by Anna Cowan
He watched their fumbling, and could do nothing.
He didn’t have the luxury of playing into their politeness and then putting some underhanded, awful thing into motion. It was . . . excruciating, trying to say what he meant. Trying to be polite because these people weren’t his father, and they weren’t Lady Marmotte, and they didn’t deserve his spite.
He was clumsy, and that made him furious.
Violet did well for herself, though, despite him. She was much easier out of his company, and her smile did have something very sweet and fresh in it. Not at all Jude’s style, who preferred women who might be foxes in human skin, but Roger Montaigne appeared to have been struck dumb. The silly girl was so giddy on her own success that she appeared not to understand what an honour Montaigne’s attention was, and had ordered him to the refreshments table for drinks while she tried her hand at Lord Harrington, who would never offer for her.
By eleven the crowd was threatening to become a crush, and Jude’s heart was beating much too fast, his blood a sickening, swooning tide. He closed his eyes and wished for Katherine – for the quiet, the dark, her fingers rough and sure on his neck.
Instead he was given Lady Marmotte, who appeared at the top of the stairs in another vicious black dress. The boy from Leeds came in a step behind.
Jude’s fingernails bit deep into his palms; his mouth opened. He was not with Katherine in the quiet, in the dark, and he still had to stay in one piece. When BenRuin was approaching the Manor, Jude had felt all the worst things Katherine must think of him: coward, selfish, weak. But he’d also known he couldn’t hide behind her. He had to come back to London, and know that he could face what he needed to face and stand tall like a man, and of all simple things, still breathe.
So he stood and watched Lady Marmotte make her way towards him, feeling a kind of triumph because his lungs had not given out on him yet.
The steward announced the Earl of Barton, which reminded Jude that he had to talk to the man later, to see if he could convince him to support the Reforms. He looked back to the doors for a glimpse of him.
And that’s when he saw her.
Dear Christ. Oh, fuck.
She stood in a hushed space at the top of the stairs, head high, eyes cool.
She wore a midnight-blue coat that had to have been stitched on. The shoulders were crusted with jewels that refracted candlelight from the chandeliers above. It made her look even stronger. Taller. Hard and incomparable.
She wore breeches tight as skin, her long, muscled legs on display for everyone to see, feet planted firmly in shining black boots.
Her hair was gathered in a tight knot on top of her head. Her face, with its crooked nose and severe brows, was plain and exposed. Her collars were short, so that the expanse of her brown throat was clear.
She held a golden leash and at the end of it was a small, familiar pig wearing a jacket to match hers.
She was like something new and badly understood that was going to change everything. Like electricity.
Her eyes found him through the crowds of people who had fallen still. There was no sentimentality or softness in her gaze. There was only that same gesture she’d made once before, that reached inside his chest and claimed him.
Then she looked away and found another target. He’d had glimpses before of the way her eyes turned to molten lava, but never like this. He followed her line of sight and found Lady Marmotte, who was no longer making her way towards Jude. Who looked just a little bit uncertain.
Katherine handed the leash to Lydia, which was when Jude first realised that she was surrounded by her family and Barton’s. The strength of BenRuin behind her, the cool disdain of Lydia, the quiet of Tom.
She walked towards Lady Marmotte, and Jude couldn’t look away from her incredible legs. He felt fierce with knowing. She stopped in front of the other woman, whose black costume seemed suddenly irrelevant. She simply looked at Lady Marmotte, every insolent line of her body clear to everyone watching. One by one she pulled the fingers of her white kid-skin glove from her left hand.
Then she lifted her right arm, which Jude had seen her use to split logs, and hit Lady Marmotte across the face with her glove. Nobody spoke, and Jude became aware of the music still playing into the horrified silence, like a single candle lighting the bottom of a well. Katherine’s eyes thinned, head on the side like a bird of prey.
‘It is customary to state your terms,’ Lady Marmotte finally said, with an admirable coolness that was at odds with her red cheek. ‘And to introduce yourself, when your adversary hasn’t the faintest clue who you might be.’
