Chapter 15 #2
"Of course, Your Grace. Forgive an old man's curiosity.
One hears so many names in a single evening at events like these.
Charles" — he turned warmly to the Earl — "you must let me steal you for ten minutes.
There is a matter at the Colonial Office I should value your view on before the week is out. "
"Of course, of course. Your Grace — Mr. Harrington — enjoy the music. We shall meet again before the evening is out."
And then they were gone — Cornwall and the Earl and the two political figures, swallowed by the crowd, Cornwall's silver head visible for a moment longer above the press of bodies before it too disappeared.
For one slow heartbeat, neither Alexander nor Anthony moved.
"Alex." Anthony's voice was very low. "Walk with me. Now. Quietly."
Alexander allowed himself to be drawn three steps to the side, into a small alcove half-screened by a marble pillar and a great vase of hothouse lilies. He set his glass down on a side table with a hand that he had made perfectly steady by will alone.
"We leave," Alexander said. "Now."
"No." Anthony's eyes had not left his cousin's face.
"Alex, listen to me. If you walk out of this house in the next quarter hour, every person in that room who saw Cornwall speak to you will know that whatever he said struck you.
You will hand him the confirmation he is still missing.
You stay. You stay another hour at the least. You dance with someone harmless.
You laugh at something. And then we leave at the natural time, when half the room is already calling for carriages, and we leave as men who came for an enjoyable evening and have had one. "
Alexander was breathing carefully. He said nothing for several seconds.
"He knows where I was three nights ago, Anthony. He knows whose house I entered. He knows what hour I left it."
"Then there is nothing more for him to learn tonight, and a great deal we can spare him by giving him no further information.
" Anthony's voice did not rise. "Stay. Smile.
Drink another glass. Find someone to dance with.
We leave at half past midnight like everyone else.
I will not let you walk out of here at quarter past eleven looking the way you look right now. "
Alexander closed his eyes for a single beat. When he opened them, the wall was already up — the polished, mildly amused expression of a duke enjoying a society evening, set into place as deliberately as armor.
"Half past midnight."
Alexander picked up his glass again. He turned back toward the room and offered a courteous nod to a passing acquaintance, and the man returned it with delight, and for the next hour and ten minutes Alexander Harrington moved through the Duke of Cornwall's ball as he had moved through every ball since his return — gracious, mysterious, slightly remote, the most interesting figure in any room.
Nothing in his face showed what had happened.
◆◆◆
The Duke of Cornwall called on the Earl of Derby the morning after the ball, and was shown into the study before the household was properly up.
He did not waste time on pleasantries. He told the Earl that he had set men to watch the Duke of Wexford some weeks before — for the Earl's sake, he reminded him, with his blessing — and that those men had brought him news that could not wait.
The Earl listened without speaking as Cornwall laid it out.
His daughter had been leaving the house at night.
She had been meeting the Duke of Wexford in the home of the widow Ashworth, alone, for hours at a time.
Three occasions in the past fortnight had been documented.
The most recent, three nights ago, the house had been empty.
They had been alone in it until shortly before dawn.
The Earl said nothing for a long moment.
"And it is worse than that, Charles. I watched him last night.
You watched him as well — but you watched him as the father of a beloved daughter watches a promising young man.
I watched him as a man who has spent his life learning to read other men, and I will tell you what I saw.
I saw a man who knows exactly how to charm a room and reveal nothing.
I saw a man who fielded my questions with the practiced ease of someone who has been fielding such questions for a long time.
I saw — and Charles, I would not say this if I had any doubt of it — I saw hostility beneath every polite answer.
Real hostility. The kind a man does not develop in the drawing rooms of London.
He came back from those eight years a different man than the one who went away, and whatever he became out there, it does not love the world we live in here.
I do not know what he is doing or what he wants.
I know only that whatever it is, it will not be good for any of us.
And I tell you frankly, old friend, I do not want my own family within a mile of him by the time it comes out. "
The Earl had gone very still.
"And Catherine—"
"Is at the center of it now, whether she knows it or not. When the scandal breaks, every name connected to him will be dragged into it. Yours among them. Hers most of all."
"What are you proposing."
"I am proposing that we move first. That we expose him — quietly, before he can act.
I have the influence to ensure that when London hears the story, it hears our version of it.
The Duke returned from those eight years a changed man.
He fell under the influence of a native shaman somewhere in Africa — half of London is already half-convinced of it.
