‘Yes.’
‘Do you not need to stay in town, now that there’s a second claim to your title?’
He was entirely lost for a moment, before he realised what she must mean. ‘That boy, that accountant from Leeds? I am the acknowledged son of my father. He has no claim.’
She dropped her hands then, and they hung still by her sides. There was something unnatural and eerie about them that put him in mind of dead things.
‘Whose skin will you wear this time,’ she said, ‘if you are not coming with me as the Duke?’
He didn’t say anything; he was curious about what she might betray to fill the silence.
‘Do not bring the man in black,’ she said. ‘Do not bring him.’
Then before he could respond she said, ‘Will we take your carriage, Your Grace? I have none.’
He swept her a bow. ‘I see. Of course.’
‘You will see,’ she muttered. ‘More than you should.’
He walked back to the Row a pace behind her and watched the dust rise in a fine cloud around her shoes and hem. Jewellyn was having trouble holding Darlington’s horse still, and when Miss Sutherland approached the beast butted his large head against her outstretched hand. The quality of her movement changed in a way Darlington couldn’t define as she stroked the horse’s nose. Even ten minutes in her company had braced him. Already the world was beginning to matter again.
‘Lovely man,’ she murmured to his horse.
Run, his instincts told him. Run until your boots are worn through. And then keep running.
‘Do you like him?’ he said, forcing himself a step closer. ‘I won him from Mr Ballantine in a card game last week. I have named him BenRuin, after another great golden beast we both know.’
She turned to hide her surprised laugh and stroked the horse’s muscular neck under his mane, where she would feel the hot pound of blood.
She pulled herself up into the carriage before the footman could reach her. What a wrinkle she was in the fine fabric of society, this Miss Sutherland who was as tall as he and wore the current confectionery of fashion so badly. She was right, though for the wrong reasons: he could ill afford to disappear from London now, with the Marmotte game afoot. But he felt, and didn’t look too closely at the feeling, that he hadn’t many chances left.
Kit held the letter that had arrived half an hour after they returned from the park, and knocked at the door of BenRuin’s study.
‘Enter.’
She paused at the sound, that deep, Scottish reminder of the man she was about to face. He was bigger and more intimidating than the Duke of Darlington. But somehow, now that she’d faced the Duke, easy in comparison.
She didn’t think she imagined that his face fell by a fraction when he saw it was only Miss Sutherland. He should have known Lydia would never have knocked.
He was as different from the Duke as could be. Nothing hid him. His golden hair was clipped back against his head, exposing a strong face. His nose was bent, like hers, and his neck and shoulders suggested great strength. What had the Duke said? That Lydia had married a man who was too much for her, and she spent her days trying to keep him at bay.
‘I’ve had a letter from Ma,’ she said. ‘Her asthma’s grown worse – she asks for me.’ The letter was from the Duke, a list of details.
‘You want to go back to the Manor?’
‘I do,’ she said. ‘Er, my lord.’
BenRuin moved to his desk, and she couldn’t help thinking how aptly the Duke had named his new stallion. He touched one of his large, scarred fingers to a stack of papers, then looked directly at her.
‘Have you told the Countess?’
‘Not yet.’
‘She’ll not be happy to see you go.’
She’ll not be happy to lose her plaything
, Kit thought. ‘She’ll attend the royal wedding next week and they’ll all adore her gown, and she’ll be happy again.’
BenRuin was easy enough to read; he pitied her. ‘She’ll not like it,’ was all he said.
Kit bowed her head. ‘Have I your permission to leave, though?’
‘If your mother needs you, then you must go. You’ll have my carriage.’
‘There’s no need. I anticipated your kindness and booked my place on the stage five days from now.’ She had no idea why the Duke needed five days – she wanted to leave London tonight.
BenRuin nodded and his large hands flexed.
Before she left she needed, to some small degree, to put his mind at ease. ‘The Duke of Darlington won’t be bothering my sister any longer. I thought you should know.’