Katherine’s lips curled up into a nasty smile and she said, ‘I am Katherine Sutherland. Granddaughter of the Earl of Barton, and future Duchess of Darlington.’
Jude gave a shocked laugh. He felt as though God had clapped His hands once, startling, inside his chest.
Lady Marmotte’s eyes flew to him, wide.
‘I don’t believe you,’ she said, but she’d already seen something on his face that dismayed her.
‘I do not like the way you are going after Darlington,’ Katherine said. ‘And I want you to stop.’
But Lady Marmotte was the woman who’d cowed society into accepting her, despite her promiscuity and her very public divorce. She drew herself up, and didn’t let the silence betray her into speaking before she was ready.
‘Pistols at dawn, then?’ she said, her tone faintly ironic – sophisticated beside Katherine’s plain speech.
Katherine shrugged and didn’t give an inch. ‘If we must.’
Liverpool – who, with Louisa beside him, had been doing his best to ignore the scene and draw his guests into polite conversation – stepped forward at this. ‘Ladies,’ he said in a mild voice, ‘threatening illegal activities within the hearing of your Prime Minister is going it a shade too far.’
There was a badly contained delight in Katherine – as though she wanted to discover just how many illegal things she could suggest before Liverpool threw her out. Lady Marmotte wasn’t paying Liverpool any attention; her eyes were speculative on Jude, and he thought, Oh, damn.
‘I will meet you on one battlefield only,’ Lady Marmotte said to Katherine, in exactly the right haughty tones. ‘Come to my piquet party next week. You and I shall play for your . . . future husband’s maidenly honour, or whatever this is about exactly.’
Katherine flushed a little, and for one sick moment Jude thought she was going to back down. She had lost everything once before, because of a card game.
Then she stood taller and stronger than ever, and the flush made her seem so human. ‘When I win,’ she said, ‘you’ll never involve yourself in Darlington’s fortunes again.’
Lady Marmotte’s bored sigh didn’t hide her triumph from Jude. Not for a second. ‘And when I win my only prize is to send Darlington’s bride to him a pauper and a disgrace? It will do, I suppose.’
Jude couldn’t be sure how well Katherine understood the political context of her actions, but she couldn’t have chosen a better place to stage this little scene.
‘In the interests of peace,’ Liverpool said, still in that mild voice, ‘I shall attend your party, Lady Marmotte, and personally ensure that the terms of the wager are kept. And now I rather think my wife would like to dance a waltz.’
Lady Marmotte conceded to Liverpool’s interference; she understood the context entirely. ‘Just one more thing,’ she said, and Jude’s breath caught roughly in his chest.
‘Every player opens with a bet of twenty thousand pounds – gold standard. Don’t bother to show up with less than two hundred thousand in your pocket.’
Katherine drew herself up and – was that one of Jude’s own haughty expressions on her face? ‘I don’t have such an amount,’ she said.
‘Then this is a waste of my time. Come with the money, or you forfeit our wager.’
Katherine opened her mouth angrily, and Lady Marmotte said, ‘Don’t worry, chérie. I’m sure something will fall
into your lap.’ Then she lowered her voice and said in a venomous whisper, ‘And don’t think for a second I’ll let you accost me like this a second time.’
Lady Marmotte swept away to the women who pretended friendship, which was perhaps as good as friendship to a woman like her. Katherine stood alone, and there was something defeated in the line of her shoulders.
Jude stepped up behind her and ached to wrap her up against him.
‘The waltz has begun,’ he said.
She turned and gave a small laugh, and her expression was so stupidly wary for a woman who had just declared to the world that she was going to marry him.
‘I can’t dance, remember?’
‘Oh no, darling fox, I let you get away with that once before. I will hold on to you, and you will follow my lead, and we will dance.’
Her hands had reached for him already, so she couldn’t exactly say no.
‘I don’t have two hundred —’ she said, stepping forward.
