Page 64 of The Duke’s Hidden Duchess

She had watched him conceal irritation, surprise and calculation. Satisfaction he concealed less successfully, perhaps because he did not consider it necessary.

“Not frightened enough, I think.”

“What would be enough?”

“For your husband to understand that eleven hundred pounds is a very small sum beside what refusal may cost him.”

Selina made herself look towards the crowd, towards Nathaniel standing at a distance with Lord Fairburn.

“He will not pay merely for the letters.”

“No?”

“He believes we can stop their publication.”

Rowland’s mouth tightened.

“So that is what you have told him.”

“I have told him that a threat which cannot be renewed has little value.”

“That sounds like you.”

Selina let another silence pass.

She had given him enough resistance to recognise her. Now she needed uncertainty.

“Giles was less interested in the letters when he came to see me. He spoke of my father’s estate.” She allowed a trace of uncertainty into her voice. “He implied that the jewels were not the whole of it.”

Rowland watched her.

She could see him considering how much she knew and, more importantly, how much she feared she did not.

“What else does he have?” she asked.

He should have stopped there.

For a moment Selina thought he might. His glass turned slightly between his fingers. The conversation on the lawn went on around them, indifferent to the small silence beside the fountain.

Then she saw the decision not to.

“Records,” he said.

Selina did not react at once.

“What records?”

“Your father’s estate was not administered as cleanly as you like to remember.”

Selina kept her eyes on him.

“The jewels?”

“The jewels are only one part of it.”

She waited.

“What else?”