Midnight Scandals (43 page)

DX,
A Crimson City novella

The Duchess War: Excerpt

From Chapter Three

M
INNIE TOOK A DEEP BREATH,
removed the handbill that she’d found on the streets from her skirt-pocket, and unfolded it.

The edges, once wetted by last night’s rain, had curled and yellowed as they dried, but she held it out to him anyway.

He didn’t take it. He glanced at the paper curiously—long enough to read the block-letter title that took up a quarter of the page—and then looked back at her. “You suppose I would take an interest in radical handbills?”

“No, Your Grace.” She scarcely dared to breathe the words. “You don’t take an interest in radical handbills. You write them.”

He blinked once. But before he could make an answer, the door opened, and two maids came in with tea trays—one for Iris, to go on the side-table near her, and a second for the long, low table in front of Minnie and the duke. The maids fussed about with cups and tea, and the duke took the opportunity to walk away from her and pick up a bun.

He gestured her into a seat, and after pouring, the maids disappeared as quickly as they’d come.

The Duke of Clermont still had not said a word. He seated himself next to her and broke his bread in half. Steam rose from it, but the heat didn’t seem to bother his hands.

He didn’t even need to respond. Her accusation was laughably absurd. He sat in his comfortable chair surrounded by furniture that was no doubt waxed and polished on a daily basis by servants who had nothing to do but leap on motes of dust as soon as they dared to appear. The Duke of Clermont had taken an entire house and twelve servants besides for the space of two months. He had estates scattered across England, and a fortune that the gossip papers could only speak of as breathless tens, if not hundreds, of thousands. A man like him had no reason to publish radical political circulars.

But then, she already knew he wasn’t what he seemed.

As if to underscore all that, he casually ate a bite of bun, and gestured to her to do the same. No chance of that. Her stomach cramped when she even thought of sipping tea. Just when she thought he was simply going to freeze her accusation into oblivion by refusing to address it, he reached out and adjusted the paper.

“Workers,” he read. “Organize, organize, organize.” He made a dismissive noise. “I abhor exclamation points, for one thing. I don’t understand why you suppose I have anything to do with this.”

She had no real proof to offer—only the feel of the way the pieces fit together. But she was still sure of it. She raised her eyes to his and met them. If he could make her uncomfortable with silence, she could do the same.

And indeed, he spoke first.

“Is it because I’ve just arrived in town, and you don’t want any of your friends blamed?”

She held her tongue and smiled.

“Because I look like a rabble-rouser?” There was a wry tone to his voice. He looked—and sounded—like anything but. His voice was smooth and fluid, drawling out syllables in the Queen’s best English. He had a faint smile on his face, a condescending expression that said he was humoring her.

“Or is it because you’ve heard stories of my radical proclivities?”

There were no such stories. His reputation was that of a scholar and statesman, a man who was both shrewd and soft-spoken.

“Why are you here?” Minnie asked instead. “I’ve heard what’s said, but a man of your stature who was thinking of investing in Leicester industry would send a man of business, instead of arriving himself and overawing everyone.”

“I have friends in the vicinity.”

“If they were such good friends as to necessitate a visit, you would be staying with them.”

He shrugged. “I hate imposing on others.”

“You’re a duke. You’re always imposing.”

He grimaced, looking faintly embarrassed. “That, Miss Pursling, is why I hate doing it. Have you any substance to your accusations?”

She picked up the paper. “If you must know there are two paragraphs in this circular that convince me it was written by you.”

“By all means.” He held out his hand, palm up. “Read them, and expose me.”

She found the right place. “‘What do the masters do to earn the lion’s share of the pay? They supervise. They own. And for that task—one that takes no thought, no labor—they are paid sums so large that they need not even lift a finger to dress themselves. Their daughters, instead of toiling from the age of fourteen, are free to do as they wish; their sons need worry only about the degree of their dissipation.’”

No reaction whatsoever from the duke. He simply sat in his chair and looked at her with those ice-blue eyes, tapping his fingers lightly against the arm. “You think a duke wrote that?” he finally asked, a note of humor in his voice.

“It wasn’t a worker.”

