Page 37 of The Duke’s Hidden Duchess

“You would not come here without preparing for my refusal. Have you taken this accusation to a printer?”

“I have done no such thing.”

“Do not lie to me.”

“I am not lying. I have never spoken to a printer in my life.”

Colour rose abruptly into Giles’s face, accompanied by something which looked disconcertingly like genuine indignation.

“You always did this, cousin. You ran ahead of the facts, arrived at the most disgraceful conclusion and expected everyone else to have reached it before you. Then, when you discovered that we had not, you never once apologised.”

Selina said nothing.

The silence lasted a moment too long. Giles heard it lengthen and sat straighter, a new brightness entering his expression.

“Your father wrote to me,” he said. “From the Tower. Three times.”

Selina’s hand closed around the back of the chair before her.

“Did you know that? I imagine not. Three letters in his own hand, every one concerning the estate and what must be done to preserve the family name; not one line in any of them about you.” He leant forwards, warming to the cruelty now that he had found its mark. “He had a daughter of seventeen living in hired rooms, yet he wrote to his heir about the timber. Do not stand there explaining how this family reasons, cousin, as though its selfishness somehow passed you over. He did not think of you either. None of us did. You have made a creed of being the only honest Calvert, and I have never understood how you believe you earned the distinction.”

“That will do,” Nathaniel said.

“Let him finish.” Selina did not look at either man. “He has very little left.”

Giles settled back and adjusted his cuff. He appeared pleased with himself, though the pleasure did not survive Selina’s turning towards him.

“The jewels were not entailed,” she said. “You know they were not, because my mother left them to me by name in a codicil written in her own hand. They were her separate property and never formed part of the settled goods of the estate. The bequest was explicit, however inconvenient you find it now.” She moved around the chair. “You have not brought me a legal fact. You have brought me a legal fiction dressed in enough Latin to frighten a woman whom you assumed could not distinguish between them. I was present while my father’s estate was administered. I know what was settled and what was not.” She stopped before him. “And there is one thing more. I shall ask you plainly, and I shall watch your face while you answer, so take whatever time you require.”

Giles had grown a shade paler. “Ask, then.”

“When my mother died, I wrote to you at Merrow, where you had installed yourself among my father’s remaining possessions. I wrote to tell you that she was gone and to ask, not for money, because I had already learnt better than to ask you for that, but whether any of her effects remained. Anything which had belonged to her and which I might keep, since I had managed to save so little.” She waited. “Did you receive that letter, Giles? It is a simple question. Did my letter reach you in the winter my mother died?”

Giles opened his mouth, closed it and looked towards the window. His hesitation extended far beyond the point at which an honest man’s answer would have come.

Nathaniel watched him from the chair beside the fire and offered no assistance. Neither did the clock, which continued marking the silence.

“I do not recall every letter I receive.”

“No. I imagine you do not.” Selina did not raise her voice. “But you remember mine well enough. You merely refuse to admit it, because then you would also have to admit that you chose not to answer.”

She glanced at the clock.

“I have heard enough. The butler will show you out. You will send me nothing further concerning the jewels, because the next accusation to which you put your name will go directly to a solicitor considerably better than whoever taught you that little piece of law.”

Giles rose and reached the door before turning back, one hand upon the handle.

“You always believed yourself cleverer than the rest of us. Your father believed himself clever too. Look where it carried him.” He waited for an answer and received none. “The estate’s debts are not all settled, whatever you may imagine. Certain matters remain which a court would find very interesting. Very interesting indeed. Cleverness will not answer them forever.”

He departed before she could reply, which was the only victory the afternoon afforded him. They heard his steps upon the stairs, then his voice in the hall putting a question to Bassett which the butler did not answer, and finally the closing of the front door.

Nathaniel watched his wife hold herself perfectly upright in the centre of the drawing room until Giles was gone. Then the rigidity left her; not in collapse, for she did not collapse, but in a weariness which made her appear suddenly older before she folded it away again.

“He received the letter,” she said to no one. “I always knew that he had. There is a difference between knowing something and watching a man fail to deny it. I did not expect the second to cost more than the first.” Her hand tightened upon the chair. “It should not. The fact has not changed.”

“Sit.”

She looked at the chair Giles had occupied, chose another and lowered herself into it.