“She is enjoying herself.” “A little.” #2
“So Merrow has been careless.”
“Has he?”
“You tell me.”
Selina looked away.
Across the lawn Nathaniel was still with Lord Fairburn. She could not hear what they were discussing, but Lord Fairburn appeared to be doing most of it. Nathaniel, to his credit, kept his attention upon the gentleman before him.
“Giles came to our house and spoke of my mother’s jewels,” Selina said. “He wanted me frightened by a claim he knew perfectly well was false. Then he hinted at something more and left before naming it.”
Rowland said nothing.
Selina let the silence lengthen.
The music carried faintly across the lawn. Someone called to a servant. Rowland waited for her to continue.
“I begin to think that was deliberate,” she said. “The letters belong to you. The jewels belong to Giles. And somewhere between the two of you there is another threat neither has been willing to name.”
“You have been busy.”
“I have been frightened.”
He smiled again.
There it was; the satisfaction.
She had watched him conceal irritation, surprise and calculation. Satisfaction he concealed less successfully, perhaps because he did not consider it necessary.
“Not frightened enough, I think.”
“What would be enough?”
“For your husband to understand that eleven hundred pounds is a very small sum beside what refusal may cost him.”
Selina made herself look towards the crowd, towards Nathaniel standing at a distance with Lord Fairburn.
“He will not pay merely for the letters.”
“No?”
“He believes we can stop their publication.”
Rowland’s mouth tightened.
“So that is what you have told him.”
“I have told him that a threat which cannot be renewed has little value.”
“That sounds like you.”
Selina let another silence pass.
She had given him enough resistance to recognise her. Now she needed uncertainty.
“Giles was less interested in the letters when he came to see me. He spoke of my father’s estate.” She allowed a trace of uncertainty into her voice. “He implied that the jewels were not the whole of it.”
Rowland watched her.
She could see him considering how much she knew and, more importantly, how much she feared she did not.
“What else does he have?” she asked.
He should have stopped there.
For a moment Selina thought he might. His glass turned slightly between his fingers. The conversation on the lawn went on around them, indifferent to the small silence beside the fountain.
Then she saw the decision not to.
“Records,” he said.
Selina did not react at once.
“What records?”
“Your father’s estate was not administered as cleanly as you like to remember.”
Selina kept her eyes on him.
“The jewels?”
“The jewels are only one part of it.”
She waited.
“What else?”
Rowland drank. “There were payments.”
A chill moved through her that required no acting.
For a moment the garden seemed to sharpen around her: the thin sound of the fountain, the music beyond the awnings, somebody laughing too loudly on the terrace. The payments themselves were no surprise. Hearing them named by Rowland was.
“What payments?”
“So you do not know.”
He was pleased again.
Selina said nothing.
She could have corrected him. Instead she let him mistake silence for ignorance.
“Your cousin has found records you did not imagine he possessed. Regular sums, sent through an attorney in your name after the Merrow estate had been administered; at a time when you were supposed to have almost nothing. The payments can be traced to you.”
Selina looked down at her glass. A drop of condensation had begun to run over her glove.
“Payments made by me prove nothing.”
“Perhaps not.”
“What does Giles say they prove?”
Rowland’s gaze moved over her face before he answered.
“That depends upon how publicly he is obliged to say it.”
There it was.
Not an accusation. The possibility of one.
Selina lowered her voice. “And what prevents him?”
Rowland looked towards Nathaniel.
Nathaniel remained with Lord Fairburn, far enough away that no expression could be read clearly. Selina did not follow Rowland’s gaze for long.
“Good sense.”
“My husband’s?”
“Yours.”
“And eleven hundred pounds.”
“For the present difficulty.”
“The letters.”
“The letters are the present difficulty.”
Selina turned the words over as though trying to understand the distinction.
“And Giles?”
Rowland smiled.
“Giles has waited eight years. I doubt he objects to waiting a little longer, provided waiting continues to profit him.”
The fountain went on spilling its inadequate stream behind them. Rowland took another drink. His ease had returned now that he believed the conversation was moving upon ground of his choosing.
Selina held his gaze.
“So we pay you, and Giles remains silent.”
“I said nothing of the kind.”
“No. You were careful not to.”
His expression hardened.
“You are not in a position to be clever.”
“Then what position am I in?”
“A dangerous one.”
Selina let the answer settle. Then she allowed the tremor into her hand.
It was small, no more than a movement of the glass against her fingers, but visible.
Rowland saw it.
The hardness went out of his face by degrees. Satisfaction was more useful to him than anger.
“You think the title protects you,” he said quietly. “It does not. A title makes a fall more interesting. If Merrow chooses to put those papers before the right people, you will discover how quickly the same drawing rooms which received the Duchess of Wexford remember Lady Selina Calvert.”
Selina did not answer at once.
Around them the gathering continued with perfect indifference.
A servant crossed the terrace carrying a tray.
The musicians reached the end of a piece and began another.
No one looking towards the fountain would have seen anything more remarkable than two acquaintances engaged in private conversation.
“And if my husband pays?”
“The letters disappear.”
“And Giles’s papers?”
“Need never become anybody’s concern.”
Selina looked at him.
“Need never?”
The question was quiet.
Rowland realised it then. Not the whole of it. Only that he had said too much.
His eyes narrowed.
The change was immediate enough that Selina knew the conversation had reached its end. There would be no coaxing anything further from him now.
Her hand steadied around the glass.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For answering the question Giles would not.”
She stepped half a pace away.
Rowland’s gaze sharpened.
He caught her meaning too late.
Lady Marwood’s voice came from the adjoining recess.
“I believe that will do, Duchess.”
Rowland went still.
For the first time since approaching Selina, he appeared to forget the glass in his hand.
A faint movement came from behind the roses.
Lady Marwood appeared around the trellis with Lady Carbery beside her.
Neither looked triumphant. Lady Carbery’s expression was particularly grave, as though she would much rather not have heard what she had heard and intended nevertheless to remember it accurately.
Rowland’s face emptied.
“My lady.”
“Mr Rowland.”
Lady Marwood stopped beside Selina. Lady Carbery remained a pace behind her.
Rowland looked from one woman to the other and then to Selina.
“This was arranged.”
“Yes,” Selina said.
He looked towards the trellis, taking in at last the two recesses, the climbing rose and the short distance between the place where he had been standing and the place from which the women had emerged.
Lady Marwood regarded him with the detached displeasure of a woman considering something that had been brought into her house by mistake.
“I have heard enough to know that you have threatened a young woman’s private correspondence and suggested that further accusations may be suppressed in exchange for money. Lady Carbery has heard the same.”
“You misunderstand.”
“Then you have been remarkably unfortunate in your choice of words.”
Rowland recovered a little of himself. Selina watched the effort take place: the shoulders easing, the glass settling in his hand, the familiar civility being put back over his face.
“You intend to repeat a private conversation?”
“No,” Lady Marwood said. “I intend, for the present, to remember it.”
That unsettled him more effectively than any threat.
For a moment nobody spoke.
From the lawn came the scrape of a chair being moved and the ordinary murmur of the party. Whatever had happened beside the fountain had not yet disturbed the afternoon beyond it.
“You will leave my house, Mr Rowland. Mrs Ottley may remain. I shall speak to her myself.”
His colour rose.
“You cannot suppose…”
“I very rarely suppose. It wastes time.”
Lady Marwood turned slightly.
A footman was already approaching.