Page 25 of The Duke’s Hidden Duchess

At last, Selina found the error. She sat back and, for the space of a minute, was entirely content without noticing that she was.

Lady Helena had been standing quietly in the doorway for some time. She watched the new Duchess of Wexford correct the entry, check the column once more and begin again from the top.

Then she went upstairs without announcing that she had been there.

Chapter Seven

“Do not rise. Young women are apt to spring to their feet from nervousness, and the movement tells me too much before they have spoken. Remain where you are and allow me to look at you.”

Lady Marwood was smaller than her reputation and, for that reason, somehow twice as formidable. She was a spare, upright woman of perhaps seventy, dressed in grey silk of such quality that Selina’s morning gown appeared decidedly modest beside it.

She had arrived at precisely three o’clock. Declining the more comfortable chair, she selected the harder one beside the window, where the light fell upon Selina rather than herself. She laid her cane across her knees as though it were an emblem of office.

“You have already looked at me a great deal, my lady,” Selina said, remaining seated as instructed. “You began at the door.”

“The door reveals carriage and posture. The rest requires conversation. Conversation is where clever people betray themselves, because they cannot resist displaying how clever they are.” Lady Marwood adjusted the cane beneath her hands. “Well? Do you intend to display yourself, or must I dig?”

“Neither, I hope. I shall answer what you ask, but I shall not perform. If that disappoints you, I regret it.”

Lady Marwood’s eyes, pale and undimmed, travelled over Selina’s face with the frank assessment of a woman long past pretending not to assess. Afterwards, they examined the room and took rather longer over it: the darned place in the curtain, the handsome clock, the chair recently moved from the faded impression it had left upon the carpet, and the empty, well-swept hearth.

Lady Marwood had been reading rooms since before Selina’s mother married. She read this one as a farmer might read the sky.

“Those flowers are wrong,” she said. “Someone young selected them.”

“His Grace’s sister.”

“They have stood there for four days because no one has possessed the courage to remove them.” Her cane settled across her knees once more. “You know who I am.”

“You are the woman whose opinion travels furthest and fastest through London.” Selina met her gaze. “You have come to decide whether the new Duchess of Wexford is to be received or quietly excluded.”

“And whether the Duchess of Wexford intends to continue pretending that she was born Miss Gray.”

There it was. Lady Marwood had brought the name into the room, but Selina would determine how it remained there.

“Gray was my mother’s name, and one I used when my own had become impossible to carry. My father was the Earl of Merrow. He was convicted of murder and hanged. I had no part in his crime, yet I have spent much of my life bearing its punishment. That is my history. Since you will hear it regardless, I prefer to give it to you plainly rather than allow gossip to arrange the particulars.”

Lady Marwood remained silent for a moment. Then, to Selina’s surprise, she smiled. It was a small, dry movement which drew the deep lines of her face into a new and not altogether unfriendly arrangement.

“Most women in your position would gamble upon a flattering fiction. It might purchase them a Season.”

“I have seen what a false account can cost. I have no wish to entrust myself to another.”

Lady Marwood did not answer immediately. She lifted the tea which had stood untouched beside her, examined the cup and did not drink.

“You were employed as a companion.”

“For three years in Suffolk. I then spent six months seeking another position.”

“Under a name which was not your own.”

“Under my mother’s name, my lady. I do not consider the distinction insignificant, though I do not expect it to interest you.”

“It does not.”

Lady Marwood took a single swallow and settled the cup upon her knee.

“Your hands are not the hands society expects of a duchess. I noticed them at the door.”