Page 31 of The Duke’s Hidden Duchess

Once they were seated and the carriage had begun to move, Selina turned one glove over in her lap.

“Well,” she said, “you have shown the ton a convincing marriage. By supper, the woman at the rail will have carried it through three drawing rooms: the Duke of Wexford laughing in the park, his hand covering his wife’s. Lady Marwood will hear a version of us before Thursday which we did not need to arrange ourselves.”

“She will have the particulars correctly,” Nathaniel said. “What of their meaning?”

Her fingers stilled upon the glove.

For once, no answer stood ready. She studied the seam for several moments before turning towards the window.

“Ask me again when I have decided,” she said.

Nathaniel sat back. “I shall.”

Neither spoke again on the journey home, but the silence travelled with them like something newly shared.

***

Sowerby’s preliminary report arrived before the week was out, enclosed in a plain sealed packet and delivered by an equally unremarkable man who did not wait for a reply. Nathaniel read it in the study with the door closed.

Mr Felix Rowland’s finances proved to be precisely the precarious structure Selina had predicted. Debts rested upon other debts. He maintained lodgings far beyond his means, had left his tailor unpaid for two years and was being threatened by his wine merchant. His entire existence as a gentleman was supported by nothing sturdier than the appearance of being one.

Sowerby wrote in a dry clerk’s hand which lent the ruin no drama and thereby made it worse. The figures described a man who could not survive another quarter without acquiring a considerable sum he had no prospect of earning.

The final line of the report brought Nathaniel to his feet.

The largest of Rowland’s obligations, the debt upon which all the others appeared to depend, was held by a single creditor. Sowerby had supplied the name.

Nathaniel read it twice to ensure that the ink had not deceived him. Then he sat down slowly. The connection might conceivably be a coincidence, but it was not one he could safely dismiss.

Felix Rowland’s ruin rested largely in the hands of a man who might also possess reason to take an interest in Selina: a man of her own blood, who had known her when her name was worth a fortune, watched that name fall and never once extended a hand to catch her.

The Earl of Merrow. His wife’s cousin.

Nathaniel remained with the report upon his knee and the fire unlit before him. The pieces shifted and began to form a different picture: the masquerade, the corridor, Selina’s true name spoken deliberately in a hall full of attentive ears. He could not yet prove design, but he could no longer regard each incident as chance.

If Lord Merrow held Rowland’s debts, he might also hold Rowland’s obedience. Georgiana’s letters could have provided the means of entering the Wexford household, and Selina’s disgraced name some further purpose Nathaniel could not yet see.

Upstairs, somewhere above him, he heard his wife walking, the household keys moving softly with her.

Chapter Nine

The letters lay across the morning-room floor in two unequal heaps. Selina knelt among them with her sleeves turned back and the inkstand placed safely beyond the reach of an unwary foot. The copies Georgiana had kept of her own letters formed the taller pile; the few of Rowland’s which she had not burnt made up the other. Selina had set the girl to sorting them because it gave her hands something to do besides wring one another.

“You are not to linger over them, and you are certainly not to weep upon them. The ink will run, and then we shall be unable to distinguish the foolishness already sorted from the foolishness remaining.” She held out her hand for the next letter. “Dry your face. We shall conduct ourselves as two clerks, not as a tragedy.”

“They are so stupid.” Georgiana held one at arm’s length, as though it might turn upon her. “Listen to this: No one in this house has ever asked me a single question about myself and waited for the answer. I wrote that to him. As though it were some great and secret truth. He agreed with me so beautifully that I felt clever merely for having thought of it.”

“It was true,” Selina said. “That is why he could use it.”

She placed the letter upon the sorted pile and reached for another without looking up. The silence remained where she had left it, in the middle of the carpet and within Georgiana’s reach.

The girl took it.

“It was not precisely true. Or it was true only upon the days when no one came, and I daresay other girls endure worse days than mine without writing to strange men about them. I did know better. I want you to understand that I knew perfectly well. I simply did not think it signified, because he never completed a sentence. He left the ends lying about for a person to pick up herself, and by the time I understood what I was picking up, I had already written three letters.” She pushed the hair from her face with the back of her wrist. “I have explained that very badly.”

“You have explained it perfectly well.”

“You are letting me talk.”