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“Why, Miss Keynsham! Or, I beg your pardon—Lady March.” He bowed and chuckled. “Dear me! I suppose that I still cannot quite think of you as a duchess.”

It was Mr. Townley. She froze, scarcely able to breathe. How could he be here? He was in Venice!

He saw the tears in her eyes. “Oh dear!” His voice dripped with false sympathy. “Surely you have not had bad news on today of all days?”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Townley.” She tried to step past him. “Please excuse me.”

He stepped sideways too, blocking her. “I really must insist on being of aid!” His eyes glinted with malice. “It is impossible for any gentleman not to be alarmed, seeing you in such a state of emotion, Miss Keynsham. I mean Lady March. Or… should I call you Mrs. Brown?”

“I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“Really? Do you not?” His smile broadened. “You see, your grace, I know a great deal about you. A great deal more than you suspect.”

Her hands were shaking. He knew her secret. But how?

“You need not trouble to play the grand lady with me, you know.” He dropped his voice to an almost intimate pitch. “After all, I know that you are merely the daughter of a bankrupt viscount. I know that your family title is not an old one—and that thanks to your father, it very nearly sank into ruin. Your mother is the upstart daughter of a Bristol merchant with no breeding at all, while your brother married someone’s governess, and has had to resort to property speculation to keep the estate afloat."

He chuckled. “And then we come to you. The impertinent bluestocking with the almost-buried scandal in her past. Who has now, it seems, turned to scribbling fiction. Tell me, duchess—does your husband know of your… writing career?”

All the blood seemed to have drained from her head. Her mouth was dry and her tongue wouldn’t move.

“I thought not.” He gave another chuckle. “You and his grace are quite a pair, are you not? He always thought that his political notions gave him some sort of moral superiority. But now he finds himself at the center of a scandal—as you see here.” He jerked his head in the direction of the caricature. “Well, who can say why the public fixates on one scandal, as it has in this case—while another dies down in mere days? It is a mystery.” He smirked. “How sad it is that he has been discredited. No one will listen to his do-gooding ideas now that he has been exposed as a hypocrite.”

Her feet were still frozen to the pavement, but her mind was beginning to race with half-formed thoughts. Townley was… was doing something. She didn’t know what, exactly. Was he spying on her? On them? She would sound crazy if she told anyone what she suddenly suspected.

“And you, Lady March! You have done your husband no favors at all! Why, when it becomes known that you are an authoress of scandalous novels—well, if there was anything left of either of your reputations, they will be thoroughly destroyed.”

"Mind you, it is high time that something is done about all the so-called authoresses who infest our once-noble tradition of English literature. Your books—if I may dignify them with that word—cause females from servant girls to ladies to neglect their duties and waste time reading. And what are they reading? Trash. Trash that promotes a disgusting social leveling and a loss of distinction between the classes—not to mention a most abhorrent willfulness in young ladies! Why, you authoresses are really nothing but scribbling little Jacobins!”

His voice was rising. Pomona took a step back, but Townley stepped forward, pointing his finger into her face. “Indeed, I see what you are about! Beneath the drivel about tombs and swordfights and ghosts and true love, you glorify stories about ladies who abandon their duties and pursue their own selfish gratification! You undermine every teaching about the importance of women remaining content with their naturally inferior situation in life. You... you are a threat to the stability of society!”

His tirade was drawing attention from passersby. She couldn’t tell if their looks of disgust were aimed at her or at Mr. Townley. Jones, the young coachman, had realized that something was wrong, and had leapt down from the box. “Good day, Mr. Townley,” she repeated.

“Some were calling your husband the Poor Man’s Duke. How touching! But what shall we call you? The Scribbling Duchess? The Disgraceful Duchess?” There was a fanatical glee in his eyes. “Oh, you will find that I have the power to make nicknames stick, Lady March. And this is only the beginning—that I promise you.”

“Your grace?” Jones, glaring at Townley, held up a protective arm. She managed to cross the pavement on shaking legs, stepped into the carriage and sank onto the seat. Jones shut the door with an aggressive click. A moment later the carriage rocked as he sprang back onto the box. They drew out into the Cheapside traffic.

Her heart was pounding. She'd felt anxious before. But now she felt as though she might be sick. And instead of the vague dread of being found inadequate, her terror had a specific focus: Townley.

I know a great deal about you. He'd stood in the middle of Cheapside and as much as admitted that he was spying on her. He’d laughed in her face, secure in the belief that she couldn’t do anything about it—likely because he knew that if she tried to tell anyone, they wouldn't believe her. And why? Because he'd discredited her in advance.

He was mad. She was certain of it now. And yet she scarcely cared about his threats to her. Because what was far worse was that he was trying to harm West.

If only West had listened to her! But then... would that have changed anything? Even if she wrote to West now and told him what had happened, there was no guarantee that he’d take her seriously. Her heart ached.

She told herself that whatever had happened, West would manage. He was capable. He was in charge at Castle March. The estate itself would insulate him from Townley’s schemes. And after all, he was a duke.

As for herself, she was no longer certain that she cared if Townley exposed her as an authoress. If he did... well, at least there was always the chance that she would be so disgraced that she would be free to go live her life however she wished.

The carriage drew up before March House. The scaffolding was swarming with painters and carpenters. Workers were unloading what appeared to be a cabinet wrapped in moving blankets from a dray cart, while a man stood on the pavement bawling instructions at them. The moment that she entered the house, Lady Alford rushed into the hall. “Where on earth have you been? You must make a decision on the study wallpaper! You simply do not seem to grasp how important this is!"

With a sigh, Pomona followed her mother down the corridor.

Chapter Twenty

West pulled the heavy volume off the shelf. As usual, he was up well before dawn, so he’d brought a candle with him. Its light caught the edges of the old shelves that ran up to the ceiling, and the brass handles of the rows of small drawers below.

He hadn’t been able to sleep much. Though the summer nights were still short, every morning he woke while it was still dark, feeling sick and breathless, as though some part of his mind had never left the airless darkness of Clee Pit.