BenRuin stood before her, his hand grasping her shoulder, before she could think. ‘What has he done to you? That bastard son of the devil, what did he dare to do?’
‘N-nothing.’ Her heart was so loud and persistent it took her a while to realise that the hand engulfing her shoulder was gentle.
‘If he has promised you anything, made a bargain with you, approached you in any way, I need you to tell me.’
Kit gathered her strength about her. She would decide when Lord BenRuin needed to know anything; the last thing they needed was for him to commit murder. ‘I spoke with him last night. It was brief, but enough to convince me that he’ll leave Lady BenRuin be.’
The Earl’s hand had begun to shake. ‘If he makes a single advance on you,’ he said, ‘he advances on me. He knows what that means.’
So that’s it, thought Kit with a sinking heart. He’s not finished with BenRuin, yet.
Darlington called on Mme Soulier that afternoon. She was lately retired, but lived in opulent infamy in Soho, having dressed all the great ladies of her time.
Mme Soulier had received him in her second-best drawing room, ‘Because you and I are old friends, darling,’ her fingers spry on her teacup, her eyes sharp on his face. The only reason she had retired, he suspected, was because her clients had been dying off, and she turned her nose up at the simple French dresses currently in fashion, with their abhorrent negligence of material and fanfare.
Which was precisely why he had chosen her, of course. When it came to great, rigid masterpieces of dress, Mme Soulier was without equal. She had also dressed his mother. Darlington had never learned how to sit still and quiet as a boy the way his mother preferred. Mme Soulier had indulged him as few adults had, managing him with words like pins tucked into the fabric of his wayward nature.
‘I believe you are bored, my well-shod madame,’ Darlington said in French. He took another lazy sip of tea and shrugged. ‘You will make me a wardrobe.’
‘My fingers are not what they used to be. Bah. Leave an old woman in peace.’ Mme Soulier’s fingertips traced the delicate lace at her still-fine bosom.
‘You have the fingers of an artist. They will never grow old.’ He leaned forward and took her hand gently in his, grazing the swell of her breast with his knuckles. He looked up at her from beneath his lashes – one dusky, heated look – and stroked her calloused fingers. ‘Death could not stop these fingers, I think. Your hands will have to be cut from your body when the rest of you expires, that they may work on in some ghastly Gothic workroom and put dressmakers to shame for an eternity to come.’
‘Fanciful boy,’ she said, smiling. It was impossible to tell, behind her thick white face paint, whether she blushed, but her unsteady breathing and parted lips would suggest that she did.
But this was purely business. When he began to outline his needs, the interest in Mme Soulier’s eyes changed, as he had known it would. Darlington wasn’t the only one to whom this presented a challenge that, if met, promised the triumph of a lifetime. She called him naughty and an arrogant boy, but by the time they had finished their second pot of tea she had drawn up an invoice that was entirely outside his means to pay.
They had set out at six that morning, making south-west from London. Though the Duke’s unmarked carriage travelled well on the dry roads and Kit had made herself a nest of blankets and cushions, she was exhausted by the time they stopped in the late afternoon in Totton. They had changed horses twice already, but eaten in the carriage throughout the day. Every coaching house they’d stopped at had been too full to accommodate them even for a cup of tea; half the countryside was heading to town for the wedding.
They sat now in the corner of a packed public room, by a window where they could watch other travellers out in the yard. Kit didn’t look out the window. She watched her companion.
Even after nine hours she could not stop staring.
Across the table, taking tea, was the most magnificent woman Kit had ever seen. She wore the rigid dress of the previous generation, but instead of looking outdated she made you long for the gorgeous, riotous colours of another age. Yellow poppies burst across the wine-red silk that bound her torso, chest and shoulders. They trailed down the skirts that waterfalled under their modest table. She was tightly corseted, her trim figure accentuated by the flare of small hoops beneath her skirts. She looked out the window, offering Kit her profile – the fine, straight nose, the smiling, expressive lips and heavy eyes. She wore a black wig, one thick coil falling over her shoulder on to the white linen tucked around her neck.
