, and know myself a fortunate woman. But I am not free, My Lord. My heart belongs to another.” Admitting the truth aloud made her heart soar, even as it was breaking.
Lord Burnley blushed very deeply, but never lost the calm kindness that characterised him. “Then allow me to spare you from saying any more, Miss Genet. I have understood you.”
But she didn’t let him go. “If you’ll forgive me, I must beg a favour.”
He frowned. “And I shall grant it, if I am able.”
“Just for this evening, don’t tell anyone what my answer has been. It must seem an ungrateful request, but please believe me when I tell you it is vital you do not.”
“You are asking me to lie.”
His voice was grave, almost disapproving, and she had to swallow down a swift annoyance.
The duke wouldn’t have hesitated. Royce wouldn’t have hesitated.
“If anyone is impolite enough to enquire, you could perhaps tell them you don’t wish to make what is private public tonight. This much is no lie.”
He hesitated, then bowed his assent. She would have spoken again had she not become aware of another person joining them in the room just then.
Such was the aura of leashed violence around this person that at first, she mistook it for Markham.
But when the figure stepped farther into the room, the odd resonance disappeared. It was the duke.
And she was livid.
“Get out,” the duke said.
“Very well.” Celine attempted to make a quick escape. Being alone with the duke would go badly for her.
“Not you,” the duke bit out in French, never taking her eyes off Lord Burnley. “Him.” Switching back to English she said, “I wish to speak to my ward. Alone.”
“You and I have nothing to say to each other,” Celine said, “that Lord Burnley cannot also hear.”
The duke did look at her then, with a burning, possessive look that promised the duke would speak in front of Lord Burnley and anyone else who didn’t get out of her fucking way. Celine’s heart began to pound, sick with longing. She wouldn’t survive what was coming.
“Go,” she said to Burnley, squeezing his hand then releasing him. “I will deal with this.”
“I cannot leave you to—”
“If you stay, you will only make things worse. Please go.”
He didn’t look happy about it, but he edged around the duke and left, glancing back at her once apprehensively. The duke watched him go before moving unhurriedly to close the door behind him.
The sounds of the party dimmed. The duke locked the door. Celine was conscious of her skin, as though every bare inch of it had the sensitivity of lips and fingertips.
The duke turned back to her and said almost idly, “Did you accept him?”
She had told Lord Burnley she would be fine, but she felt cornered, threatened. How long could she hold the duke at bay? She hadn’t engaged in any of the seductions she’d planned this evening, and yet the momentum was undeniable. Maybe in the end there was nothing she could have done to stop it.
“I told you,” she said, “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.”
“Did—you—accept him?”
“This has nothing to do with you! You knew this was my goal, I have been as clear on that point as possible. You told me you understood. Why get in my way now?”
“Because,” the duke said, coming to her, voice low and rough, “you are mine.” The duke’s hand went around her head, bringing their foreheads together. “As I am yours. Tell me you didn’t accept him.”
She could have wept. She felt an awful anger at the duke, though it was her own fault.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, struggling to maintain the cool distance that was her only hope of getting through this encounter. “What do you imagine you could do if I did accept him? Nothing.”
“I will have to leave England. I can’t stay and watch you become another lord’s wife.”
Her heart twisted at the plain truth in the words.
Her hands were inside the duke’s coat, against warm satin. The duke’s face was not still against hers, but moving, searching. Hard thighs came against hers. They were no longer merely touching, but embracing.
As soon as she became aware of it, she put her hands flat and pushed, her body straining against the duke’s hold on her. “No. You can’t just take me when it’s convenient. That’s no better than you leaving me when it was convenient.”
She had thought the reminder of their troubled past would put distance between them where her own straining body was unable to, but the duke only took a more complete hold of her, a warm, masterful hand around her nape.
The urge to submit, to drop off the razor wire she was walking and fall into the duke’s sheltering body, was overwhelming.
