Page 11 of The Duke’s Hidden Duchess

She delivered the last lightly because the alternative was to deliver it with all its weight.

“The library is at your disposal,” Nathaniel said. “Not merely to borrow from. To use as you please.”

He addressed the words to the window rather than to her.

“I shall have a chair placed beside the south window. The light lasts longest there. It is otherwise a poor room: cold, full of consequence, and wasted upon me. Consider it an asset put to better use.”

He did not say the rest, nor did he turn. He had wrapped the entire kindness in the language of a ledger so that she would not be obliged to feel grateful for it. Selina stood in the middle of his study with her hands at her sides and found, for a moment, that none of her usual replies would come.

“Thank you, Your Grace,” she said, and left it there because he had made it possible for her to do so.

***

The invitation arrived that afternoon upon thick cream paper, perfumed with hothouse flowers and addressed to Lady Georgiana Sinclair in a bold, fashionable hand. Selina found it upon the salver in the hall and read the name without compunction, having been forced to abandon such delicacies over matters of greater consequence.

Mrs Ottley requested the pleasure of Lady Georgiana’s company at a masquerade.

Selina turned the card between her fingers. Mrs Ottley presided over the sort of household that sent scented invitations to nineteen-year-old girls without extending the courtesy to those responsible for accompanying them. Hers was a house of new money and considerable ambition, its mistress purchasing admission to greater circles by providing what more respectable hostesses would not: rooms open to anyone whose presence might make them interesting. A Mr Felix Rowland might be welcomed there without inconvenient questions about the company he kept or the young women he encouraged towards the private supper rooms.

Selina stood in the cold hall, the invitation in her hand and the name Rowland turning once more within her chest.

The pieces had begun to gather into an ugly picture, though too many of them were still missing. A hostess of new money who traded propriety for interesting company. A man named Rowland, whose name belonged to her father’s former circle and whose face she might have seen across the charitable hall. A girl of nineteen meeting him in secret and calling the secrecy romance.

Perhaps the invitation was no more than an invitation. Perhaps Mrs Ottley’s failure to include Georgiana’s brother was merely discourteous. Yet Selina could not dismiss the possibility that someone had drawn a line from the Fenwicks’ rout in March to this salver in May, and that the line passed through Georgiana towards the protection, influence and fortune of the Duke of Wexford.

Selina did not return the invitation to the salver. She slipped it into her own cuff, where Georgiana had concealed the note that morning, and walked down the hall to the study. There she stopped with one hand raised, the card stiff against her wrist, considering how much she ought to tell Nathaniel and how much she had promised to keep.

The hall clock measured most of a minute before she knocked.

Chapter Four

“She will not attend.”

Nathaniel set the invitation upon his desk.

“That conclusion was swift.”

“It required no deliberation.”

Georgiana was summoned and received the decision with a composure more alarming than anger.

“You took my invitation,” she said to Selina.

“I brought it to your guardian.”

“You brought it to my brother.”

“In this instance, they are unfortunately the same man.”

“And neither of you thought I should be consulted before deciding where I may go?”

“You have made your intention clear,” Nathaniel said. “I still refuse it.”

“You refuse everything before I have finished asking.”

“Mrs Ottley’s house is unsuitable. Repetition will not improve it.”

Georgiana’s eyes moved between them. Anger rose into her face, then slowly withdrew behind an expression of careful composure.