by Anna Cowan
‘Ugh,’ said Jude, holding his coffee as far from him as he could. ‘This coffee is cold. Get me another cup, Crispin, quickly.’
Jude hadn’t bestowed a single kind word or look on Mr Scott that Kit could see, but the boy’s face lit up as if the sun had just come out. It hit her then, what made her so uneasy about his adoration.
She looked at Jude in the same way. She sat at his feet and listened to his nonsense and smiled when he was autocratic and rude, because she had fancied she knew him in a way no one else knew him. Looking at Mr Scott’s face – at the eager way he leapt up to do the Duke’s bidding – she felt her mistake. She wasn’t the first person, she would wager, who had thought she held a particular place in his affections. She doubted she was even the hundredth.
She looked up and caught Lydia watching her, something inscrutable in her grey eyes. She looked quickly away.
‘We should go to the continent, Rose,’ Lydia said. ‘You and I. Can’t you just imagine the mischief we could cause? Not to mention the sheer amounts of wine and cheese we could consume.’
‘The continent bores me,’ said Jude with a sniff.
‘Come, my love, you can hardly waste away here. Now that I have found you out.’
Kit’s shoulders tensed and she saw Mr Scott’s do the same. Her mother and Tom remained blissfully ignorant of the dangerous undercurrents.
‘I have decided to stay here forever,’ Jude said brightly, and lifted the pig to his face, nose-to-nose. ‘Porkie would pine for me so badly he’d forget to eat, and that would break your brother’s heart. No, I’m afraid there’s simply no way I can leave.’
And the worst part of this wretched morning was the way Kit’s heart thudded in her chest, and the way she thought, He’s going to stay forever, even though she knew what a liar he was.
Ma turned the conversation back to gossip, and Lydia smiled her polished society smile and didn’t stop her. Kit let it wash over her – the hundred inanities, the sparkling performance given by Jude, Lydia and Mr Scott. They were outrageous, witty, sophisticated, sarcastic. The Duke was high-handed and spoilt, and it only made the others lean in towards him more. When Tom made a tentative foray into the conversation, the Duke smiled at him like Tom was the only person in the world, and Kit watched her brother blush under the attention. And grow more confident in the conversation.
It was a kind of magic in Jude, the way he drew people out and made them feel necessary. He sat there in a tatty old armchair, half-dressed, with a pig in his lap, and Kit had never felt so clearly just how powerful he was.
She had a sudden memory, more visceral than conscious, of the vulnerable curve of his spine when she’d pulled the bodice off him. The man sitting in her parlour laughing at her mother’s old-fashioned French was bright and complete. He would never fall apart.
He was not entirely real, she thought.
And then she thought – he came to me.
Lydia said, ‘You’re looking almost heathen, darling. We must get you back to civilisation as soon as we possibly can.’
‘Oh, I never dress before two if I can help it,’ Jude said, and looked directly at Kit for the first time. His hand stilled on Porkie’s belly. ‘Katherine usually laces me up, and she was nowhere to be found this morning.’
‘Of course,’ her sister said. ‘She’s had a lot of practice at being a lady’s maid.’
‘Darling,’ said Jude, reaching lazily for Lydia’s hand, ‘it is far too early in the day to be catty.’
Kit expected a sharp, sarcastic response from her sister, and wasn’t prepared for the childish face Lydia pulled at Jude, or the small smile between them. They had been lovers, Kit thought numbly. And perhaps would be again, now that she had failed to keep them apart.
‘I would kill for some sandwiches,’ Lydia said to Kit. ‘Would you come to the kitchen with me? I’ll never find my way around on my own.’
‘Ring for a footman,’ Jude said, before Kit could respond. ‘They become so despondent when one doesn’t order them about. Here, Katherine, sit beside me in your usual spot. Crispin, dear, you’ll have to move.’
‘I’m comfortable here with Ma,’ Kit said.
‘Thomas,’ said Jude in a light, ruthless voice that made Kit realise, too late, that she had miscalculated. ‘Didn’t we all express our desire not to crowd your mother when Katherine and I agreed to share a bed?’
