Chapter Forty-Eight
Within the walls of St. Mary le Strand, it was quiet.
The church, an island in the middle of the broad thoroughfare, was built for silence.
The walls were thick and windowless until well above street level; when at last they broke, it was to admit light and sky, pocked by the darting shadows of birds.
Celine, too, felt quiet.
She would feel pain. She would feel uncertain and scared. She would probably, realistically, feel regret. All of that was coming for her. But for now, she stared into the blue-lit sanctuary and breathed.
There had been some activity around her through the morning.
A conversation between three gentlemen with input from the organ.
A mother and daughter and the man one of them was to marry making awkward conversation before the harried-looking minister arrived and took them elsewhere.
The middle-aged women who changed the flowers, and visitors from the country listening to a quiet lecture by the door.
After the tour left, she had been alone for some time.
The door opened, then closed. There was a pause, then a booted step made its way up the centre of the nave. She knew that step. It shattered her fragile peace, like the moon dropped on the floor.
“Celine.”
She looked up, sure she must be wrong. She wasn’t.
“What are you doing here?” she said.
The Duke of Howard was a mess. She had thrown a country jacket over last night’s fine, embroidered waistcoat, of which only one button was done up, incorrectly.
The rumpled shirt gaped open, and her hair looked like it had taken the brunt of her anxieties.
Her cuffs were stained with blood, her right knuckles bruised.
These signs of distress paled in comparison to what Celine saw in her eyes.
“I am humbled,” the duke said, and went to her knees before Celine. “I thought the worst of you.” The posture wasn’t for show. There was a quality about the duke’s prostration that suggested she would kiss Celine’s foot if she dared.
Celine hid her trembling hands. She was trembling all over.
She had thought it likely the duke would search her out eventually. When the work of defeating Lord Wroth was complete. When the public scandal died down. When she had established herself in a life she could maintain by her own work. When a polite, friendly meeting was possible.
Not now. She hadn’t expected to see the duke now, when she was raw, almost in a state of shock. She couldn’t think why the duke was here, or how. She found it hard to think at all.
But she must. She must make this as painless as possible for them both.
“No one taught you any different,” she said, in as normal a voice as she could manage. “No one’s ever shown you how to expect better.”
The duke looked up, exposing her stark face. “Why did you do it, though? You gave up everything, and got nothing in return.”
“Nothing?” She felt her face contort with amazement. “Kate, I got your future out of it. That’s not nothing.”
She saw this notion occur to the duke for the first time, and wanted to weep.
“Did you think last night meant nothing to me?” she said evenly, keeping her hands where they were.
“I thought…,” the duke said. “I thought you still hadn’t forgiven me. I was stupid. Small-minded and ungenerous.”
“No.” Celine’s voice wobbled, and she took a moment to steady it. “I told you already. I love you more than you realise. I would do anything for you. Those weren’t empty words. It’s how I feel. I would do it again.”
It was working. The duke had begun to look calmer. Her tone was more conversational when she said, “How did you know Wroth would wait to open the letter in Lords? What if he’d opened it as soon as it was delivered? He would have discovered it wasn’t what you promised.”
She felt a flush of amused satisfaction.
“He waited? In truth, I hoped he would; it was the most elegant outcome. But it would have worked either way. The promise of the letter was powerful enough to make them wait for me until the last possible minute. By then it was too late for them to do anything about the rest.”
The rest. What a neat way to sum up the total annihilation of her reputation, and with it, any hopes of marrying the duke. She wasn’t ready to face these feelings. She had thought she would have time.
The duke said, “Why didn’t you come to me when Lord Wroth found Louise?
Why hide her from me? I assume it was a threat to her safety that made you engage with Lord Wroth.
Or, no, of course, the threat of your past being exposed.
” The duke curled her hand around Celine’s calf and said again, “Why not come to me?”
She was tempted to fob the duke off, but she knew they had to have it all out now and leave nothing that needed to be said later. She couldn’t do this again. “Tell me honestly, what would you do if you found out Lord Wroth was threatening me?”
