Page 39 of The Duke’s Hidden Duchess

Rowland remained deeply indebted to Giles, and Giles had now brought a false claim against Selina into Nathaniel’s drawing room. He could not yet see precisely how the two facts joined, but he no longer believed that they stood apart.

Nathaniel sat in the darkness without consulting the arithmetic. It was a long while before he lit a candle.

Chapter Eleven

“Do you find it difficult, Your Grace, stepping into such an old title so suddenly? One imagines it must be rather like wearing another woman’s gown. The fit is never quite one’s own, however the maid pins it.”

The speaker was a Mrs Calloway, seated three places down Lady Marwood’s long table, a handsome woman with a handsome fortune and the particular smile of a person who has decided to be charming and cruel in the same breath and trusts the charm to carry the cruelty past the slower guests.

Selina had marked her within the first course as the one to watch, because she laughed a beat too early and looked a beat too long, and the compliment arrived now precisely on schedule, dressed in silk and pointed at the throat.

“Not difficult,” Selina said. “Heavy. But I have carried heavier things than silk, and the trick is the same with all of them, which is to stand up straight and decline to let the weight decide your posture for you.”

A small silence held the near end of the table, the silence of a room recalculating. At its head, Lady Marwood made a sound into her wine that in a younger woman would have been a laugh.

“You will forgive Mrs Calloway, Duchess. She collects the discomfort of others as I collect Sèvres, and with rather less discrimination. You have disappointed her by declining to be discomfited. I enjoyed watching you do it.”

“I intended no cruelty, my lady. I have simply run short of the sort of shame the question was designed to spend.”

The dinner had been, until that moment, precisely the ordeal Nathaniel had warned her of: a long, polished procession of compliments with teeth and questions fitted with hooks. The company appeared united in the courteous project of discovering whether the murderer’s daughter would break beneath a sufficient weight of gentility.

A gentleman to Selina’s left had asked, very gently, whether she found London greatly changed since her debut, a civil way of reminding the table that she had once entered society as an earl’s daughter, before the fall. A dowager opposite had wondered aloud whether the country did not suit certain constitutions better than town, which was a civil way of suggesting that Selina return to it.

Every hook came wrapped in solicitude. She answered each with a plainness which offered it nothing to catch upon. As the courses passed, the company’s verdict shifted by small degrees from eager anticipation towards wary and unwilling respect.

Beneath the table, Selina held her napkin in a grip which had crushed it beyond recovery.

“You bear scrutiny remarkably well, Duchess,” the dowager observed at last, shaping the remark as a compliment. “Some women would find so much interest in their history rather trying.”

“I have already survived the history, ma’am. I see no reason to relive it for the entertainment of a dinner table.” Selina lifted her wine. “Anyone may ask for the facts. My composure is not available for the asking.”

Nathaniel sat opposite her and two places down, magnificently silent as instructed. She caught his eye once between the fish and the fowl. His expression held none of its earlier concern. He returned calmly to his plate, and Selina found that she could do the same.

Mrs Calloway waited until the ladies had withdrawn, the coffee had been served and the conversation had settled comfortably enough for an interruption to carry.

“I wondered, Duchess, whether you might advise us. My sister has a daughter coming out next spring and very little money to speak of. I have said to her a hundred times that the great difficulty lies in knowing what a girl without fortune may reasonably hope for.” Her cup rose to her lips and descended again. “You will have considered that question more closely than the rest of us. One does, I imagine, after seeing both sides of it.”

Someone laughed and stopped abruptly.

“Tell your sister to teach the girl to be useful,” Selina said. “It is the only fortune which cannot be attainted. And when the useful girl marries better than your sister did, advise her not to express her surprise at dinner.”

Colour rose into Mrs Calloway’s face and remained there for several minutes. The dowager opposite contemplated the fire with the expression of a woman remembering a private joke, while three people attempted to change the subject at once.

The evening altered after the ladies rejoined the gentlemen, during the crowded, overheated hour when the order of dinner dissolved and guests arranged themselves according to preference rather than place cards.

Felix Rowland had entered the room.

Selina saw him before he noticed her, standing among the guests near the pianoforte in a coat too new and an attitude too easy. The strength left her legs and had to be summoned back.

Lady Marwood did not knowingly receive men of Rowland’s character. Someone had opened a door which should have remained closed, and Selina traced the route in a glance. Rowland stood beside Mrs Ottley, one of the additional callers admitted after dinner. Mrs Ottley had evidently presented him as some respectable connection and brought him into the room beneath the protection of her own invitation; a curiosity whose danger she mistook for interest.

Selina crossed to her husband before Rowland could approach either of them. She reached Nathaniel just as Rowland detached himself from Mrs Ottley and came smiling towards the Duke of Wexford.

“Your Grace.” Rowland’s bow was a shade too deep to signify respect. “Allow me to offer my belated congratulations upon your marriage. Such a sudden marriage, and such a quiet one. One admires a man capable of conducting so considerable a piece of business with so little noise. I had not even known that you kept a bride, and I flatter myself that I know most of what passes in town.”

“You flatter yourself upon a great many subjects, Mr Rowland,” Selina said. “It is your most consistent quality.”

His smile remained, but his eyes sharpened. “Yet here I am, in a respectable house. Received.”