The Duchess War (The Brothers Sinister) (27 page)

“This,” she said, “is personal correspondence from His Grace.” Her voice was trembling now. Her hands were, too. She smoothed the paper against the table and gripped the edge. “I will point out that he uses the highest quality of Graydon Mills paper that there is—there’s the watermark. His signature, too, can be authenticated.” She pointed. “But I rather think you will find the contents more interesting than the source.”

Stevens snatched the paper from her hand.

“Don’t know what I’m doing…” he muttered, reading. And then he stopped and looked up at her.

“I write handbills,” he read slowly. He read it again, and then a third time, his eyes moving more slowly across the paper with each successive reading. Over his shoulder, Charingford perused the words with a growing frown. He moved away, shaking his head.

“I don’t believe this,” Stevens said. But his words were not the words of a man who doubted the letter. They were an attempt to deny reality.

“Minnie,” Charingford said, “this letter…the tone of it is intimate. The salutation. The words he uses. Even the way the letter is signed. How is it that you came to be in possession of this letter?”

Robert might possibly have forgiven Minnie for revealing the truth under the circumstances. The duchess had said that she’d needed to betray him, to earn his scorn.

If she had been playing a game, this was the moment when she would have kissed her chess piece. Once she made this move, there would be no going back.

Minnie lifted one eyebrow. “The Duchess of Clermont approached me,” she said, quite distinctly. “She wants her son to give up his ideals. She offered me five thousand pounds if I could stop him.”

The truth. Not the full truth, and said as it was, it conveyed an impression that was entirely false. Her hands were shaking.

“Tell him that I said that,” she said, her voice surprisingly steady. “Show him, and he won’t deny his involvement.”

There was no longer any turning back. If she’d read the relationship correctly, telling the duke she had been in league with his mother would end any esteem he had for her.

But then, the moment Stevens had connected her with the name Minerva Lane, all chance at a happy marriage with the duke had ended.

“He’s a duke,” Stevens said dully. “How could a
duke
do this?”

“Ask him.” She dropped her head. “I wouldn’t know what a duke does or why he does it.”

“And how am I to bring him to account, even if he did?” Stevens was still staring at the paper. “He’s riled the town near to boiling with his handbills and his assertions. Next you know, you’ll have workers marching, refusing to come to work. How am I to keep peace if the citizens of the town think the law can be broken with impunity?”

Minnie reached for the letter—but Stevens yanked it away from her. He shuffled angrily through the papers, looking at them.

“Someone,” he said. “Someone must pay.”

She had paid once, and she would pay again. But for now… Now, she’d earned her money. She’d have enough to leave, enough to escape Minerva Lane for good. So why did she feel like weeping?

“Get out,” Stevens said. “Just—get out. I’ll deal with you later.”

Minnie slowly left the room.

Lydia had waited, pressed against the wall the entire time. But as Minnie went by, she followed her out into the front room.

“Lydia.” Minnie’s voice was shaking.

“What was that?” Lydia asked. “It couldn’t have been the truth. The Duchess of Clermont paying you? Minnie, she only arrived in town a few days ago, and this thing with the duke has been going on much longer than that. Telling them your name is really Minerva Lane? If you were really named Minerva Lane, you would have told me. I know you would have.”

Minnie flinched. “Lydia.”

“You
would
have told me,” Lydia repeated. “You are like a sister to me. You can’t be anyone else.”

“My name really is Minerva Lane.” She dropped her eyes. Somehow, this story should have been easier on the second retelling, but it was even harder with her friend’s eyes on her.

“No.” Lydia shook her head more fiercely. “It can’t be. You would have told me.”

“In a way, Minerva Lane never existed,” Minnie said. “When I was very young, my father dressed me as a boy and brought me around Europe, showing me off. He called me Maximilian. The truth came out.” She swallowed. “I was ruined. You can only imagine how I was ruined. I changed my name to escape his legacy.”

“But…” Lydia was shaking her head. “But how could that be true? If it were true,
you would have told me.”
She was becoming more vehement with every repetition of the phrase.

“No,” Minnie said. “I wouldn’t have.”

Lydia drew up her chin. “You knew everything—absolutely
everything
about me. How could you not tell me?”

Lydia’s ragged breath, her clenched fists, felt worse even than that moment when the crowd had surrounded her, when they’d gathered around her…

“Lydia. I couldn’t. If I told you—”

“I wouldn’t have said anything. Not ever.”

Minnie’s scar felt tight. Her whole head burned. Her stomach churned. “I can barely bring myself to speak of it. When I do, my whole body starts to shake. I stop being able to breathe. I couldn’t have you looking at me while I said it. I couldn’t.”

“God forbid,” Lydia said, “that you should have showed me a weakness. Why, I might have thought you a mere mortal.”

Minnie closed her eyes. “I still love you. Lydia?”

“How can you?” Lydia said coldly. “The person who was my friend—she wasn’t even real. She was a construct.”

“No. It was…it was real.” But her voice was quiet now, so hard to marshal, and Lydia wasn’t even looking at her.

“Get out,” Lydia said. “I can’t even look at you right now. Get out.”

Minnie stumbled to the door. It was still raining hard, and the rumble of thunder sounded like the stomp of feet, the roar of a crowd. Lightning flashed, searing across her vision.

“Here,” Lydia said, shoving an umbrella into her hand. “Take this. No, you ninny, I don’t care what happens to you. I just want you out of my sight. Go!”

Minnie wasn’t sure how she staggered down the steps to the pavement. She could scarcely even see through her tears. When she opened her eyes, she saw three men across the way. They looked at her curiously. Perhaps it was not every day they saw a woman stumble out of a house. Just three, but it was enough.

