Chapter Eleven #2
“The sum is nothing to your husband. An evening’s losses at cards. Eleven hundred pounds against a young woman’s reputation ought not to require lengthy consideration.” His smile sharpened. “Unless, of course, the difficulty is persuading him that she is worth the expense.”
“You mistake his ability to pay for your ability to compel him.” Selina forced the words out steadily.
“And you have already committed enough to paper: the demand for a clandestine meeting, the threat of publication, all in your own hand. My husband has a solicitor, a confidential agent and a great deal of patience. Every letter you send furnishes him with further evidence against you.”
“And yet Lady Georgiana’s letters remain in my possession.”
“They will not remain there for long, any more than that coat will.” The words escaped before Selina could weigh them.
She heard their cheapness as soon as they entered the air: a fishwife’s thrust at his tailor, unworthy of her and far too revealing.
“Men who dress beyond their means eventually part with what they possess,” she continued.
“It is the one thing upon which they can be relied.”
Rowland laughed softly, with genuine delight.
“Ah,” he said. “There she is. The frightened woman. I wondered whether she was still inside.”
Selina looked at him and could not find her next sentence. Her palm remained flat against the wall, and her heart beat high in her throat. She made herself draw breath and then made herself use it.
“You are in debt to my cousin, sir.”
That stopped him.
Behind her, in the room she had left, a number of people laughed at a joke she had not heard.
“Did you imagine that we would not discover it?” Selina kept her hand against the wall.
“A man who attempts to blackmail a duchess should first enquire whether her reach extends farther than that of his creditor. Mine does. You may consider that during whatever hours your creditors leave you in peace.”
She watched the words strike. At the mention of Giles, the certainty left Rowland’s face. For the first time since the assembly, his smile did not return quickly enough to conceal the gap.
Selina left him in the passage and walked back into the light and noise, her spine straight and her hands loose at her sides. She did not look behind her.
A shallow window recess stood several paces inside the drawing room, half concealed by a curtain, with a closed card table beneath it.
Selina stopped there and rested one hand upon its edge.
In the dark glass, her reflection lay faintly over the garden.
She brought her hands together because, separately, they were of no use to her at all.
A footman offered her a glass from his tray.
Selina accepted it but did not drink. Someone at the pianoforte began playing an Irish air badly.
At the far end of the room, a woman Selina had never met laughed, and the ordinary noise of the gathering continued around her, untouched by what had occurred in the passage.
Eleven hundred pounds.
The demand was not Selina’s to accept or refuse. The money was Nathaniel’s, the letters Georgiana’s, and the danger belonged to all three of them. Her task was to carry the information back intact.
Selina placed the glass upon the card table. Her hands had begun to obey her again. She turned and went back into the room.
Nathaniel met her at its edge. He had plainly noticed that both she and Rowland were absent and had begun searching for her.
She placed the glass upon the card table. Her hands had begun to obey her again, and she returned to the room.
Nathaniel met her at its edge. He had plainly marked both her absence and Rowland’s and had begun searching for her.
“He cornered you,” he said quietly.
“He did. He demanded eleven hundred pounds in exchange for Georgiana’s letters. If we refuse, he means to publish them with her name in full.”
Nathaniel’s expression hardened, but he did not interrupt.
“I told him that his letters had already supplied your solicitor with evidence,” Selina continued. “Then I said something about his coat which I should like to recall. He saw that I was frightened and enjoyed the discovery.”
“Did he touch you?”
“No.”
“Then we go home.”
Selina placed her hand upon his arm. It was not entirely steady.
“The room has decided in my favour. I believe the decision will have travelled through three drawing rooms by breakfast. But I have spent everything I brought with me, and I should like to return to a house where no one is weighing me, if such a house exists.”
“Ours,” Nathaniel said.
The word still sounded strange, but she did not dispute it.
***
In the carriage, Selina relinquished the composure she had maintained throughout the evening. She did not weep, but subsided into a silence so complete that Nathaniel did not disturb it for the first mile.
