The Duchess War

by Courtney Milan

  Chapter Twenty-five

  It was late when Minnie’s husband returned home—so late that all the servants except one solitary footman had gone to bed. Minnie heard the front door open and then close behind Robert. She could imagine him taking off his things—greatcoat, frock coat—and handing them to the footman. She waited to hear his footsteps on the stairs, but as the minutes ticked by, they didn’t come.

  Minnie slowly stood and tiptoed out of their room. The house below had been doused in darkness. The only reason she could find her footing on the great staircase that led to the entrance was that a hint of light was coming from some room in the back. She followed that path of golden light down the hallway.

  The door at the end was ajar. Robert sat at the table, a plate in front of him filled with the cold remains from dinner. He wasn’t eating; he simply held his fork in one hand, staring blankly off into nothingness. His head was bowed a fraction, as if he were supplicating the beef before him for some great thing. While she watched, his hand crept to the corner of his eye and brushed against it—almost as if he were swiping away a tear.

  He wasn’t crying. He didn’t reach for a handkerchief. But his hand stayed there, next to his eye, as if to ward off any other emotion.

  Her own breath caught.

  She retreated down the hallway, cursing her soft silk slippers. He hadn’t even heard her coming. Loudly, she opened the door to the parlor and retrieved the package that she’d obtained earlier that day. Even more loudly, she slammed the parlor door shut.

  It was impossible to scuff slippers against carpet, but she did her best. By the time she got to the door, he’d set his hand down. That look of intense bleakness had faded, and he even managed to manufacture a little smile for her.

  “Minnie,” he said. “I didn’t think you would be awake.”

  As if she would have been able to sleep, thinking of him and worrying about his brother. The trial was scheduled for tomorrow. She could see the toll the strain had taken on him. There were dark circles under his eyes, worry lines grooved on his forehead.

  “I had a hard time sleeping without you,” she answered. She set the package on the table near him.

  He picked up a chunk of beef on his fork. “No time for supper,” he said, almost apologetically, before putting it in his mouth. “And I find I’m starving.”

  She sat next to him. “I’m a little hungry, myself.”

  They were probably both lying. They probably both knew it.

  Still, Minnie took a roll to keep him company, and while he ate, she shredded it on her plate. If nothing else, her presence spurred him on to do justice to the food before him. He ate mechanically—peas and turnips and carrots, as well as the beef in a sauce that had congealed. It turned her stomach to think of it, but he didn’t seem to taste anything he put in his mouth. He seemed surprised when his fork found nothing on the plate.

  “Long day,” he said. “I—I think I’ll be going straight to bed.” But he didn’t stand.

  Minnie took that as an invitation to walk over to the sideboard and pour a glass of sherry. She brought it to him; their fingers touched as she passed it over.

  “Will everything be all right?” she asked.

  In response, he put his head in his hands. Minnie put her fingers over his. His skin was warm to the touch; she could almost feel his temples throbbing. Slowly, she rubbed his forehead; he made a little noise and then leaned into the pressure.

  “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I’m not…” He turned his head sideways to meet her eyes and then quickly looked away. “I’m not certain.” His fingers drummed against the table. “But I’ll do everything I can to make it so. My brother…” He drew in another deep breath. “My father didn’t care. He didn’t help. Oliver grew up with none of the advantages I had, and to have him so publicly take the blame for something that I have done—Minnie, I can’t abide it. I feel on the brink of madness just contemplating it. You must know that.”

  “I know.” She rubbed his forehead. “But you’re doing everything you can.”

  “Yes.” His voice was bleak, so bleak. “Still, I can see no way that this can turn out well.”

  “Maybe not. But whatever happens, we’ll face this together.”

  He took in another long breath. “Minnie… Tomorrow there’s going to be a crowd at the courthouse. Someone notified the London newspapers that I would be testifying, and now there are not just two reporters present, but twenty.”

  “Are you asking if I can manage with a crowd? I can be in crowds. They make me uneasy, but so long as everyone’s not looking at me, I can make do.”

