Chapter Eleven
“Do you find it difficult, Your Grace, stepping into such an old title so suddenly? One imagines it must be rather like wearing another woman’s gown. The fit is never quite one’s own, however the maid pins it.”
The speaker was a Mrs Calloway, seated three places down Lady Marwood’s long table, a handsome woman with a handsome fortune and the particular smile of a person who has decided to be charming and cruel in the same breath and trusts the charm to carry the cruelty past the slower guests.
Selina had marked her within the first course as the one to watch, because she laughed a beat too early and looked a beat too long, and the compliment arrived now precisely on schedule, dressed in silk and pointed at the throat.
“Not difficult,” Selina said. “Heavy. But I have carried heavier things than silk, and the trick is the same with all of them, which is to stand up straight and decline to let the weight decide your posture for you.”
A small silence held the near end of the table, the silence of a room recalculating. At its head, Lady Marwood made a sound into her wine that in a younger woman would have been a laugh.
“You will forgive Mrs Calloway, Duchess. She collects the discomfort of others as I collect Sèvres, and with rather less discrimination. You have disappointed her by declining to be discomfited. I enjoyed watching you do it.”
“I intended no cruelty, my lady. I have simply run short of the sort of shame the question was designed to spend.”
The dinner had been, until that moment, precisely the ordeal Nathaniel had warned her of: a long, polished procession of compliments with teeth and questions fitted with hooks.
The company appeared united in the courteous project of discovering whether the murderer’s daughter would break beneath a sufficient weight of gentility.
A gentleman to Selina’s left had asked, very gently, whether she found London greatly changed since her debut, a civil way of reminding the table that she had once entered society as an earl’s daughter, before the fall.
A dowager opposite had wondered aloud whether the country did not suit certain constitutions better than town, which was a civil way of suggesting that Selina return to it.
Every hook came wrapped in solicitude. She answered each with a plainness which offered it nothing to catch upon. As the courses passed, the company’s verdict shifted by small degrees from eager anticipation towards wary and unwilling respect.
Beneath the table, Selina held her napkin in a grip which had crushed it beyond recovery.
“You bear scrutiny remarkably well, Duchess,” the dowager observed at last, shaping the remark as a compliment. “Some women would find so much interest in their history rather trying.”
“I have already survived the history, ma’am. I see no reason to relive it for the entertainment of a dinner table.” Selina lifted her wine. “Anyone may ask for the facts. My composure is not available for the asking.”
Nathaniel sat opposite her and two places down, magnificently silent as instructed. She caught his eye once between the fish and the fowl. His expression held none of its earlier concern. He returned calmly to his plate, and Selina found that she could do the same.
Mrs Calloway waited until the ladies had withdrawn, the coffee had been served and the conversation had settled comfortably enough for an interruption to carry.
“I wondered, Duchess, whether you might advise us. My sister has a daughter coming out next spring and very little money to speak of. I have said to her a hundred times that the great difficulty lies in knowing what a girl without fortune may reasonably hope for.” Her cup rose to her lips and descended again.
“You will have considered that question more closely than the rest of us. One does, I imagine, after seeing both sides of it.”
Someone laughed and stopped abruptly.
“Tell your sister to teach the girl to be useful,” Selina said. “It is the only fortune which cannot be attainted. And when the useful girl marries better than your sister did, advise her not to express her surprise at dinner.”
Colour rose into Mrs Calloway’s face and remained there for several minutes. The dowager opposite contemplated the fire with the expression of a woman remembering a private joke, while three people attempted to change the subject at once.
The evening altered after the ladies rejoined the gentlemen, during the crowded, overheated hour when the order of dinner dissolved and guests arranged themselves according to preference rather than place cards.
Felix Rowland had entered the room.
Selina saw him before he noticed her, standing among the guests near the pianoforte in a coat too new and an attitude too easy. The strength left her legs and had to be summoned back.
Lady Marwood did not knowingly receive men of Rowland’s character.
Someone had opened a door which should have remained closed, and Selina traced the route in a glance.
Rowland stood beside Mrs Ottley, one of the additional callers admitted after dinner.
