Page 106 of The Duke’s Hidden Duchess

“I am bargaining with my principal investor. It is an important distinction.”

“Fourteen.”

Selina considered him. “Fourteen. Any remainder returns to the general account.”

“Agreed.” He went back to the first page. “You have thought about this for some time.”

“Since the placement assembly, though I did not know then that I was thinking about it.”

Nathaniel remembered her against the wall in grey, watching an entire room assess what use might be made of her.

“There were women there better qualified than I was,” Selina said. “Some had been looking longer. Some were young enough to believe that a gentleman offering twice the usual wage must necessarily be generous. Some were old enough to know better and desperate enough not to care.”

Her finger rested upon the edge of the paper.

“I was fortunate. You happened to be there.”

“You did not consider yourself fortunate at the time.”

“I considered you insufferable.”

“You concealed it admirably.”

“I did no such thing.”

“No.”

Her mouth shifted.

“But you were there,” she said. “And you offered me a post in a house where my room locked, my wages were paid when promised, and nobody expected me to purchase security by tolerating liberties. That should not require extraordinary luck.”

“No.”

“I cannot stand beside every pillar at every placement assembly in London.”

Nathaniel looked again at the pages.

“So you intend to build the pillar.”

Selina gave him a suspicious look.

“That was almost poetic.”

“I withdraw it.”

“Too late.”

He read on.

There would be a matron resident in the house. A small number of rooms at first, not the vast institution his mind had already begun trying to construct. Applicants would be interviewed, but employers would be examined just as carefully. References would run in both directions. A woman placed through the foundation could write back if the situation proved different from the one represented to her.

It was, Nathaniel realised, less a charity than a mechanism for giving women without power some of the protections ordinarily supplied by family and money.

“What do you need from me?” he asked.

Selina’s eyes lifted. “You are asking?”

“Yes.”