The woman turned away from the window and the Duke’s difficult blue eyes laughed out of her face. He took a sip of tea. ‘Not hungry, Miss Sutherland?’
‘Your Grace —’ His brow rose, and Kit scowled. ‘I feel like a bloody fool, calling you Lady Rose. I swear, I can’t do it.’
‘Then I must return to London,’ the Duke murmured, his voice a frightening, compelling thing. He did not sound like a man, but neither did he sound like any woman Kit had ever met. ‘Your sister will be happy to see me return, I think.’
Kit looked out the window at the carriage that had driven behind them all day, piled high with luggage. ‘I think my house will suit you even less well than it would have suited the Duke,
my lady
.’
The Duke gave an elegant shrug and flicked his fan open. A water scene had been painted onto the paddles with exquisite care, and the lazy motion of his wrist seemed to bring it to life. Kit had seen her brother, Tom, assume theatrical roles in the local, amateur productions – she’d even seen him act the woman more than once, when the number of parts required it. He always remained Tom, acting. The Duke’s transformation was absolute, down to the very marrow of his bones. There wasn’t a single hint of self-consciousness about him. His demeanour, the set of his mouth, the lazy sway of his hand, all belonged to Lady Rose. The ease with which he changed his skin was frightening.
How could she ever hope to glimpse his true face? Kit knew first-hand that he would let her think she had if it served his purpose.
Her mind turned again, as it had turned all day, to the question of his purpose. She suspected, still, that his actions were directed not at her but at BenRuin, though she could not answer what he hoped to achieve by sending himself into exile.
And why disguise himself so that he was as far from the Duke of Darlington as could be?
‘My dear Miss Sutherland,’ he murmured, and watched her over the top of his fan. ‘Do not think too deeply about it. I’ll be gone and forgotten soon enough.’
She wondered if anyone, ever, had managed the trick of forgetting him.
It was dark, and they had been travelling through uninterrupted countryside for close on three hours now, as Darlington reckoned it.
‘We’re almost there,’ Miss Sutherland said. She sounded exhausted. He soliloquised briefly on the hardships of travelling while corseted, and how he had found one must particularly rely on one’s feminine fortitude to undertake the longer journeys.
He’d meant to entertain and distract her, but was left with the distinct impression he’d only exhausted her further.
She rapped on the roof, signalling that the driver should turn into the driveway coming up on the right. They turned and the road immediately grew worse.
When they stopped it was still dark, and Darlington assumed they were waiting for the estate gates to be opened, until Miss Sutherland opened her door and alighted without the help of his footman. What trick was she playing on him now? He placed his gloved hand in that of the footman who opened his door and accepted his help down from the carriage.
They were parked in front of the unlit shell of a house. It had perhaps been grand once, though small. Smaller than his Surrey hunting lodge, certainly.
‘We’ll need to carry the luggage around the back,’ Miss Sutherland said, not bothering to look at him. ‘The front hall’s blocked up, and I don’t like to risk using it now. I’ll go and get Tom to help us.’
‘Could we not drive around the back?’
‘It’s dark,
my lady
, so you probably can’t see the state of the gardens. No, we can’t drive around the back.’
Then she was gone into the dark, an animal returning to the wild.
He had looked at himself in the mirror last night, bound in one of Mme Soulier’s masterpieces, his face shaved twice and made up by Grey to soften his cheekbones and accentuate his eyes and lips. He had been giddy with delight. He’d ordered the Dandies to attend to him all evening, pouting and flirting when they particularly pleased him.
Standing in front of this ruined house, he had to remind himself that in all the world, and with all the resources available to him, he hadn’t found anything better than the sharp edge of this woman’s tongue.