  If anything, that intensified the bleakness in his eyes. He seemed to deflate right there at the table. “I…Minnie. I don’t know what to say.”

  She shook her head. “I have to be there,” she said. “There is no other way. So I will.” She’d work out the details later.

  He shook his head. “At least one good thing has come of this. I came to Leicester to stop the misuse of criminal sedition as a tool to end strikes. Now I know who’s behind it.” He gave her a sharp smile. “I had the most interesting talk with…with a magistrate about what Stevens has asked for in order to help him keep the peace. Justice will be done.”

  “Good,” Minnie said. “Excellent. I have something else for you, and I hope it’s good, too. I got you something.” She indicated the object wrapped in brown paper that she had brought in with her.

  He eyed the oblong package warily, then took hold of one corner and pulled it to him. “What is this?”

  “A gift.”

  “It’s not my birthday.” He glanced up at her. “It’s not Christmas, not for over a month.”

  “It’s not a gift for any occasion.” She could feel her heart pounding in her chest. “It’s just one where I saw it and wanted you to have it.”

  Like those rubies he’d given her, now packed away in a box for a happier occasion.

  “It’s heavy,” he said, feeling the edges. “A book? An atlas?”

  “I’m not going to tell you,” she said. “You have to open it and find out.”

  He tugged on the twine, and, when the rough bow came undone, dropped the string to the floor. The paper crinkled as he unfolded it.

  The volume was bound up in soft cream-colored leather, embossed in a subtle pattern. There was no title on the front, nor, when he tilted it, was there one on the spine. She held her breath as he pulled back the cover and flipped through the first creamy pages.

  This book had come off no printing press. It had been lovingly, perfectly, illustrated by hand. She thought that the illustrations were watercolors, but if they were, they were astonishingly vibrant—layers and layers of paint ghosted on top of one another until the reds were as deep as dying leaves in autumn and the blues as real as a summer sky. The first illustration—a giant letter A—stood on the crest of a hill. The letter itself was composed of myriad smaller pictures. An apple tree, bending in the wind, formed one side of the letter. At the very height of its branches, an albatross stood, stretching its wings to the sky. An alpaca stretched to eat an apple, its neck forming the other side. An adder curled at its feet, but instead of threatening any of the other creatures, it appeared to be busily munching on an apricot. The entire illustration was composed of things that started with A.

  He stared at it before turning the page to letter B—bees, birches, and buttercups. “You got me a primer?” He looked bemused.

  “I thought—” She swallowed. “You said you wanted to have lots of children. I thought I would get you a primer that didn’t have any words printed in it. That way, you might make up anything that you wanted for each letter. And you wouldn’t be wrong.”

  He looked at the pages. He touched the edge of one, and she wondered if he was thinking about the M—which, indeed, had both mice and the figure of a mother, holding her child’s hand entwined in the moonlight, with moths and magpies flying around a mulberry bush at the dead of midnight. But he didn�
�t flip to that letter. Instead, he turned to look at her.

  “You got this for me,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “Because…”

  “Because I was thinking about you.”

  He stood. She couldn’t read his expression at all.

  But then he put his hands on her shoulders, and, when she looked up at him, he kissed her. He kissed her with no finesse, no gentleness. He kissed her with all the emotion that he hadn’t shown since he’d walked in the door—fiercely, savagely, as if he’d returned from an absence of ten years and needed to remind her of everything that had happened. His arms came around her, wrapping her to him as tightly as chains. He was a scorching heat against her. He took kiss after kiss after kiss, scarcely allowing her to draw breath before wrapping her in another one. He pulled her to him so tightly that she scarcely noticed when he lifted her up and set her on the table in front of him. He left her mouth long enough to suck on her chin, her neck. Little spots of pleasure bloomed in the wake of his kisses, and still he went further down—until he undid the buttons at the neck of her nightgown, enough to pull it down over her breasts.

  His mouth closed over her nipple and she gave herself over to him. There was nothing but the heat of his tongue against her, the savagery of his hands on her hips. Her back met the hard wood of the table.

  “God, Minnie,” he breathed. “What will I do without you?”

