Chapter One #2
It did not come. That was worse.
“Your father was convicted of murder,” Wexford said, in the tone another man might have used to remark upon the weather.
“He was tried before his peers and hanged. Your family name was struck from every list that matters, and a good many that do not. You have lived under a false one ever since because the true one closes every door in England.”
“You have summarised eight years with admirable economy.” Selina placed both hands upon the edge of the table, where he could see them.
“Eight years.”
“I was seventeen when they took him. I am five-and-twenty now. Nothing that occurred between those two points would interest you.”
“I dislike wasting words,” he said.
“So I observe. Most people prefer to arrive at cruelty by a more scenic route.”
“Was that cruelty?”
“No,” she admitted, and the admission surprised her more than the question. “It was accurate. I object less to accuracy than to pity. Pity requires me to be grateful, and I have very little gratitude left in stock.”
This time, he did smile, faintly. It altered his whole difficult face, and Selina turned her attention to the palm’s shadow upon the cloth until she had finished noticing the change.
“Tell me how you came to be here,” he said. “The particulars, not the account you have prepared for interviews.”
“You would know the difference?”
“I would.”
She considered him. She had told the arranged version forty times, and it had never once earned her a place. Perhaps the truth would fail differently.
“When my father was taken, our house was sold to pay what he owed and a good deal that he did not,” she said.
“My mother died within the year. Grief, the physician called it, and I have never found a better word for a heart asked to carry more than it was given. There were no relations who would own us. There was one who might have, and did not. I sold what I could and took the name Gray, because my own is a sentence rather than a name. That is the whole of it, Your Grace. It does not improve with ornament.”
The Duke was quiet. Behind them a woman was being told, in the bright false voice of charity, that she would suit very well, and the woman was thanking her benefactress like somebody hauled out of a river.
“I have a sister,” Wexford said at last. “Georgiana. She is nineteen, clever, and convinced that the world was arranged for the express purpose of boring her. She has driven away four companions in the past year. The last departed in tears and took with her a clock of which she had grown particularly fond.” He paused.
“I do not want a woman whom my sister can frighten.”
“You wish to hire my rudeness.” Selina considered the notion and found that it did not offend her.
“Your spine,” he said. “The rudeness I shall deduct from your wages.”
The offer lay between them, absurd and enormous, while the practical part of her mind was already weighing the salary against the fortnight’s lodging that was all that stood between her and the street.
“You would take the daughter of a convicted murderer into your house,” she said. “And place her near your sister.”
“I would take a woman of sense into a house that has none to spare.” He said it without ceremony, as another man might state a sum.
“And if your household discovers who I am?” Her hands had drawn together again upon the table.
“Then they will regret it.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one I can give without lying.” His hand settled flat upon the cloth and remained there. “I cannot promise that you will never be recognised. I can promise that, in my house, it will cost whoever recognises you more than it costs you. That is what I have to offer.”
“You are very certain of your household.”
“I have never had cause to be otherwise.”
“Then you have been fortunate and mistaken it for management.” She smoothed her glove over her knuckles once more. “I hope you are never taught the difference.”
He regarded her with a look that held equal parts interest and warning. “You think me arrogant.”
“I think you have not yet encountered the thing that would teach you not to be.” She did not look away. “I hope, for both our sakes, that I am not it.”
The salary he named a moment later sent her gaze to the window and held it there, for it meant the difference between a room of her own and one shared with three strangers; between a future and the absence of one.
Long ago, she had promised herself that she would not weep before those who held her fate in their hands.
She kept that promise now by the narrowest of margins, fixing her attention upon a chimney across the street.
“You have not asked whether I did it,” she said, once she could trust her voice. “The theft, I mean. The one your sister’s former companions will be whispering about within the week. Whether a murderer’s daughter can be trusted near the plate.”
“I do not require an answer. If you steal from me, I shall dismiss you, and you will have squandered your one good reference.” He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “You are too intelligent to be a thief. A thief must believe the day will go well.”
“And what am I?” Her hands had grown still upon the edge of the table.
He did not answer at once. He turned the glass another quarter turn, frowned at it, then pushed it an inch away across the cloth. The frown remained.
“A thing that lasts,” he said. He appeared dissatisfied with the answer, but made no attempt to improve upon it.
A brief, unwilling laugh escaped her and startled them both. She pressed her lips together at once.
“Tell me about your sister,” she said, recovering herself. “If I am to keep her from frightening me, I should like to know what form the frightening takes.”
“She is not cruel. She is nineteen and lonely, and has decided that boldness is a cure for both. She reads novels her governess did not select. She receives letters she does not show me. She speaks of officers and masquerades with a fondness I find alarming.” He moved one shoulder again, though the gesture did not suit him.
“Four companions have attempted to manage her through disapproval.”
“Then four companions were fools. Disapproval is a kind of company, and a lonely girl will accept the company and preserve the fault.”
He looked at her sharply. “You have met my sister.”
“I have met myself at nineteen, which is very nearly the same and considerably cheaper to consult.” She rested one finger upon the edge of the table. “Was she given her freedom too late or too early?”
“Too late.” He addressed the answer to his glass. “I kept her close after our father died. I believed it a kindness.”
“It was a cage. She has spent a year testing the bars, and now you are surprised to find them worn.” Selina heard herself half a beat after the words had escaped and withdrew her hand into her lap. “Forgive me. You have not hired me to correct you before I have earned my first quarter’s wages.”
“I have not hired you at all yet,” he said, without rancour. “And yet you speak as though you have accepted.”
“I find that I have.” She did not look towards the reticule. “I merely wished you to understand what you were purchasing, since you were good enough to tell me what I was.”
“You may take some time to consider it.” Wexford rose, and the palm’s shadow slipped from the cloth and climbed the front of his coat. “I do not require an answer today.”
“I require no further consideration. I accept.” She rose as she spoke and took hold of the reticule with both hands. The room remained where it belonged. “I should be a poor sort of anything if I hesitated over the only rope thrown to me in six months.”
“Then it is settled. My carriage is outside. Collect your belongings and come with me now, unless there is someone you must inform.”
“There is no one.”
He did not offer her sympathy for that. He held out his arm. After a moment, Selina rested her gloved hand on it, and they crossed the great assembly room together, past the tables and the rows of chairs and the small hard commerce of the morning.
Heads turned as they went. Selina had expected that and disregarded it. What she had not expected was the other kind of attention, particular and warm, that reached her as they neared the doors and made the back of her neck go cold.
She turned her head without meaning to.
A gentleman stood by the far wall, well apart from the placement tables, dressed a shade too well for a charitable morning.
Perhaps five-and-thirty, handsome in the manner of a man who had spent his handsomeness carelessly and had begun to run short of it.
He was watching her. Not the Duke. Her. When her eyes met his, he did not look away as a stranger would.
He smiled, slowly, and inclined his head the smallest degree, the way one does to a person one has already been introduced to.
She had never seen him before. She was almost certain of it.
“Miss Gray?” The duke had paused at the door, watching her with that attentive stillness of his.
“Forgive me, Your Grace.” Her hand had tightened on his sleeve, and she took it away. “I was collecting my nerve.”
“Keep it in a safer pocket,” he said, and stood aside for her. “You will want it where you are going.”
He handed her into the carriage. The door shut on the grey morning and the horses moved off into the noise of the street, and Selina looked back once through the small window.
The gentleman had come out to the assembly-room steps to watch the carriage go, his gloved hands folded in front of him, that same slow smile still on his face.
She faced forward again and put one hand inside the other in her lap, and pressed, and went on pressing until it hurt, and did not stop until the square was behind them.