Page 97 of Ne'er Duke Well
Had she read anything about unexpected honesty engendered by lovemaking?In coitus veritas?
She felt fairly certain she had invented that phrase.
She’d seen an engraving once of a man, drooped pathetically across the lap of his nude and preposterously proportioned sweetheart.Post coitum omne animal triste est, it had read. After intercourse, all animals are sad.
She did not feel sad, precisely, here in the bed with Peter, her limbs tangled up with his. She thought of Freddie and Lu downstairs. Peter here with her, his skin warm under her cheek. She touched her thumb to the brass circlet around her ring finger.
No, not sad. Afraid, and cold with it, down in her bones.
How could she leave him now?
He had told her of his father, how they’d been abandoned in New Orleans. His brother—as close to him as Will was to her—who had died and for whom he still grieved. She could not leave him too. She couldn’t bear it.
But if her secret came out before the hearing—if her connection to Belvoir’s was revealed—what else could she do? She had seen his bleak fear at the prospect of losing Freddie. How would he respond if her scandal caused him to lose both of the children? To lose all the family he had left?
He would hate her. Or, if he did not hate her, she would hate herself.
“Please,” she whispered against Peter’s chest, barely knowing what she asked for. Things she could never say aloud.
Love me. Hold on to me. No matter what.
His arm tightened around her as if he’d heard. Perhaps he had. He’d told her, had he not? He would not let her fall. But it was not falling she feared. She could face that—the fall from grace, the utter destruction of her reputation and her life.
No. What she feared was that in the moment of crisis, she would not be strong enough or selfless enough to let Peter go.
Chapter 25
… I am so glad—so glad—to hear that everything’s come right. I know I have not met Freddie yet, but I’ve been sleepless with worry over the child. You understand why.
—from Will to Selina, upon receiving word of Freddie’s recovery
In the tepid light of predawn, Selina dressed without waking Peter. She peeked in on the children as she passed Freddie’s bedchamber. Both of them slept: Freddie in the bed and Lu upon the mattress on the floor, the gray kitten locked in her arms.
Selina’s half boots made a rhythmic click as she descended to the lower level. She didn’t need a candle, though it was dark in the staircase. She burned with purpose—practically blazed with it.
She was going to Belvoir’s. Now, before Regent Street was crowded with shoppers and people-watchers. She was going to call Laventille in, and all his secretaries, and everyone she’d ever worked with, if necessary.
She would find out who was responsible for the rumors about Nicholas and Belvoir’s. And she would stop them.
She would not let anything wreck their chances of securing the guardianship. Not now, when they were finally together.
This was how she could solve everything. She would arrange it all—she knew how to fix things. She had to keep the rumors at bay until after the hearing, at the very least. This was the only way to keep hold of what she wanted: the soft beloved contentedness she’d felt in Peter’s arms the night before, their new and cautious family.
It was the only way to make sure that she would not hurt Peter. That he would—
That he would still want her.
She directed Emmie (who was emerging from a bedroom that was decidedlynother own) to inform Peter where she had gone when he arose, and silently resolved to ensure that Emmie knew where she might acquire a French letter.
The carriage ride to Regent Street was brief, and before long she was hurrying into the alley behind her beloved library. She hadn’t disguised herself this time—no servant’s garb or even a decorative bonnet. It was reckless, perhaps, but shefelta little reckless. It was time to see this done.
To her surprise, there was a figure waiting at the back entrance to Belvoir’s. At this hour, she had not anticipated anyone else, and she wondered for a moment if she ought to turn around and run away.
But no. It was a deliveryman, she supposed, or a coal-cutter, and she was tired of being so afraid. She strode forward to take her place alongside the shadowed form.
It wasn’t a coal-cutter. It was a woman, cloaked and hooded, and when Selina looked into her shadowed face, twocornflower-blue eyes peeped out from beneath curling lashes the color of moonbeams.
It was, undeniably, Lady Georgiana Cleeve.
