Page 41 of The Duke’s Hidden Duchess

Selina looked at him and could not find her next sentence. Her palm remained flat against the wall, and her heart beat high in her throat. She made herself draw breath and then made herself use it.

“You are in debt to my cousin, sir.”

That stopped him.

Behind her, in the room she had left, a number of people laughed at a joke she had not heard.

“Did you imagine that we would not discover it?” Selina kept her hand against the wall. “A man who attempts to blackmail a duchess should first enquire whether her reach extends farther than that of his creditor. Mine does. You may consider that during whatever hours your creditors leave you in peace.”

She watched the words strike. At the mention of Giles, the certainty left Rowland’s face. For the first time since the assembly, his smile did not return quickly enough to conceal the gap.

Selina left him in the passage and walked back into the light and noise, her spine straight and her hands loose at her sides. She did not look behind her.

A shallow window recess stood several paces inside the drawing room, half concealed by a curtain, with a closed card table beneath it. Selina stopped there and rested one hand upon its edge. In the dark glass, her reflection lay faintly over the garden. She brought her hands together because, separately, they were of no use to her at all.

A footman offered her a glass from his tray. Selina accepted it but did not drink. Someone at the pianoforte began playing an Irish air badly. At the far end of the room, a woman Selina had never met laughed, and the ordinary noise of the gathering continued around her, untouched by what had occurred in the passage.

Eleven hundred pounds.

The demand was not Selina’s to accept or refuse. The money was Nathaniel’s, the letters Georgiana’s, and the danger belonged to all three of them. Her task was to carry the information back intact.

Selina placed the glass upon the card table. Her hands had begun to obey her again. She turned and went back into the room.

Nathaniel met her at its edge. He had plainly noticed that both she and Rowland were absent and had begun searching for her.

She placed the glass upon the card table. Her hands had begun to obey her again, and she returned to the room.

Nathaniel met her at its edge. He had plainly marked both her absence and Rowland’s and had begun searching for her.

“He cornered you,” he said quietly.

“He did. He demanded eleven hundred pounds in exchange for Georgiana’s letters. If we refuse, he means to publish them with her name in full.”

Nathaniel’s expression hardened, but he did not interrupt.

“I told him that his letters had already supplied your solicitor with evidence,” Selina continued. “Then I said something about his coat which I should like to recall. He saw that I was frightened and enjoyed the discovery.”

“Did he touch you?”

“No.”

“Then we go home.”

Selina placed her hand upon his arm. It was not entirely steady.

“The room has decided in my favour. I believe the decision will have travelled through three drawing rooms by breakfast. But I have spent everything I brought with me, and I should like to return to a house where no one is weighing me, if such a house exists.”

“Ours,” Nathaniel said.

The word still sounded strange, but she did not dispute it.

***

In the carriage, Selina relinquished the composure she had maintained throughout the evening. She did not weep, but subsided into a silence so complete that Nathaniel did not disturb it for the first mile.

At last, he extended one hand across the darkness and stopped before touching her. Selina looked down at the offered hand, then turned her own beneath it. Only then did he cover her gloved fingers with his.

“You are permitted,” she said. “I am amending the agreement. In carriages, after battles, you are permitted. Do not extend the privilege to breakfast without a fresh negotiation.”