Page 1 of The Duke’s Hidden Duchess

Chapter One

The fan stopped moving first.

Lady Bracken had been working it in short strokes for the better part of a minute while she inspected Selina like a length of cloth of uncertain weave, turning her a little towards the light, and it was the stillness of the fan rather than the question that told Selina the interview had already gone wrong.

“Can you keep silent when corrected?” The fan lay shut across the lady’s knuckles.

“That would depend entirely upon whether the correction is accurate, madam.” Selina kept both hands on the reticule in her lap and did not move them.

The assembly room at Harcourt House had been arranged for exactly this. Chairs in rows for the impoverished gentlewomen, small tables for the ladies who came to inspect them.

“I beg your pardon?” The fan had not moved again.

“You asked whether I can keep silent when corrected, and I answered honestly. A false correction deserves a reply and a true one deserves attention. I am capable of both. I confess I cannot promise the first without knowing which sort you intend to offer.”

A silence spread across the little table, brief and total. Behind Selina, a chair scraped, and a matron laughed at a joke that had nothing to do with her.

“You are insolent,” Lady Bracken said.

“I am accurate.” Selina met the look and held it. “The two are frequently mistaken for one another by people who prefer to be agreed with.”

“My last companion never once contradicted me in eleven months.” The fan came open again and went faster than before.

“Then I imagine you were wrong at least once in that time and never had the benefit of hearing so, madam.” Selina let a moment pass. “I mention it only because you asked.”

Lady Bracken drew herself up, and the two feathers in her turban trembled with a wrath the rest of her was too well-bred to show. “You may go, Miss Gray. I require a companion, not a debating society.”

Selina rose from the low chair without hurry, inclined her head at precisely the correct depth, and gathered the plain reticule that held everything she still owned worth carrying. Rising made the room tilt a little at its edges. She waited for it to right itself and did not touch the back of the chair.

“Then I wish you a companion who keeps silent, madam.” She was already turning as she said it.

She walked away before Lady Bracken could summon a reply. The grey gown she wore had been chosen for its power to make her unremarkable, wool the colour of a rainy afternoon, and six months of wearing it had taught her to cross a room without troubling it. Most days she managed. Today her tongue had betrayed her twice before noon.

She found a place against the far wall where a tall window let in the thin light of a London morning, and pretended to study the street below. Carriages passed. At the corner, a crossing-sweeper worked with his head bowed, clearing a path through the wet muck for pedestrians who never came.

She counted her money in her head, a habit she despised and could not break. Two more weeks of the lodging house. Bread at six that morning, the end of the loaf, and coffee behind her now on a charity table with little iced cakes ranged around the urn, and the smell of it reached her at the window and closed a hand around the back of her throat. She kept her face to the glass. After that, a decision she had been refusing to name for a fortnight and would have to name by Tuesday.

“You did not want the position.”

The voice came from her left, low and dry. A gentleman stood perhaps three feet away with his hands clasped behind his back, tall, dark-haired, dressed with a restraint that had cost more than display would have. His face was not kind. It was attentive, which was rarer.

“I wanted the salary, sir.” She turned only as far as she had to. “The position was merely attached to it.”

“And yet you spoke yourself out of both inside a quarter hour,” he said.

“A mistress who cannot bear an honest answer at the interview will bear one still less across a year of employment.” Selina drew her glove smooth at the wrist. “It seemed economical to disappoint her now rather than by degrees.”

The corner of his mouth moved in a way that was not quite a smile. “You are either very foolish or very tired.”

“Must it be only one?”

He looked at her a moment longer, and Selina held his gaze. Around them, the assembly murmured on, and the urn hissed, and a spoon rang against a saucer.

“You watched all that,” she said. “From over there, beside the pillar, with your hands clasped behind your back and your judgement already formed. I do not care to serve as an entertainment, sir.”

“You were not an entertainment.” He appeared to consider whether to continue, but ventured no further than, “You were the only person in the room worth watching.”

“And now you have come to inspect the specimen more closely.” Her chin had risen, and she made no effort to lower it.