A twig snapped, breaking the silence of the night, and he started. Miss Sutherland emerged, sure-footed, from the dark again, and another figure came after her. Tom – he must be the brother, Mr Thomas Sutherland – was taller than Miss Sutherland, but his steps were more careful. He didn’t look Darlington directly in the face, and it was hard in the dark to see him properly.
‘Lady Rose, my brother, Tom. Tom, Lady Rose.’
Darlington’s laugh tinkled uneasily into the country night and was absorbed by quiet brush and undergrowth. ‘Am I to address your brother by his Christian name? It is rather forward, but then so am I.’
‘Mr Sutherland, then. Tom, you can start unloading the lady’s things. John, you’ll help us?’
John?
thought Darlington, peering into the dark at the side of the house.
Who’s John?
‘Of course, Miss,’ said Darlington’s footman.
Ah. John.
Darlington stood in grand state to one side of the carriage as they carried his luggage, piece by piece. His footman – John – was too well-trained to swear when he tripped or was scratched or thwacked in the face by a branch, but Darlington could hear his progression through the overgrown darkness that Miss Sutherland navigated almost silently.
He was conscious of feeling . . . foolish. A new and uncomfortable thing. She should have shown him into the house first, of course, rather than leave him waiting. He would have thought she’d done it on purpose except that she seemed entirely uninterested in him.
Another new thing.
People had longed to be out of his company before. His father, for instance. But they had always wanted it passionately. There had always been disgust, or fear, or heartache to propel them from his side.
Never this
sufferance
of his company.
She came back around the house with only John for company. She conferred briefly with his coachmen, who were sharing a smoke. They snuffed their pipes and stowed them under their greatcoats, then pulled themselves back up on to their seats. They nodded respectfully in his direction, and drove away, taking the lantern light with them.
‘Now you, my lady,’ she said, coming to him.
‘Are you going to hoist me over your shoulder, as well?’ He wondered if she was as suddenly conscious as he that they were alone together in the dark. Marooned on this desert island.
‘Hold your skirts in tight,’ was all she said, before turning. Assuming he would follow her. He watched her disappear into the dark.
He followed her.
She went slowly, and held branches away from him as he passed. The silence pushed against him and his sense of her became muted. By the time he came through the gate she held open to him, into the kitchen garden, his skin was damp and breathing was a sickening exercise.
He had begun to think the house abandoned, wild, but light spilled from two spotless leaded windows into the garden.
Miss Sutherland opened the heavy kitchen door, giving it a practised shove with her shoulder. He caught the shake of her head as he swept past her. Not a communication to him. A simple, bodily denial that this was in any way a good idea. She had not, after all, exaggerated when she told him her house was not fit for a duke.
The kitchen was as clean as its windows, though most of its surfaces were worn and there was little evidence of crockery or pans.
‘This is Liza,’ said Miss Sutherland, gesturing to a red-faced woman whose hands gripped tightly into her apron as she hovered in a curtsey. Miss Sutherland placed a hand on the maid’s shoulders, and it was a soft touch, Darlington thought, confused. ‘Liza is a right angel, come to save my poor hands from cracking any worse than need be.’
The maid swatted Miss Sutherland’s hand from her, bobbed one last curtsey in Darlington’s direction and turned back to kneading dough on the large wooden table that dominated half the room. Miss Sutherland jerked her head towards the door on the far side of the kitchen and made to walk through it.
‘Now there I must protest,’ he said. ‘I know we have left London far behind us, but am I really to follow your gestures like a trained dog?’
She became unnaturally rigid.
‘Do please forgive me, my lady. Would Your Ladyship prefer that I bow and scrape and ask Your Ladyship’s permission for every little thing, in my own home, because Your Ladyship has graced it with her presence?’
I would prefer that you be kind
, he thought, then pulled away from the thought, embarrassed.
‘The common courtesies should suffice,’ he simpered. He gestured for her to lead on and put as much condescension as he could into it.