Mrs Ottley had evidently presented him as some respectable connection and brought him into the room beneath the protection of her own invitation; a curiosity whose danger she mistook for interest.
Selina crossed to her husband before Rowland could approach either of them. She reached Nathaniel just as Rowland detached himself from Mrs Ottley and came smiling towards the Duke of Wexford.
“Your Grace.” Rowland’s bow was a shade too deep to signify respect.
“Allow me to offer my belated congratulations upon your marriage. Such a sudden marriage, and such a quiet one. One admires a man capable of conducting so considerable a piece of business with so little noise. I had not even known that you kept a bride, and I flatter myself that I know most of what passes in town.”
“You flatter yourself upon a great many subjects, Mr Rowland,” Selina said. “It is your most consistent quality.”
His smile remained, but his eyes sharpened. “Yet here I am, in a respectable house. Received.”
“Then we must conclude that respectable houses are occasionally deceived.” Selina answered lightly, pleasantly and loudly enough to be overheard by those nearest them.
“Even a well-run household cannot inspect every parcel which arrives in another woman’s carriage.
Lady Marwood will be desolate to learn what entered with Mrs Ottley’s party.
She is so particular about her threshold. ”
“Her threshold appears to have admitted more than one surprise this evening.” Rowland’s gaze rested meaningfully upon her.
“I was invited, Mr Rowland. You were brought.”
The flush climbed higher upon his neck. Nathaniel had become very still beside her. Selina placed two fingers against his sleeve, a slight pressure which said not yet, and he remained where he was.
“You possess a sharp tongue, Your Grace.”
“You have supplied it with an occasion.” She did not smile. “Enjoy your evening, Mr Rowland.”
He withdrew with a bow and a murmured civility, returning to the shelter of Mrs Ottley’s oblivious company.
Selina released a breath she had concealed until then. Beneath the cover of the room’s conversation, Nathaniel bent his head towards her.
“You are trembling,” he said. “Only slightly. I can feel it through your glove.”
“Do not be kind to me in this room. My composure is finite, and your kindness spends it more quickly than Mrs Calloway’s cruelty.
” She kept her gaze upon the company. “Save it for the carriage. Here, I require you cold and standing at a thoroughly respectable distance, or I may forget how public this room is.”
“As you wish.”
Nathaniel stepped back by the necessary degree and arranged his former coldness over his features. Selina had learnt to recognise it as something donned for protection, but she did not tell him so.
***
A quarter of an hour later, Rowland found her in the quieter passage beside the music room, where she had gone in search of air. He had plainly been waiting for the opportunity. The social ease vanished from his manner as soon as they were beyond the company’s immediate notice.
“Let us speak plainly, now that your husband is not here to be impressed. You are a clever woman who has married into powerful company, and you imagine that your wit has answered me. It has not.”
He came no nearer, but lowered his voice.
“Lady Georgiana did not answer my last letter. I offered her an opportunity to settle this matter privately, but she, or those advising her, mistook silence for safety. Her refusal has obliged me to address someone with greater influence. I possess her letters; every foolish, confiding line. I shall see them printed with her name entire unless the Duke of Wexford discharges a debt which I shall name to you privately. You will persuade him to pay it. A wife of your evident talents can persuade a husband of most things, particularly one who covers her hand in Hyde Park.”
His smile returned, though none of its earlier ease accompanied it.
“Persuade him, Your Grace, or watch Lady Georgiana become the subject of every drawing room in England. The scandal will not spare you: the former companion who permitted it beneath the very roof into which she married.”
The passage was narrow and poorly lit, and no one else stood within it. Selina reached behind her, beyond his sight, and placed one palm against the cold wall to steady herself.
“You cannot frighten me with ruin,” she said. “I have endured ruin before. I am not new to it.”
Her voice thinned upon the final words. She heard it happen.
“Eleven hundred pounds,” Rowland said. “You will want the figure, being so determined to make yourself a woman of business. Eleven hundred pounds, and the letters will go into the fire before you. You may count them as they burn.”
He regarded her with infuriating composure.