The duke’s face went cold. “I would kill him.”
Love surged through her, and despair, and the desire to laugh.
She wasn’t ready for this. She made herself give an easy smile, with no sign of strain.
“So long as Lord Wroth had the power to expose me, he had the power to get his bill through Parliament. For all your strengths, I didn’t trust you would let me publicise my past. You would have tried to protect me by marrying me off to Lord Burnley as quickly as possible. ”
“Never that,” the duke swore, her hand tightening around Celine’s leg. “I would never have let you marry him. I gained great clarity on that point last night.”
“No,” she conceded. At some cost to herself she said, “You would have married me yourself, then.”
She saw the passionate response, and made herself say in the same, even way, “It would have been no protection at all, and when he exposed me, your immoral, insane marriage would only have added weight to his arguments against you. This was the only way.”
The duke groaned and doubled over, pushing her face into Celine’s lap.
“Only … you miscalculated, Celine. For all your strengths, you thought keeping the letter secret mattered more to me than you. You thought I would be more devastated by losing my name and title and estate than I would be by losing you. Celine, if you knew what I have been through this morning…”
Celine was shaking her head. No, this was privilege talking. “It sounds very romantic, but if you had lost all those things in truth—”
The duke looked up. “I found the letter while you were sick.”
She stilled. “What?”
“It was under the mattress. Did you think I wouldn’t find it?
I chose to leave it. It was during those weeks that you came to mean more to me than the letter.
Nothing that has happened since has changed my mind.
If Wroth had read that letter out loud today, I would have hated it, but I would have managed. I can stand to lose anything else.”
With a sudden, jerky movement, she pushed the duke from her and stood.
“You knew where the letter was?”
She somehow couldn’t work through the implications, even though they were obvious, even though doing so was her great strength.
“Why leave it?” she said. “I don’t understand. I … don’t understand.”
Why was it making her so angry? Why was this the thing that made her feel out of control and hot all over?
The duke stood as well. “I thought you hated me. I didn’t think you would want me to help you out of love. I thought pride would make you leave.”
Her disturbed mind and heart latched on to the one thing she wanted. “You loved me then? Kate, when did you know?”
“I can’t say exactly…” The duke shook her head and colour came into her cheeks.
“No, that’s not true, but I’m somehow ashamed to say.
Look, it was hearing what happened to you in Paris.
It was seeing you completely defenceless while you asked the question you’d wanted to ask me for three years.
A question, I think, that had been inside you for a lot longer than that.
It makes me feel like a beast admitting it.
Celine, I’m sorry. But that was it. I felt how it changed my body, physically.
It will never be undone. It will never diminish.
The organ that gives me breath is engineered to love you; the muscle that feels, the matter that thinks… ”
She didn’t want to be the duke’s mistress, but she would be, eventually.
She saw that now. There was no way she was strong enough to stay away just because she wasn’t going to get everything.
Maybe if the duke hadn’t found her and immediately come to her, she would have been able to put herself outside the duke’s reach and spared them both.
But that was no longer a possibility. The effort to part as friends was wasted.
They were going to have to be very careful. The public knew a lot about her, now. She was a risk, even for a duke.
“And you, Celine?” The question was tentative. “Is it true you loved me even in Paris?”
“Oh God, yes,” she said, giving in to the inevitable suddenly, gladly. Why waste a second more? “I’ve loved you since I was thirteen.”
“What?”
The stunned look on the duke’s face made her laugh.
Feeling was coming back into her body, and warmth.
Already she had begun to reorder her vision of the future.
Somehow, she would fit the productive, useful life she had imagined for herself together with the secretive pockets of time she would share with the duke. She would make it work.
Her heart had begun to ache in a new way, but she would learn to live with that, too.
She drew the duke down to sit on the bench with her. “There was a sensational story in the newspaper,” she said, “when you gave your maiden speech. It scared the wits out of me, which was the first indication of love.”
The duke scowled, and Celine took her bare hands and kissed them, laughing.