Her golden eyes narrowed, but she bobbed her head. ‘If you would follow me, my lady.’ The door opened into a hall and he thought he heard her whisper a curse on the other side of it.
‘Please wait here, Your Grace,’ she said. ‘I’ll announce you.’
‘You needn’t —’
‘No, please, let me announce you.’
‘Miss Sutherland, I didn’t mean for you to —’
‘I want to greet my mother without you watching me do it! I haven’t seen her for seven weeks.’
He sank into a deep, graceful curtsey. ‘Of course.’
She opened the next door down the hall and entered that room. He followed quietly in her wake and pressed his ear to the door after she shut it.
‘Ma,’ she said quietly, and then again, a little louder. She laughed, the sound evidence of a warmth in her he hadn’t been allowed to see.
‘. . . sleep you silly old woman.’
‘Katherine Grace.’ This voice was softer, indistinct. ‘. . . never manage . . . manners . . . woman. Let me look at you. Oh . . . graceful, very . . .’
‘Don’t fuss over me, Ma, it’s just Lydia playing dress-ups with me, trying to make me as uncomfortable as possible.’
‘That girl,’ – this louder –’she’s the devil’s own child . . . has made you look . . . reminds me of . . .’
‘Never mind that now, I’ll be selling them to Miss Faith, anyway.’
‘You needn’t —’
‘I’ve no use of these fine rags but what they’ll get me. But, Ma, do you remember I wrote to you that I’d be bringing a guest with me?’
‘. . . all very mysterious.’
‘She’s the cousin of a duke.’
Darlington’s mouth pulled into a smile against the door at the distressed gasp this news elicited.
‘Oh, Kit, how could you – how can we – oh dear, oh dear.’
There was a great deal of busy noise and Miss Sutherland laughed again.
‘Make yourself as respectable as you can. I’ll bring her in to introduce her to you.’ A few steps towards the door. A pause. ‘She’s very grand. But don’t mind what she says. Speaks a lot of nonsense, Lady Rose. Better not to try making sense of it.’
He didn’t bother to step away; she pulled the door open and started back at the sight of him. Her face flushed and her back was as straight as an exclamation point when she turned and ushered him into the room.
‘Your Ladyship, may I introduce my mother, Mrs Sutherland? Ma, this is Lady Rose Everdale, cousin to His Grace the Duke of Darlington.’
Miss Sutherland’s mother was shorter than she, and somehow faded. Or maybe that was the room, too full of furniture and all of it old. The woman gave a very creditable curtsey, and in the soft lamplight Darlington could see neither of her daughters in her watercolour features.
He curtseyed in return. ‘I cannot thank you enough for giving shelter to a poor ruined woman. Oh, please don’t be uneasy, you and I both know society is a capricious lover and will take me back next month, or the next month after that. You are the daughter of an earl, are you not? May I call you Sophie?’
He didn’t look at Miss Sutherland, but he felt her go very, very still. What had she thought – that he wouldn’t make it his business to find out what he could about her family?
‘Of course, Your Ladyship,’ said Mrs Sutherland, thrown into a delighted kind of confusion. ‘Please, have a seat. Kit will bring us some tea.’ A significant look, from mother to daughter. ‘And find that brother of yours. His books are poor company when we are hosting a duke’s cousin, and you can tell him so.’
He caught Miss Sutherland’s eye and let his lips curl, by the smallest fraction. There was dismay on her dark face, but she did as her mother bid.
‘Tom!’ she yelled from the hallway. ‘Ma says you must come down!’
Mrs Sutherland froze, and her eyes flitted to Darlington. ‘I have tried to instil manners in her, Your Ladyship. I am, as you say, the daughter of an earl. She’s a wild girl, though. Very spirited.’ Her fingers picked nervously at some sewing. ‘Not like her sister, who’s a countess now. Have you met Lady BenRuin?’