“You’d be surprised at the literacy that many—”

“I
am
involved in the Incapacitated Workers’ Charitable Trust,” Minnie interrupted. “I don’t underestimate any of them—there’s a fellow with a memory like an encyclopedia, who reads the latest Dickens serial by night and recites it back to the others during the day,” Minnie said. “It’s not merely the first paragraph that gives you away. It’s the first taken in concert with the second.”

“Oh,” he said, still smiling. “There’s a second, much more damning paragraph. Of course, the flyer is only two paragraphs long—but by all means, show me what you mean.”

“I can’t do that.” Minnie set the paper down. “The second paragraph, Your Grace, is the one you failed to write. You wrote all about what the masters
didn’t
do. You never once mentioned what the workers
did
do. A laborer would have been focused on how he spends his day—what he did, who it benefited—not how someone else spends theirs. This was written by someone who, whatever his intentions, was thinking like a master.”

Clermont paused and tilted his head. Then he reached out, picked up the paper, and read it through. When he started, his lips were set in a frown. He read quickly, his eyes scanning down the page. But she could watch his expression alter—running from disbelief, to the quirk of an eyebrow in surprise. Slowly, his mouth curled in a smile. When he looked up, his eyes—so stark and cold before—were sparkling.

“Well,” he finally said. “I’ll be damned. You’re right.”

“Knowing that, it’s a matter of simple logic.” Minnie folded her hands. “A master wouldn’t write that—he’d have too much at stake. And once I subtract the workers and the masters, my choices are few. And you were hiding behind the curtain last night. You’re not what you seem. You are the only possibility that makes sense of the available evidence.”

She expected him to deny authorship once more. What she presented was the feeblest pretense of proof—a paragraph he hadn’t written, a lack of other contenders.

But he didn’t argue with her. He glanced across the room at Iris—who was sipping her tea and casting glances laden with curiosity in their direction. Then he lowered his voice even further. “If you intended to denounce me publicly, you would have told the magistrate, who would have come here with a handful of angry masters in tow, all demanding that I stop riling the workers. You didn’t. In fact—” He inclined his head toward Iris “—you’ve taken pains to hide the true purpose of your visit from everyone. What is it you want from me?”

His hand rested over his waistcoat pocket, where a man might keep a purse. As if he was already expecting her to extract money.

“I want you to stop.”

His eyes bored into her.

“Please.” She swallowed. “You see, these sheets put everyone at each others throats. Everyone is watching each other. Asking questions. And I am involved with the workers’ charity—there’s nothing radical about it, but suspicion might fall on me.”

“Surely, even if you came under scrutiny, you would quickly be vindicated.” He paused. “Unless you have something else to hide. Perhaps you don’t want anyone asking why a young lady on the verge of matrimony leaps behind a davenport when her suitor appears.” He raised an eyebrow. “I had my questions about last night, but as a gentleman, I could hardly ask.”

Minnie couldn’t meet his eyes any longer. “That’s the way of it,” she whispered, looking into her tea cup.

“What a surprise,” he said, his voice low and teasing. “Never say that
you
have something in your past you wish to hide.”

She stared into the brown liquid in her cup. “Easy for you, to find this all so amusing. But my future is no game. I have worked hard to get where I am, and I will fight to keep what little comfort I’ve earned, small though it may be. I don’t wish to have my actions examined too closely. Neither, I suspect, do you. If you stop, we’ll both be safe.”

“Safe.” He drew out the syllable, as if savoring the word. “I don’t much care for safe, myself. And I’d be doing you a favor if I separated you from your suitor.”

She could hardly argue with that. But she shook her head. “It’s no favor if you make it impossible for me to ever find another. I live on fate, Your Grace. When my great-aunt passes away, the farm will go to her brother. Elizabeth and I will have nowhere to go. I
must
marry.” She lifted her head now, and looked him full on in the eyes. “I haven’t any choice.”

“Your past—it’s that bad?”

For one mad moment, she considered laying the whole story at his feet. He looked so open, with his head tilted in that welcome, beguiling manner. Surely, she could… But no. Reason reasserted itself.
Don’t lie. The truth will always serve to cover what you cannot say.