At last, he extended one hand across the darkness and stopped before touching her. Selina looked down at the offered hand, then turned her own beneath it. Only then did he cover her gloved fingers with his.
“You are permitted,” she said. “I am amending the agreement. In carriages, after battles, you are permitted. Do not extend the privilege to breakfast without a fresh negotiation.”
“In carriages, after battles,” Nathaniel agreed gravely. “I shall remember the amendment. My solicitor will be distressed to learn how many new terms our marriage continues to acquire.”
She laughed once, tiredly but sincerely. Beneath his hand, she shifted her own until their palms met through her glove. Neither remarked upon the change.
The carriage carried them through the darkened streets, past the lamps, the linkboys and the occasional watchman making his rounds.
“Eleven hundred pounds,” Nathaniel said after a while.
“You possess it.”
“Yes.”
“And Rowland knows that you do. That is why he chose the sum: large enough to save him, but not large enough to wound you.”
“I could pay it tonight.”
Selina’s hand tensed beneath his, but Nathaniel continued before she could answer.
“I shall not. Not without speaking to you and Georgiana. The money may be mine to disburse, but the letters are hers, and any decision will determine what Rowland believes he may demand from this family hereafter.”
Relief moved through Selina so swiftly that she was glad of the darkness.
“If we pay him once, the letters will never reach the fire.”
“I know.”
“He will return when the money is gone.”
“I know that too.”
“Then we tell Georgiana in the morning and decide together.”
“Yes.”
His hand remained over hers for the rest of the journey.
The house was quiet when they entered shortly before midnight, but it was quiet in the wrong way. Selina sensed the wrongness before Bassett appeared.
“Lady Georgiana is waiting up, Your Grace.” He addressed Nathaniel, though his gaze moved towards Selina.
“She is in the small parlour and would not go to bed. A man came to the kitchen door at nine with a letter. He would give no name. Lady Georgiana has had it open upon her knee for more than an hour, and she has asked twice whether your carriage had entered the square.”
His expression remained properly composed, but his concern did not.
“I did not like the look of her. I have known her since she was six, and I did not like it at all.”
“Thank you, Bassett.” Nathaniel was already removing his gloves. “You may retire. Whatever this is, it belongs to us now.”
Bassett bowed but made no movement towards the servants’ stairs. He remained beside the hall table, holding a candle he had not been asked to bring.
Selina did not remove her cloak. She crossed the hall with Nathaniel half a step behind her, and the exhausted triumph of the evening drained away as she approached the single candle burning beyond the parlour door.
A message delivered by a nameless man to the kitchen entrance at nine o’clock could not be dismissed as an ordinary communication. Rowland had timed his next threat to reach Georgiana while both Selina and Nathaniel were absent.
Georgiana sat before the fire with a folded paper open upon her knee. When they entered, she looked up. She appeared to have passed through fright and emerged beyond it into a cold, still fury Selina had never seen in her before.
“He wrote to me while you were at dinner. A man brought it to the kitchen door and refused to give his name. Bassett would not allow him beyond the step, but he did not wish to enter. He wanted only to place the letter inside the house with me.”
She held the paper flat against her knee with both hands, as though it might otherwise rise.
“It is very short. I am to meet him on Thursday at a place he names, or he will send my letters to the scandal sheets on Friday with my name printed in full.”
She held it out. Her hand did not tremble.
“He was at the dinner,” Selina said. “He made the same threat to me and demanded eleven hundred pounds for the letters.”
“Did he?” Georgiana’s voice was flat and attentive, as though she were enquiring after the price of coal. “Then he intended for both of us to receive the threat before the night ended. He arranged it very carefully.”
Nathaniel took the paper and read it standing with his back towards them, illuminated by the single candle.
“He is growing impatient,” Georgiana said. “There is no pretence of persuasion left in it. He has begun to write as though I have only to be told where and when.”