‘If I had it,’ he said, ‘it would be yours. In a heartbeat. You know that. If my title had been recognised I could have it on credit tonight, but they’re suspicious of me, Katherine.’
‘Oh,’ she said in a very small voice.
‘I have properties,’ he heard himself say. ‘Unentailed properties. And I have . . . well. You’ll go with as much armour as I can make for you.’
‘It’s not the first thing I would have asked for, after —’ She lost her nerve, looked away for a heartbeat.
‘After engaging yourself to me?’ he said, his lips laughing and close to her ear.
She placed her hand flat against his collarbone and pushed him away, glaring. ‘Yes.’ And God, she should have known already that he would never ask her to take it back. Not for anything.
‘I know,’ he made himself say lightly, and then guided her in among the other couples.
He held her the entire correct, aching distance from himself and tried to ignore the temptation to pull her up against him, his thighs against hers, so that every movement would be a hot slide of muscle against muscle.
She was no good at following his lead.
‘You really cannot dance,’ he said, and smiled brilliantly at her.
Her hand on his shoulder curled up into his hair and she held him in a rough fist, but her gloves were soft on his skin. He turned his face, blindly seeking, and found a piece of skin on the inside of her wrist.
He had thought . . . But here she was. She had made this being together irrevocable.
BenRuin was watching them, his fury an almost intimate thing. But Katherine had declared herself publicly, ensuring the worst thing Jude could do was leave her alone. If he stepped away – as BenRuin silently demanded – he would ruin her utterly.
He pulled her closer and brushed one gloved hand across her face. Her eyes closed as he covered and uncovered them, like a cat giving itself over to being stroked. Her eyes opened again, and were hot and golden.
Let them all see it: the Duke of Darlington was smitten.
He stood out the next two dances with Katherine close and warm by his side. It was a statement – he fully endorsed Katherine Sutherland’s claim to him. But more than that, it was how it had to be. If she was here, then he would be here beside her.
Lydia brought Porkie over when Katherine caught her eye, and Katherine handed Jude the leash and said, ‘Here’s a little pig who missed you terribly. Don’t ever leave him behind again.’
He barely had a chance to reply, because the same people who had given him a wide berth earlier were suddenly unbearably curious. Men he had known most of his life, powerful men who struggled to puzzle out the pieces of their own lives – estate, income, wife, mistress, nightmares, triumphs, bloody despair – so that they would fit in some sensible way, tried and failed to make sense of Katherine. They could understand only that Darlington had called something extraordinary to himself, and that they couldn’t do the same. She made them uneasy, the way Jude had always made people uneasy, and she stood by his side.
She seemed to have gathered arrogance around her like armour. She cared so little for the opinions of these people that they became desperate to please. She looked down her nose at Castlereagh and spoke to Clarence in that clear, cutting fashion Jude knew so well.
Clarence looked struck, as Jude had been struck the first time she spoke to him.
He pulled her a little closer. She was his – she had declared herself publicly and couldn’t take it back.
Barton came and spoke to Jude, and he kept a speculative eye on Katherine and called her ‘niece’. He listened more readily to Jude than he would have otherwise, and they agreed to meet tomorrow at the club, with some of Barton’s cronies. Barton didn’t have a lot of power in Parliament, but it was a beginning. It was headway, made by speaking directly to people instead of manipulating them into action.
He looked sideways at Katherine and couldn’t help an evil grin. He had her to manipulate people for him now, apparently.
‘Katherine,’ he said, low and drawn out and warm. He watched the shiver play over her skin. ‘Did you buy your ancestry back just for me?’
‘Of course I did,’ she said, without looking at him. ‘Idiot. You could hardly have married a nobody from the country.’
‘A shame you couldn’t rustle up a fortune from thin air as well.’
‘Not yet,’ she said.
BenRuin came not long after, and wouldn’t look at Jude.
‘We’re going home now, Kit,’ he said. ‘Come.’