She looked back at her tea. “Do you know what it is like to be a woman in these modern times? Gentlemen marry less and less these days—they’re off in the far corners of the Empire, dying early or making do with…arrangements less expensive than supporting a wife. I read the other day that thirty-four percent of genteel young ladies reach the age of twenty-seven without marrying. I don’t need anything shameful in my past. All I need is to be a little different. Anything outside the ordinary, no matter how harmless it might seem, is a catastrophe.”

He sat back in his chair and considered this. “Then I see an alternate solution to our mutual problem. I, apparently, need a more believable reason to stay in town. If you didn’t believe what I said, others won’t either. You need to be in the top sixty-six percent of unmarried women, such as it is.” He shrugged. “So I’ll set up a flirtation with you while I’m here. You can reject me; I’ll moon about morosely. The whole thing will do wonders for your reputation. I keep writing; you get your husband.”

He said it so matter-of-factly, but the image that brought up—of him dancing attendance on her, of his hand resting over hers in a waltz—made her stomach flutter uncertainly. She gave her head a fierce shake. “That’s a terrible idea. Nobody would ever believe that you had any interest in me.”

“I could make them believe. Not one in ten thousand would have figured out what you just did. Not one. I could make everyone believe in the woman who saw that—quiet, yes, and perhaps a little shy in company—”

Minnie made a rude noise, but he waved her quiet.

“That woman has steel for her backbone and a rare talent for seeing what is plainly in front of her face. I could make everyone see that.” His eyes were intense, boring into her. There was no escaping him, it seemed. He dropped his voice. “I could make everyone see
you.
”

Was it just her stomach fluttering? No. Her whole body seemed on the verge of trembling. It had been years since anyone pretended to have an interest in her. To have his attention fall upon her in such concentrated fashion… It was too much.

But he wasn’t finished. “Then there’s your hair. Hair shouldn’t change color, just by curling, but the edges seem to catch the light, and I can’t be sure if it’s brown or blond or even red when it does. I could watch that for hours, to try and figure it out.”

Her heart was thudding in her chest. It wasn’t beating any faster; just more heavily, as if her blood required more work to move.

But this was an exercise in hypotheticals, and Minnie was too desperate to be anything other than practical.

“Go on with you.” She’d intended the words to be dismissive, but her voice trembled. “What would you say when it was just men about? When they were asking you what the devil you saw in that mousy Miss Pursling? I dare say you’d never tell them that you’re entranced by the curl of my hair. That’s the sort of thing a man says to convince a woman, but men don’t talk that way amongst themselves.”

He’d obviously expected her to swallow that codswallop about her hair, because he paused, slightly taken aback. And then, he gave her a shake of his head and a grin. “Come, Miss Pursling,” he said. “Men wouldn’t ask any such thing. They’d already know what caught my eye.” He leaned forward and whispered in conspiratorial fashion. “It’s your tits.”

Her mouth dropped open. She was suddenly very aware of said tits—warm and tingling in anticipation, even though he wasn’t anywhere near them.

He murmured, “They’re magnificent.”

He wasn’t even looking at them, but Minnie’s hands itched to cover herself—not to block out his sight, but to explore her own curves. To see if, perhaps, her bosom
was
magnificent—if it had been magnificent all these years, and she had simply never noticed.

If another man had told her her tits were magnificent, it might have been in a leering, lustful way—one that would have made her skin crawl. But the Duke of Clermont was smiling and cheerful, and he’d thrown it out there as if it were merely one more fact to be recounted.
The weather is lovely. The streets are made of cobblestone. Your tits are magnificent.

“Surely you’re not about to protest,” he said. “You did ask, and after furthering our acquaintance over a spot of blackmail, we’ve no need to encumber ourselves with false modesty.”

Minnie squared her shoulders, all too aware that the act of doing so brought her bosom up a notch.

“Look in a mirror sometime,” he suggested. “Look beyond
this.
” He touched his cheekbone, mirroring the spot on her face where her scar spread. “Look at yourself sometime the way you are now, all fire and anger, ready to do battle with me. If you’d ever once looked at yourself that way, you wouldn’t question whether I’d want a flirtation with you. You’d know I would.”