Tom grinned. ‘I’m sure if you ask Kit again she’ll come and sit by you, Rose. You know you always get your own way.’
Lydia finally spoke, and she sounded winded. ‘You and Kit share a what?’
‘Bed,’ said Jude, looking at her with concern. ‘Are you quite well, my dumpling?’
‘You bastard.’
‘Lydia Jane!’ said their mother. ‘Apologise at once!’
‘I will not.’ Lydia’s face was blotched a fierce red. ‘It is quite accurate, after all,’ she continued, smiling horribly Jude. ‘If one listens to the rumours.’
He smiled back at her in the same way, and Kit thought, Lydia learned that smile from him.
‘Ah, the old persistent rumours,’ he said. ‘They made my father so angry by refusing to die.’
She wondered how Lydia could know him so well, and still not understand that you couldn’t wound him like that. Anything you could level at him he’d already told himself a hundred times, and worse.
‘Now, my sweetmeat,’ he said, ‘I believe you and I have been sufficiently entertaining and should cease speaking. Usually Thomas reads to us from the paper, and we all pretend an interest in the latest political nonsense. After twenty minutes or so, when we’ve proved our gravitas, I read the gossip pages aloud and Sophie and Thomas pretend to disapprove. Katherine demonstrates her insufferable superiority by paying us no mind and reading something boring and scientific.’
‘Rose reads the gossip as if it’s a play,’ Tom said, his eyes shy and avid on his sister’s face. It hit Kit for the first time that Tom hadn’t seen Lydia since she left for London more than two years ago.
‘Except yesterday, when I tried to perform the part of my cousin, the Duke, your mother told me I sounded as if I had a potato in my mouth. I suspect she meant some other orifice, but was too polite to say so.’
Her mother giggled and swatted in the direction of Jude. ‘Oh, you do go on, you naughty thing. I would never think such a thing.’
‘I do. Every time I see him.’ He launched into an impression of himself that was far too . . . accurate for comfort. Tom and Mr Scott shared a look, which seemed to tip them both into a fit of giggles. Ma laughed behind her hand, and at any other time Kit would have thanked God for the man who could make her mother seem like a girl again.
But she had caught sight of Lydia’s face, and her sister had gone so pale Kit was scared for a moment she might be sick.
Kit had forgotten he could be like this. She watched him, his eyes glittering as he berated his audience for laughing at a peer of the realm. Lydia had challenged him and he had given her a warning slap, with as little thought as you would slap an overly enthusiastic puppy. I belong here with your family, he was saying to her. And you do not.
‘Ma,’ Kit said, ‘didn’t you tell me this morning you wanted Rose to look over your menus but you weren’t sure you should ask?’
‘Tut, Sophie,’ said Jude, unable to resist the lure. ‘You know I am your slave for life. I also have an exceptional palate and very expensive taste. I would love nothing more than to review your choices, though I intend to be very scathing and pithy. I hope you are ready.’
Kit patted her mother’s shoulder and stood. She retrieved the draft menus from the bureau and placed them in Jude’s hands.
‘Tom will help you decipher her writing,’ she said. ‘Ma has a terrible hand.’
She turned her back on her family, drawn cosily around Jude, and bent close to Lydia, placing her palm warm on her shoulder. ‘Let’s go and see about those sandwiches.’
Lydia nodded and rose, her cold exp
ression less perfect than usual, but at least it was in place again.
Jude caught Kit’s eye as she crossed the room. He opened his mouth to speak. Closed it again. Something very like fear crossed his face, fleeting and sharp. Then he bowed his head over the menus and turned to her mother with a bright smile, as though he wouldn’t be anywhere else.
‘Eggs – for – dinner,’ Kit heard him gasp as she left the room. ‘Bring me a taper, quickly. We have to burn this document before it offends me to death!’
‘You didn’t need to do that,’ Lydia bit out, when they entered the room with the piano. Her voice echoed a little; the only other piece of furniture was a whimsical divan.
Kit sat on the piano stool – remembered his tongue on Lady Marmotte’s large, pale breast, and stood again.
‘He was being an arse,’ she said.
