Page 74 of The Duke’s Hidden Duchess

Selina almost smiled and prevented herself. She rose and came around the desk.

“I am not angry because you and Petherick went to the printer. He ought to have gone. Had you told me this morning, I should have told him to go faster.”

“I suspected as much.”

“Then you might have saved yourself the suspense.”

“I am beginning to understand that.”

She stopped in front of him.

“I spent eight years having choices made for me by people who were quite certain they knew what was necessary. Some of them were even right. I did not marry you in order to acquire a kinder version of the same arrangement.”

Nathaniel’s expression changed.

The distinction was not new to him. Hearing how precisely he had failed it was.

“I know.”

“No. You are learning.”

He took the correction.

“Yes.”

Selina let the silence remain between them a moment. She did not soften what she had said, and Nathaniel did not ask her to.

Then she looked at the packet once more.

“What did you learn?”

He began with Sowerby’s message, then the printer, the intermediary, the recovered copies and the written account. Selina listened without interrupting except when she wanted something made precise. Nathaniel answered precisely.

The anger did not disappear while he spoke.

Neither did she sharpen it merely because she possessed it.

By the time he had finished, she was standing beside him at the desk rather than opposite him.

The packet lay between them.

“The intermediary matters,” she said.

“Yes.”

“And Rowland still has the originals.”

“Yes.”

“And Giles still has whatever papers he means to use concerning the payments.”

Nathaniel turned his head towards her.

She had gone pale.

The change was slight, but after the conversation they had just had he was in no mood to pretend he had not seen it.

“You know what those payments are.”