The duke spoke against her temple. “Maybe if I had your gift with words I could tell you what I feel when I think of Paris. How it took me far too long to realise what happened between us that night wasn’t an accident.
That to know how dearly I love you now, I must understand the woman I love was with me then as well.
If anyone else had left you, instead of saving you, I would have killed him. ”
The duke had come back to get her. The duke had come to give her the future she desperately wanted, three years too late.
“I was scared,” the duke murmured against her cheek.
“You scare me. You always have. Last time, I ran until I’d put the sea between us.
But…” The duke lifted Celine’s resisting left hand to her mouth, pressing her lips to Celine’s forefinger.
She absorbed the strain of Celine’s body without any apparent sign of effort.
“I gave you a ring, and you came back to me, still wearing it. You cannot in all honesty tell me you are free to marry elsewhere.”
She wasn’t, and never would be.
“You cannot do this to me,” she cried, and wrenched herself away. “Don’t do this, I beg of you.”
“Celine.” The duke laughed, quiet and warm. “What is it you think I’m doing? But forgive me, I haven’t made myself clear. I want to marry you. I want you to be my duchess. My wife. I want you to let me love you, for as long as you can stand it.”
The words—she hadn’t been able to stop them after all, not even by begging—were an assault on her heart she couldn’t survive. Cracked bones and pints of spilled blood.
Duchess.
Wife.
“For as long as I can stand it,” she said dumbly. “Kate, what do you think I…” She couldn’t even put into words what she was feeling. For as long as she could stand it? She would die cloaked in love. She would carry the duke’s love across the threshold with her.
That the duke could believe Celine might one day find her love a burden …
It was more than she could take. Desperately, she cast around for anything she could throw in her own path to stop the glorious rush towards capitulation.
Come morning, marriage between her and the duke would be impossible.
She knew it—all her plans depended on it—but her dumb animal heart wouldn’t understand.
“The letter,” she gasped out. “I will use the letter if I must.”
“Yes,” the duke said, coming closer, “the letter. The letter I can only have when you marry. Celine, it has not escaped my notice that the quickest route to getting the letter back was always for me to marry you myself. It wasn’t possible for me when you first arrived.
I’m sorry. All this trouble I’ve put you to, when I could have been loving you instead. ”
Celine’s mind went blank, and then she felt herself blush all over. Was that what she had been doing when she designed the terms of her blackmail? It was so blatant. For all her subtlety and finesse, she’d been wearing her most private desire like a bloody heart on a brooch.
The duke’s eyes went very soft, and she cupped Celine’s cheek. “You hadn’t realised?”
She could only shake her head. Her resistance, even in some sense her grip on reality, was in pieces, and she couldn’t reassemble it.
The first time she’d laid eyes on the duke, they had been in a private room like this, a noisy party continuing elsewhere in the house.
The duke sliding one hand to the back of her head, determined to have her.
Then, Kate had not been quite real to Celine.
She had been a fantasy come to life, an archetype, of which Celine had been in awe.
Now the woman she loved stood before her, completely human, completely known. Asking to have her.
A future with the duke was impossible, yes. But life wasn’t made up of absolutes: love forever, happiness forever. Life didn’t stop like that, only death. Celine had used what harmed the duke to try to buy herself a dream, and now she had to pay the price for it.
But she would take one night with the duke first. Just one night.
She had done all she could to mitigate harm.
She had paid the printers handsomely. Louise had the letter, and she would take it to Wroth House in a matter of hours before going to Lords to give her testimony.
Markham had seen Celine go to speak privately with Lord Burnley and would think the engagement settled.
The only real harm left was to her own heart.
No, that was disingenuous. The duke would be hurt by it as well.
The duke released her suddenly, turning away, and began pacing, her manner agitated. “I cannot bear it,” she said. “For God’s sake, have mercy on me! Did you accept Lord Burnley?”
“No,” Celine said, reckless and wretched and in love. “I didn’t accept him.”