Page 110 of The Duke’s Hidden Duchess

“Refuse it?”

“Yes.”

“Even if it is respectable?”

“A house may be perfectly respectable and entirely wrong for you.”

The young woman considered this as though Selina had proposed overturning a law of nature.

“I do not think anyone has ever asked me to decide anything,” she said at last. “I was told my situation, when I had one. I did not choose it. It chose me, and then it dismissed me, and I was told that too.”

“Then this will be a novel afternoon for us both, because I intend to ask you a good many questions to which I do not already know the answers, and then wait for them.”

Selina leant back slightly.

“We shall find you another situation, or arrange further instruction if that would improve the choices available to you. While we look, you may lodge upstairs. Your room has a lock, and the key will be yours. You will not be obliged to take the first unsuitable position offered merely because you cannot afford another week without one.”

The girl stared at her.

“That,” Selina said, “is the part I should like you to remember.”

She reached for the bell.

“Now. Shall we have tea? Important decisions generally improve with tea, and we appear to have several to make.”

“They said you were a duchess,” the young woman said in a rush.

Her hand rose halfway towards her mouth before she stopped herself.

“The lady at the agency. She said, if you are fortunate, the Duchess of Wexford will see you herself, and I did not believe her. A duchess does not see a person like me. A duchess is seen, from a distance, in a carriage.”

Selina waited.

“And you are one,” the girl finished. “And you are pouring me tea and asking what I want. Forgive me. I do not understand why a duchess should trouble herself with a girl in a grey gown.”

Selina glanced down at the sleeve of her own gown.

She had worn grey that morning as well.

“Because a duchess in a grey gown once sat where you are sitting and knows precisely what it costs to have no good choices.”

The young woman looked at her.

“That is the whole mystery,” Selina said. “There is very little of it once explained. I was fortunate. Someone happened to give me a position when I badly needed one, and the position proved safe. Chance should not have so much to do with it.”

“But why this?” The girl glanced towards the room, and beyond it the house. “Why all of this?”

“Because one position was enough to alter the course of my life. It seemed reasonable to see whether the opportunity might be made less accidental for someone else.”

“Then this is a charity?”

“No.”

Selina’s answer came gently, but at once.

“Charity may be useful, and I have no quarrel with it. But that is not what is happening between you and me. You do not owe this house gratitude for having needed it. You will pay for your keep when you are able, according to your means, and nothing while you are not. If one day you find yourself able and willing to help another woman who has fewer choices than she deserves, I shall be glad of it. If you never do, you will owe me no account of why.”

Something in the girl’s face altered.