  “Why would you ever have to know? I’m not going anywhere.”

  He didn’t seem to hear her. He let go of her long enough to undo his trousers and then captured her wrists in his hands, holding them to her side. He didn’t look in her eyes, though.

  “I’m here,” she said. “You don’t have to hold me down. I’m not going anywhere.”

  He didn’t let go. Instead, he let out a growl and pushed inside her. Her body was slick to receive him. He’d not even bothered to remove his trousers all the way, and when he buried himself inside of her, she felt the fabric against her thighs. Somehow that fact—that he’d been so desperate for her that he’d not even disrobed, that he’d pushed her on a table—only heightened her desire all the more. The glorious slide of his body into hers seemed even more delicious, even more forbidden.

  There wasn’t anything pristine and proper about his lovemaking. It was something far more feral, an elemental force that she’d never experienced before. His thrusts were hard and steady; his hair curled around his forehead, dripping sweat.

  “God,” he groaned.

  She clenched him tightly, and he growled once more. “I want you,” he said fiercely. “God, I want you. Why can’t I have you?”

  “You can. You do.”

  But he didn’t speak in response. Instead, he took her harder. He seemed almost in a frenzy. He growled one final time and then came. He let go of her wrists as he did—but only so he could take hold of her face and kiss her.

  As his climax passed, his kiss faded from savage to sweet. He gently pulled away, took in a shuddering breath, and looked around, as if to verify that he had just had his way with her on top of the table.

  Well-constructed, that table. It had scarcely even budged, no matter how he’d taken her.

  He disengaged from her and slid off to stand on the floor. She sat up gingerly.

  “Minnie,” he breathed.

  “If you say one word other than ‘Lord, that was magnificent,’ I will bite you,” she said.

  He let out a laugh. “God.” He fingered the side of her face. “You are magnificent.”

  But there was still a shadow on his face, a curtain pulled over his expression. He stepped back from her and she could feel him withdraw.

  And Minnie knew. She could see it in the tilt of his head, the way his eyes didn’t meet hers. There was something he wasn’t telling her.

  She smiled wanly and tapped his wrist.

  “I don’t want you to father all our children atop a wooden table, but this once…this wasn’t so bad.”

  “I just…I just needed to know you were still mine.” His hand hovered near her shoulder and then dropped down to his side. “I don’t know what came over me.”

  She reached out and took hold of his hand and entwined it with hers. “You know, it has always been one of my dearest wishes to drive a man to distraction. It was simply glorious to do it.” She touched her finger to his lips. “I know how difficult today must have been for you—how hard these last days must have been. You told me when we married that you wanted an ally, someone who always saw you rather than a duke.” She pulled him close. “And here I am.”

  “Here you are,” he breathed. His voice was raspy. His hands closed on her hair. “Here you are.”

  At three in the morning, Robert’s dreaming mind took over. He saw himself on the stand and Minnie—a younger, more vulnerable version of herself—in the audience.

  “She’s an unnatural child,” he heard himself say. “The spawn of the devil himself. She made me do it.”

  She watched him, her eyes wide and hurt—and then she shattered in a fountain of gray glass. He reached for her, but the shards only cut his hands to ribbons.

  He woke gulping air, reaching for her, with the realization fresh on his mind. Oh, God. He was going to do that to her—to betray her on the stand in front of everyone, just as her father had done.

  She was curled on her side next to him. In her sleep, her hand rested on his hip; her head leaned against his shoulder. Even in her sleep, she trusted him.

  He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t do this to her.

  He dragged himself out of bed instead. By the light of a flickering candle, he wrote her a letter telling her everything—what he’d planned, why he’d wanted it.

  I have to tell the truth about you, he finally wrote. I can’t see my way around that. But don’t come to the trial today. I’m sorry about what must be said—but don’t come to the trial.

  I love you.

  His hand hovered, wanting desperately to write one last sentence.

  Please forgive me.

  But he didn’t know how she could. He wasn’t even sure if he could make himself ask.

  Before he left to meet Oliver’s lawyers, he roused her maid and put the letter in her hands.