It’s nothing. It’s nothing. You’re nothing.

But she wasn’t nothing, and she couldn’t pretend that the events of today had happened to anyone but her. She bent over double and was noisily, violently ill on the pavement.

When her stomach settled, she stood. She was still shaking, but it felt as if that wave of nausea had carried everything away. Not just the physical shakes, but her fear, her timidity, twelve years of lies. Everything that had made her Wilhelmina Pursling, the shy, retiring wallflower who stuck to the corners, had been washed away.

She glanced at the Charingfords’ house over her shoulder. Wilhelmina Pursling was gone, and with her had gone a decade of friendship.

Bravo, Minnie. Bravo.

Sighing, she opened the umbrella and started toward the mews where she’d left her horse.

Chapter Eighteen

I
T WAS ODD,
R
OBERT THOUGHT, THAT HIS OUTLOOK
could change so completely in twenty-four hours. Two days ago, he’d made an offer of marriage. He’d been full of hope and desire and longing. And today…

“So, you see, Your Grace, we are at an impasse.”

Robert was seated in his parlor. Captain Stevens stood before him, a sheaf of papers laid out on his table.

“I cannot announce that it is
you
who authored the handbills,” Stevens said. “To give such sentiments the imprimatur of a duke would leave the rabble with no reason to hold back at all.”

Robert could scarcely listen. His mind was still fixed on that letter. It was a good thing he’d been sitting when Stevens had brought it out and told him that his own mother had paid Minnie to obtain it, or he might actually have stumbled.

She could have just said no.

“You, yourself, will likely face no consequences.” Stevens frowned. “But if I detect your
sincerity
correctly… For every handbill that you author, I will have one suspect arrested and imprisoned.”

“Without proof? Knowing that they are not involved?” Robert’s voice was quiet.

“It’s all of a piece,” Stevens said. “Someone must pay. If nobody does, we all will. I cannot—the
law
cannot—be flouted in this manner.”

Even through the roaring in Robert’s ears, he recognized what Stevens was doing—threatening him by threatening others. He’d known that someone was behind the convictions for criminal sedition—convictions that should never have happened. He’d wanted to draw out whoever it was that had perverted the law.

At least he’d succeeded in that. He made a mental note to have Stevens removed from office. Just as soon as he had a chance to gather his wits.

“I see,” Robert said. “Well, thank you for your time.”

“But—”

Robert was already standing, leaving the room without so much as a glance back.

He paced in his library, waiting for his emotions to catch up with him.

But in the end, what triumphed was a surprising sense of calm—as if he’d been through a sandstorm, and it had scoured away the excess, unreliable flesh of his emotion, leaving only his bones behind. Bones didn’t yearn. Bones didn’t wish. Thank God for that.

He didn’t feel the slightest bit of anger as he asked his staff to have a horse readied for him. The road to her great-aunts’ farm was long, but he didn’t feel a sense of annoyance at the minutes ticking by. He didn’t feel anything at all.

He didn’t feel anything when he threw his reins over a hitching post. Not one twitch from his chest as he knocked on the door. It seemed as if he were wrapped in muffling cotton, as if the entire world had gone mute around him. The door opened soundlessly, and he could scarcely hear himself request to see her.

The drawing room where he was shown might have been devoid of all furniture, for all that he noticed it. He didn’t sit. He didn’t look. He only waited, knowing what might come.

She opened the door.

Perhaps, deep down, he’d feared that when he saw Minnie once more, he’d be so overcome by his feelings that he would forgive what she had done. He’d built up an image of her, expanding on things she hadn’t said, words she’d never spoken, until he’d imagined himself enamored of a woman who didn’t exist. But when she walked in, he didn’t feel anything.

She was small, and she drew in on herself. All the magic had gone from her. He felt nothing but a dull ache where she had once been.

He was safe, thank God. Safe from himself.

“Your Grace,” she said simply.

He inclined his head to her.

It was the first time in all of their acquaintance where she had treated him like a duke. It was the first time that he’d wanted to be treated as one. Dukes didn’t need to explain. They didn’t need to beg. They just
did,
and nobody ever questioned their actions.

“You must know why I’m here,” he said.

She bowed her head. Distantly, he noticed that she looked miserable. There were dark circles under her eyes. And that light he’d seen in them—that beautiful light that had seemed to fill the room—was utterly extinguished.

He didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything any longer.

“Your Grace. I owe you an explanation.”

“I don’t want an explanation.” Ice didn’t listen.

“But—”

“I don’t care why you did it,” he said. His words seemed to ring out with a hollow, staccato sound. “I don’t care how much my mother paid you. I don’t care about you at all.”

She flinched. “Then let me assure you—”

“I have even less wish for your assurances.” Not, he realized, that she’d ever given him any. He’d been the only one providing them. He’d fooled himself into thinking that if only she knew him, if only he could explain to her, that she might…what?

That she might care about him, too. Just a little. She’d known who he was, what he wanted. He’d told her his dreams, his secret wishes. He’d offered her everything.

And he hadn’t been enough.

His own delusion, once again. His own foolish daydream, built up around someone who scarcely noticed him.

The difference was that this time, he wasn’t going to be the one watching someone else walk away. He wouldn’t be the one waiting hopelessly for letters that never arrived.

He made himself breathe evenly, until that sense of benumbed calm returned. Swathed in cotton? No, cotton was too light to hold the entirety of him. He was buried in sand, each grain a weight pressing against his chest, so heavy that all other sensation was blocked. He didn’t feel anything at all, and he liked it.

She must have seen something of what he didn’t feel flit across his face, because she bowed her head. “I’m so sorry, Your Grace.”

“I don’t want an apology,” he snapped.

“Then why are you here?”