Lydia looked at her in shock and sat abruptly on the divan. She laughed – an unpractised, involuntary sound. ‘My God, no wonder he’s in love with you.’
Heat cracked open at the top of Kit’s skull and licked, long and slow, down every inch of her skin. She very distinctly felt the muscle in her heart expand, then painfully contract. She thought for a moment she might pass out.
‘Kit,’ Lydia said clearly. ‘You realise this is what he does – he changes the world to suit himself. He has made this happen. He has made you think that you would do anything for him, because he demands everything of people. You saw clearly, in London, who and what he is. Ask yourself whether that has changed. Ask yourself whether this isn’t exactly what he wanted.’
Kit sifted desperately through everything she knew of Lydia, of herself, of him.
‘Whatever he’s done,’ Lydia said, ‘whatever thing he found that made you trust him – the thing that is particular to only you in all the world – he did it for a price.’
Kit remembered the texture of his skin slicked with sweat, thought of the voice he hadn’t been able to control, how pliant exhaustion had made him. Not even he would shatter himself just to get what he wanted from her.
Would he?
Lydia stood, agitated. ‘You saw him just now. I know him better than you do, so he’s terrified to let us talk. He can’t afford to have you come to your senses. He has you under his influence, and everything he says next will be just the right thing to say to gain your trust back. He knows you will think the worst of me, with only a little help.’
Kit opened her mouth to speak, and forced herself to stop and think. He had hurt Lydia by showing how much more comfortable with her family he was than she. And he unerringly found the thing that hurt the most.
‘Is your brain diseased?’ Lydia burst out, sounding much more like herself. ‘I threw every eligible man I could think of at you, and he was the one man – the only one, in all of England – whom I didn’t want you to meet. There is only one way this ends – unless you are strong enough to end it first.’
‘Oh, Christ,’ Kit said weakly. ‘All that time in London – all those balls and introductions to eligible men. You thought you were helping me.’
‘Have you never considered what London would have been like for you, without my silly little efforts?’
‘Do you have any idea how much I hate going out to ton parties?’
Lydia smirked. ‘I was doing right by you. That didn’t mean I was also going to be nice.’
Kit almost smiled back, and she thought Lydia knew it, because Lydia added, ‘Not to you, Katherine. Of all people I wouldn’t be nice to you.’
Lydia hadn’t cared about the white dress. She had stood, her face shiny with tears and snot, and screamed at their father. She had said, Kit won’t let you take me. She had been so sure, so full of unshaken faith in her big sister.
And Kit had let Abe hit her, and take her away. It was the moment that would forever stand between them.
Yet here Lydia was, trying to warn Kit away from the Duke. Not because she showed any sign of wanting him for herself, but because she feared he was dangerous.
‘Then I . . . thank you,’ she said, feeling absurd, and absurdly moved.
Lydia took a step closer to her. ‘It makes sense that you and I would both be drawn to him.’
‘You warn me away,’ Kit said, desperate to forestall what she knew was coming, ‘and yet I can see that you like him. The two of you have history, affection —’
‘Sometimes, he is so like Father,’ Lydia said, and reached out a shaking hand to Kit.
‘If you are comparing me to the man who broke Katherine’s fingers and nose,’ said a lazy voice from the doorway, ‘then Lydia, I will have to do violent things to you.’
‘Like break my fingers and nose?’ Lydia said, stepping away from Kit. She’d gone white again, but she looked defiant.
Jude faltered, then came into the room and closed the door behind him.
‘Lydia, my sweet, melodrama was never your style. Of course I wouldn’t hurt you. I was being expressive.’
‘And sometimes fists and feet express more than words. And sometimes they hurt less.’ Lydia shrugged, pulling Kit’s eye to the thin, sharp line of her collarbone.
‘You don’t understand everything that’s going on here,’ he said. ‘You and I have been very good friends, but there are some things you don’t know about me.’
‘And my sister – who is under my husband’s protection; my very large, very angry husband – seemed like the perfect person to confide in?’
He frowned – a genuine expression. ‘You turn against me so quickly.’