He has cast some species of spell upon your daughter.
The story is half-written already. We need only to put it in motion. "
The Earl shook his head slowly. "Even if every man in London believed it — Cornwall, my daughter would be finished.
A woman who has been bewitched is still a woman who has been alone with a man in an empty house at midnight.
No respectable family will take her after that.
Spell or no spell. You know this as well as I do. "
"I do know it. Which is why I have not come to you only with a problem.
" Cornwall set down his cup. "Charles. I have thought about this for hours.
I would not have come to you at this hour if I had not thought it through.
I will not see my oldest friend's daughter abandoned in this. She will marry my son."
The Earl looked at him.
"Edward has admired her for years. Society reads it as a love match long expected.
We announce the engagement immediately — within days.
The spell story explains everything that came before: she was not herself, she has been recovered, the engagement to a steady young man of good family proves she is restored.
The world will read it as the curse being broken.
Within a fortnight no one will be talking about the Duke of Wexford in connection with her at all.
They will be talking about the wedding."
The Earl was silent a long time.
"You would do this for us."
"I would do it because she is the daughter of my oldest friend, and because my boy has wanted her since he was nineteen, and because it is the right thing. We have always looked after each other, Charles. This is no different."
The Earl reached across and gripped Cornwall's hand briefly. He did not speak again for some moments.
"Thank you," he said at last. "I do not have the words. Thank you."
"There is nothing to thank me for. Speak to her this morning. Do not let her send word to him. The announcement should be in the Times within the week."
The Earl hesitated. "Cornwall — give me a few days. Not many. I must speak with my wife. I must prepare Catherine. I cannot have the news break on this household before the household itself knows what is coming. A week, perhaps. No more."
"Of course." Cornwall inclined his head. "Take what time you must with your family. I shall begin making arrangements with the press in the meantime, so that when the moment comes the story is ready to run. But Charles — do not take too long. Every day we wait is a day he might act first."
"You will have your week."
"Then we are agreed."
Cornwall took his leave shortly after. The Earl sat alone in his study for some time after the front door had closed below, the fire crackling softly, the rain still pressing against the window.
He felt, on the whole, a profound relief.
A friend had come to him in a crisis and laid out a path through it.
His daughter would be saved. The family name would be preserved.
The whole business would be over within a fortnight.
What he did not yet see — could not yet see, would not see for some time — was that in the course of a single conversation he had handed Cornwall the timing of the announcement, the substance of the story, the identity of the bridegroom, and the silence of his own household.
He had agreed, without quite noticing he was agreeing, to act only when Cornwall said the moment had come, and to release a public version of events that Cornwall alone controlled.
He believed he had accepted a friend's help.
He had in fact placed his daughter, his name, and his next several decisions into the hands of a man who had walked into the study that morning knowing exactly which of them he would walk out with.
But the Earl saw none of that. He saw only the fire, and the rain, and the considerable comfort of a problem that had, at last, a solution.
He rang for the butler and asked whether his daughter was awake.
◆◆◆
Catherine was at her writing desk when her father came in. She had been about to attempt a letter to Alexander — she had been trying since dawn, and had so far produced nothing but discarded openings — and she rose at once when she saw her father's face.
"Papa."
"Sit down, Catherine."
She sat.
He did not sit. He stood at the window with his back to her for several seconds before he turned.
"I know where you have been going at night.
I know whose house. I know the hours. I know that three nights ago you were alone in that house with the Duke of Wexford until the small hours of the morning.
" He held up a hand as she opened her mouth.
"Do not. Do not lie to me about it. Do not try to explain.
There is nothing you can say that I will believe, and nothing I wish to hear. I know."
Catherine had gone white.
"You will not leave this house. You will receive no visitors I have not approved.
You will write no letters that do not pass first through my hand.
You will not communicate with the Duke of Wexford in any form whatsoever.
From this moment until I tell you otherwise, you are confined to this house and to my authority. Do you understand me."
"Papa—"
"Do you understand me, Catherine."
"Yes," she whispered.
"Good." He drew a long breath. "There is one further matter. You will be married, Catherine. Quietly, within the month. To the Duke of Cornwall's son. The announcement will be published in the Times this week."
The room turned silent.
She stared at him.
"Why are you doing this to me?"
"Because you would not save yourself," her father said. "So I must do it for you."
He left the room and closed the door behind him, and Catherine heard, very faintly, the sound of the key turning in the lock.