Page 36 of The Duke’s Hidden Duchess

Selina refolded the report and returned it. Her gaze moved to the note upon the table.

“Then we allow him to believe we know less than we do.”

“Agreed.”

Lord Merrow arrived at three.

Nathaniel saw at once that he was a man shaped by grievance and appetite, soft where his cousin was spare, wearing the Calvert features like a coat inherited from a better man and let out carelessly at the seams. He bowed too deeply to Selina and not deeply enough to Nathaniel, accepted the chair offered to him and the tea which had scarcely been offered at all, then extended his legs until his boots reached the edge of the hearthrug. He set his cup upon the table at his elbow without troubling to look where it landed.

“Cousin,” Giles said. “Or must I call you Your Grace now? I suppose I must. How very strange. I remember you in short skirts at Merrow, ordering the grooms about as though you owned them. Now here you are, ordering a duke’s household. Not everyone in the family has landed so softly. Some of us have been obliged to shift as best we could.”

“You have landed softly enough to afford that coat, which is newer than anything I owned during my final two years as Miss Gray.” Selina remained standing. “Say what you came to say. My husband has generously agreed to remain silent while you say it, and I would not squander the rarity of a silent duke upon reminiscence.”

Giles lifted his cup, discovered that the tea was too hot and replaced it.

“So direct. You always were. Like your father. Though it did not serve him particularly well in the end.”

“Very little served my father in the end. That is what the end means.” She glanced deliberately at the clock upon the chimneypiece. “You may have three-quarters of an hour, which is more than politeness requires me to grant a caller. You have already spent four minutes of it upon my short skirts.”

Giles laughed. The sound emerged at the wrong pitch, and he cleared his throat over it.

“You are not curious to know how I found you? No? Well. A companion, they said. Miss Gray. Very quiet, very grey. Then, overnight, a duchess, with half the town wondering who the new Duchess of Wexford might be and only one or two of us knowing.” He leant back. “I did not speak. I want that understood before we proceed, because you will otherwise misconstrue me. You always did. One word from me in the proper ear, and Miss Gray would have appeared in every sheet in London before the town had finished learning of your marriage. Yet I held my tongue. Out of family feeling. I believe that entitles me to a hearing. That is all I ask.”

“It entitles you to nothing. You did not remain silent out of kindness. You remained silent because a duchess is worth more to you intact than disgraced, and you have come to collect the difference. Do not dress appetite as restraint in my hearing, Giles. I was raised at the same table as you.” She indicated the clock. “Name the thing; or spend the remainder of your visit admiring my furniture.”

His soft face tightened, and grievance showed beneath the courtesy like bone beneath thin cloth.

“Very well. Since you insist upon having it in the ugliest possible form, which was always your way.” He adjusted one cuff. “You have done well for yourself, cousin. Better than a woman in your position had any right to expect, and I am glad of it, whatever you may believe. I have never wished you ill. There was a time when I might have done, but never mind that.” He glanced towards Nathaniel, then back to Selina. “Your good fortune rests upon an unsound foundation. That is the plain fact of it. I have come, at some inconvenience to myself, to help you strengthen it before someone less kindly disposed notices the same weakness.”

“Then name the weakness,” Selina said.

He took his time. First, he surveyed the pictures, the hangings and the height of the ceiling, pricing each in turn. Then he looked back at her with the satisfaction of a man preparing to spend a coin he had carried a long way.

“The jewels.” He spread his hands. “Your mother’s garnets. You sold them, cousin, to a dealer in Ludgate Street, for a sum which I shall not embarrass you by naming. I do not blame you. I am certain you were driven to it, and equally certain it was very difficult.”

He paused to allow the sympathy its effect. Selina gave him none.

“The difficulty is that the jewels were not yours to sell. The law is particular upon the point, and it does not agree with you.” Again, he glanced at Nathaniel. “They formed part of the settled goods of the Merrow estate. Upon the administration of your father’s affairs, they ought properly to have passed to the heir, which is to say, in the fullness of the law and with no pleasure to myself, to me.”

He settled more comfortably into the chair.

“There it is. You sold property belonging to the estate. A court has an unpleasant name for such conduct, and it is not a name any duchess would care to carry.”

The room became still.

Nathaniel remained in the chair assigned to him, his hands resting upon its arms. After a moment, his right hand closed. He looked down, opened it finger by finger and laid it flat again.

“You are attempting to blackmail my wife in my drawing room,” he said. His voice was low and level, and therefore more dangerous than anger would have been.

“I am attempting to discuss a family obligation, Your Grace.”

“You have stated what you came to state. My wife will answer you.”

Selina allowed Giles no time to recover.

“Who else knows of this?” she asked.

Giles’s expression altered. “I beg your pardon?”