‘I told you to stay away from her. God damn you, you useless bloody prick. I thought you and I would be friends at least, when I no longer appealed to your cock.’
Kit’s face heated, prickling into her hairline. She wished she were anywhere but here, in the middle of a lovers’ quarrel between her sister and her . . . and Jude.
He glanced at Kit, some residue of fear still in his eyes. His lips were so ready, she knew, so fluent in obscenity, but he said, ‘I was so unhappy I couldn’t breathe. Er, I actually couldn’t. Breathe. Your sister has a way with words, and she has a way of seeing right through to what matters. And a charming ability to put me in my place. I need, selfishly, to be near her.’
‘Oh, God, you . . .’ Lydia gave up on words and pushed him.
‘Just until I can breathe again,’ he said, and Kit thought stupidly, But you said you were staying forever.
He caught Lydia’s hand in his, touched his other hand to her cheek. Lydia cast her eyes down.
‘How lucky for us all that I’m such a useful sort of person,’ Kit heard herself say. She sounded like them, and she hated it. ‘What will I be asked to mend next, I wonder?’
‘Katherine, you know that’s not —’ he turned to say, but she cut him off.
‘Yes. It is. And because you’re the most complicated bloody man in the universe, the fact that you’re using me doesn’t exclude other things from also being true.’ She couldn’t doubt, now, that he cared for her.
Lydia pulled her hand from his and said, ‘Where are we all to sleep tonight? The Duke’s munificence didn’t extend to extra beds, I can’t help but notice.’
They watched her – two of the most sought-after personalities of the beau monde – as though the next words out of her mouth would determine the future of humankind.
There was no right answer.
‘Mr Scott with have to share with Tom,’ she said finally. ‘There’s a spare bed in Ma’s old room. You’ll sleep there, Your Grace, and Lydia will share with me.’
She didn’t know if she was trying to keep Lydia out of his bed, or him out of her own. She just knew she wasn’t ready to make that decision yet.
Lydia tried to look smug – but her nervous dismay was so obvious she’d have had better luck covering horseshit with lemon icing. ‘Will we never get those sandwiches?’ she said, and swept out of the room.
Neither Kit nor Jude spoke, and they didn’t move.
‘Are you going to resume your aff
air?’ she asked, because she could not keep the words inside.
He was in front of her then, his hands tight around her skull, as he pressed his forehead against hers. ‘I promised you,’ he said. ‘Did you think I didn’t mean it?’
She made herself stay very still and tried to ignore her lungs filling with the warm, close scent of him, and the restless, almost painful pressure of his fingers around her bone, and the very faint tremor that ran through him.
He let her go.
‘You chose her above me.’
‘She’s my family.’
‘And I —’ He closed his mouth in a thin line, looked away. Nodded. ‘I am not your family.’
She grinned suddenly, and he stared at her mouth.
‘Well?’ he said, wary.
‘It’s not as easy, is it, when you really want something?’
Her smile faltered a little under his intense scrutiny and the frightening look on his face. ‘I wonder if you feel what I feel,’ he said. ‘This slow desperation to kiss, to fuck.’
He pressed his thumb hard into her bottom lip, so that her teeth bit into the soft flesh of her mouth.
There was a polite cough from the door, and he didn’t have the decency to let go of her.
‘Refreshments are being served in the parlour,’ said the footman.
Kit pulled herself out of his grasp and left the room. She wanted to wash linen until her skin was cracked and raw and bleeding into the dirty water, so that she needn’t think of him.
She knew the woman who married Jude would never wish for such a thing. It was the wish of a servant.
Chapter Fifteen
Kit was sure that supper would have been hilarious for anyone on the outside of their little drama – say a playwright or a particularly malicious wit or anyone who didn’t have to suffer through it themselves.
The exchange in the parlour that morning looked benevolent in comparison. Because Kit had chosen her, Lydia was insufferably smug, and condescended to Jude every chance she got. Not that she was any nicer to Kit for it. In fact, as it grew later, and came closer to the time Kit and Lydia would be sharing a bed for the first time since they were girls, the snide pinching fingers of Lydia’s commentary began to twist, so that she left bruises in Kit’s insides.
