Page 87 of The Duke’s Hidden Duchess

Lady Marwood received them at the head of the stairs. Her gaze passed once over Selina’s gown.

“Silver,” she said.

“Apparently.”

“It will do.”

From Lady Marwood, this constituted extravagance.

Selina looked past her towards the adjoining rooms.

“Rowland is here.”

“Yes.”

Selina turned her eyes back to her hostess. “After you expelled him from your garden?”

“I instructed my servants to admit him tonight.”

“Why?”

“Because Giles intends to accuse you in my ballroom. If Rowland is part of the business, I prefer him present when it is answered.”

Selina considered this.

“Does he know you deliberately admitted him?”

“He knows only that no servant stopped him at the door. Vanity generally supplies a man with the explanation he prefers.”

“And Mrs Loxley?”

“Upstairs. Comfortable. She has asked for you once and been told you had not yet arrived.”

“I should like to speak with her when this is over. Not before. I will not have anyone suggest that I influenced what she means to say.”

“You shall. She has also been told that if she changes her mind, my carriage will take her home without a question.”

“Thank you.”

Lady Marwood waved the gratitude aside.

“Go into the room. Your cousin has been watching the door for twenty minutes, and I should hate to deprive him of the reward for his diligence.”

Selina almost smiled.

Then she and Nathaniel entered the ballroom.

At the threshold she paused for no more than a breath. The room was enormous when one knew that it might shortly turn against one. Fear was there after all. Selina felt it in the tightness beneath her ribs and in the sudden awareness of every face that might turn towards her. She had been wrong to think eight years could be put aside merely because she had chosen a silver gown.

But fear was no longer the same thing as helplessness.

Nathaniel’s arm remained beneath her hand. Georgiana was behind her. Lady Helena waited by the fire. Petherick had the papers. Upstairs, Mrs Loxley retained the right to say no.

Selina stepped forward.

Giles was near the centre of the room. He saw her almost immediately.

His expression changed; not to surprise, precisely, but to the satisfaction of a man whose warning had been ignored in exactly the way necessary to justify what came next.