  “Here,” he said, gesturing to a chair just outside their bedroom. “Sit here. Make sure that whatever you do, she reads this letter as soon as she awakes, and not one instant later. It is urgent.”

  The rest of the morning passed in a blur. He seemed to wait forever for the trial to start, but once it did, the prosecution’s evidence bled together into a meaningless stream of testimony and examination. Robert’s sense of unease grew.

  All around them, reporters made industrious notes in shorthand. The defense started their case. This was the moment when Minnie would have appeared in the room, his mother in tow. But she didn’t arrive. Thank God.

  Robert was finally called to the stand, and everything else seemed to disappear—the courtroom, the jurors, the reporters watching in avid interest. There was nobody but him and the barrister conducting the examination.

  The questions were simple at first—his name, his title, his age, the last time he’d sat in Parliament. And then…

  “Do you know who wrote the handbills that are at the heart of the prosecution’s case?” asked the barrister.

  “Yes,” Robert answered. “I did.”

  A surprised murmur rose up from the crowd.

  “Did anyone assist you with them?”

  “I had them distributed by a man who could not read, had them printed more than a hundred miles away. Nobody in the household I set up here in Leicester knew the first thing about them. I made sure of that.”

  “Nobody? What about Mr. Marshall?”

  “Especially not Mr. Marshall,” Robert said emphatically. “You see, I wrote those because it had come to my attention that there has been a rash of criminal sedition convictions in town—ones that did not appear to be properly charged under the law. I wanted to draw out
those who were involved in the scheme. I wrote the handbills because I could not be tried, but wouldn’t have involved another person in the jurisdiction of Leicester. I wouldn’t have wanted to put anyone at risk.”

  “What would you care about Mr. Marshall?” asked the barrister. “He was only a paid employee, was he not?”

  “He was not,” Robert said forcefully. “I have never paid him—I settled funds on him. And even if I didn’t care about the wellbeing of my employees, he is my brother.” Gasps and a second murmur arose. Robert had been so concentrated on the questions that he hadn’t looked out at the courtroom. He did now. For one moment, the reporters in the front row looked at him in shock. Then they grinned in delight as they realized that the story here was even more interesting than they’d supposed. To a man, their pencils began working feverishly. He smiled, looking out over them—until his eyes fell on the back of the room.

  There, seated in the last row, was Minnie. She must have come in while he was speaking. Next to her sat his mother.

  Had she not received his message? What was she doing here?

  “Your Grace.” The barrister’s voice seemed slow, so slow, and yet Robert could not outrun it. He couldn’t even move from his seat. “Do you play chess?”

  Minnie’s eyes burned into his.

  “No.” He couldn’t turn away from her.

  “Have you ever played chess?”

  “A few times, when I was young. Enough to know the rules of the game. But I know very little.”

  “Can you explain how you came to write about a ‘discovered attack’ in your handbills—and how you did so in terms that closely parallel words in an obscure handbook of chess strategy?”

  “Yes,” Robert said. “I can.”

  The entire courtroom became quiet.

  “As it happens, when I wrote that, I had been talking with someone who is an expert at chess. Not Mr. Marshall.”

  “And who was this person?”

  Minnie would know what was happening now. She would understand why he’d asked her to come to the courtroom. She’d know that he’d trapped her, betrayed her in public, done everything to her that he’d promised not to do. He should have shaken her awake this morning and told her himself.

  She was watching him with a curious look on her face. And then, oddly enough, she touched two fingers to her lips and held them up to him.

  I’m sorry, Minnie.

  “In 1851,” Robert heard himself say, “a twelve-year-old girl by the name of Minerva Lane almost won the first international chess tournament.”

  In 1851, Minerva Lane was betrayed and ruined by her father. And now, Robert was doing it again.

  “Are you acquainted with Minerva Lane?”

  He made himself look Minnie in the eyes when he drove the knife in. Her face was gray, her eyes wide. Slowly, ever so slowly, she lowered the fingers that she had kissed.

  The words felt like shards of glass in his mouth, but he formed them anyway. “I’m married to her.”