Jude would eviscerate him. He opened his mouth to punish BenRuin for speaking to Katherine – his Katherine – like a dog being called to heel. Katherine’s warm, naked fingers closed around his wrist and held him quiet.
She pulled gently on him, and he turned to her.
‘Good night, love,’ she said, and smiled for only him in all the world.
He would have argued – letting her leave him now felt like an argument he was losing spectacularly – but she looked tired. She had not been brought up knowing she was superior to every other being on earth.
He hadn’t been sure, when BenRuin was on his way to the Manor, that he could take Katherine’s strength for himself. He knew it now.
‘Good night,’ he said, and watched her refuse BenRuin’s arm and walk on her own out the door in long strides.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kit paced her bedroom and her body shuddered and shook. She was exhausted. She was spilling energy into the quiet night.
She kept seeing his face, over and over. She was remembering the exquisite pain of being held by him and not held. His lips brushing her exposed wrist. His eyes burning up with need.
So close now.
She just had to win against Lady Marmotte.
If she lost, he would probably marry her anyway. She didn’t think either of them would be any good without the other. But she would be an embarrassment, a liability. And that bloody Marmotte woman would only have more ammunition to bring against him.
He could lose everything, and she wasn’t nearly stupid enough to think that she could weigh against so much loss.
Her window slid open. Jude said, ‘Bugger,’ and fell over the sill on to the floor.
BenRuin had been watching Lydia all evening – ever since Katherine had —
He shook his head, watched his wife pour herself a large brandy and scrub a self-conscious hand through her hair.
She didn’t seem upset.
She was a little bit like a stranger to him, since she’d cut off her hair. It was unsettling – put him on his toes around her, made him desperate, all over again, to please her. She was different from the icy, perfectly coiffed woman he’d lived with for more than a year. She was prickly and approachable and she flushed when he came near. He didn’t always know what to say, and her eyes were still wary most of the time, but they both wanted, and he didn’t think that had ever been true before.
They wanted this uncomfortable, awkward, warm thing.
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br /> ‘Care for a drink, husband?’ she said, holding up the decanter. She used to invest that word with ironic scorn. It was still ironic, but there was a kind of defiance to her now. You are my husband, she seemed to say. Do you have a problem with that?
The gorgeous, belligerent thing.
‘Please,’ he said, and lounged against the wall across from her.
When she handed him his glass, he closed his fingers around hers, and waited until she looked up at him. And as hard as she had been trying lately, he could see in her eyes how part of her was desperate to escape the warm clasp of his hand.
‘Are you upset?’ he asked, making his voice as gentle as he could.
‘What are you talking about, James? Should I be —? Have you done something to – you didn’t let Tobin buy Mrs Church that horrible cheap-looking brooch, did you? Will none of you listen? A mermaid wearing seashells is a terrible present, even when the seashells are made of diamonds.’ She said that last loudly, and as though she’d said it a hundred times already and been roundly contradicted each time.
For a stunned second he had no idea what she was talking about. ‘Katherine and Darlington,’ he said stupidly, and with far less tact than he’d intended. ‘It was so public and he seems to be honouring. Well. And you. And he.’ He clenched his free hand against the wall and was carefully not violent at all. ‘If he broke your heart,’ he said through his teeth, ‘I will break his face.’
‘Oh, James,’ she said.
His head cracked around to her as though she’d slapped him.
She looked the same as always, and he wondered if he’d imagined that loose tenderness.
She slipped her hand from his, and for a moment he thought she was going to leave – always just beyond him, just out of his grasp. But then she started talking, and he realised she simply needed her hands for gesturing, because Lydia really loved to speak and she would use her whole body to do it if she could.
‘Darlington is not a man you fall in love with – unless you’re Kit, I suppose, but she has terrible taste in just about everything, so it shouldn’t surprise any of us, really. In fact,’ she said, warming to her theme, ‘Darlington is about as tacky as that mermaid brooch. He has been worn all about town, and is a terrible flirt, and terribly insecure, of course. What do you think of me, husband? You should know by now that I have impeccable taste.’
