Page 112 of The Duke’s Hidden Duchess

There were other women moving through the rooms too: women Selina had helped privately while the Foundation was still being built, some now established in suitable positions and returned for the opening. One had brought flowers. Another had volunteered to spend the morning helping new arrivals find their way through the unfamiliar house.

They needed no speeches explaining what the Foundation might accomplish.

Their presence did that well enough.

Nathaniel was standing near the foot of the stairs.

He had come, as he came now to the things that mattered to her, without announcement. He had apparently been detained by Georgiana and her books and was holding one volume she had thrust into his hands.

He saw Selina.

His expression changed in the familiar way it still did when he found her unexpectedly in a room.

She crossed towards him.

“You have become formidable, Duchess.”

“I was always formidable. You were merely distracted by my grey gown.”

“I remember the gown.”

“I am surprised. You appeared far more interested in my employment history.”

“I was trying to discover whether you would terrify my sister.”

“And?”

“I underestimated you considerably.”

He laughed.

It was still not a common sound, though it was no longer rare enough to surprise her.

Selina looked down at her own gown. She had chosen grey deliberately that morning, though she had told no one why. It was finer than the one she had worn to Harcourt House and cut for a woman who expected to be noticed rather than overlooked.

Nathaniel followed her glance.

“Grey again.”

“Yes.”

He did not ask.

That was one of the things he had learnt.

Almost a year had passed since the ballroom, the terrace and the first time in eight years that Selina had said aloud a word she had believed safer left unnamed. The year since had been less dramatic and considerably more difficult to describe: breakfasts, accounts, visits to Wexford Park, Georgiana’s careful return to society, and hundreds of ordinary mornings upon which Nathaniel had done precisely what he had promised.

He had still been there.

The certainty had accumulated quietly.

The Foundation had grown in much the same fashion; not out of a single grand gesture, but out of papers signed, rooms inspected, references checked, money argued over and doors made ready to open.

Now they had.

“What did you think of your first applicant?” Nathaniel asked.

Selina glanced towards the stairs up which the young woman had disappeared.