Chapter 15

Not the pink. Definitely not the pink. The scarlet, I think. The one that looks like blood. (Before you ask—yes, this is for the duke's twelve-year-old sister. And no, he will not mind.)

— from Lady Selina Ravenscroft to Mrs. Maria Pierpoint, modiste, in response to fabric samples sent to Rowland house for her perusal in preparation for her wedding

Two days later, Selina stood on a small platform in a back room at her favorite dressmaker's shop, wearing nothing but her undergarments and a feather on her head.

"No," said Lydia decisively. She reached up to pluck at the feather, but between the platform and Selina's six inches of height on her, her fingers caught nothing but air. "Not that one. Bend down. I should've had my mother come with us. You know she's brilliant with millinery."

"I agree," said Daphne. "Not that one. She looks like a peacock."

Selina's sister-in-law sat on an upholstered armchair in the corner, smiling so smugly that Selina was put in mind of a house cat with a feather dangling from its mouth.

Everyone, in fact, looked a trifle smug. Thomasin appeared delighted as she sorted through lace night rails and embroidered chemises more lurid than anything even Selina's jaded eye had before encountered. Aunt Judith wore a distracted half smile as she busied herself with the dress that had just been removed from Selina's person by the dressmaker. Even Mrs. Pierpoint, the modiste, had looked rather pleased with herself. From the hasty conversation Selina had overheard at her first fitting the day before, she understood that her wedding dress was to be made in one-tenth the time such a dress would typically require and cost thirty times as much.

Lydia, for her part, was grinning while she examined the options they'd acquired at the milliner for atop Selina's head. A feather. A little cap made of fur. A bandeau of pale-blue forget-me-nots.

For Selina to wear at her wedding . Good Lord.

Selina was not quite sure how any of this had transpired, and if she focused very hard on all the details—on what slippers would adorn her feet and what they would serve for the wedding breakfast and who would collect the children—she could almost distract herself from the anxiety that swamped her at the thought of the potential consequences of this union.

"How about this?" Lydia held up a cake-like confection made of white satin roses and lace. "I think it's a bonnet. I know you favor these enormous hats. Bend down."

"Absolutely not."

Lydia's eyes crinkled with amusement. "You mean you don't favor enormous hats? You could've fooled me. My goodness, Selina, so many secrets—first a covert tendre for my former suitor and now an unrevealed preference for small headpieces—"

Daphne coughed a smothered laugh into her glove.

"I don't—"

Oh God, what could she say? She certainly could not deny having harbored all sorts of illicit feelings for Peter Kent while shoving him in the direction of her closest friend. Not now, when she'd been caught with her shoe off and her arse in his hands in her brother's music room.

Not now, when they were about to be married .

"I'm—" she tried again. "I'm so—"

Lydia laughed then, a real laugh, and dropped the cake hat on the ground to pull Selina down into an embrace. "I'm teasing! Don't fret."

"You don't—mind?"

"Of course not, you ninny. I never wanted him. He talks far too much. My, you are absolutely crimson about the face!" Lydia pulled back and turned gleefully toward Selina's relatives. "Crimson! Have you ever seen it?"

"Vermilion," offered Daphne cheerfully. "She is the color of beetroot."

"She is the color of guilt ." This last was Aunt Judith, but Selina could hear the thread of amusement that laced her voice.

Thomasin set down her pile of shocking nightwear and tugged Selina down from the platform, lacing one arm about Selina's waist. "My darling, ignore these three for a moment. What I want to know is—are you happy?"

Selina opened her mouth to reply, but no words emerged.

Was she happy? She had scarcely allowed herself to be. She thought perhaps she was: happy and afraid of that happiness. Afraid of how easily she could lose it all.

Thomasin looked up at her, blue-eyed and dimpled. "You need not go through with it, darling girl, unless you want to. Unless this marriage—this man —is the one you want. We will be beside you either way."

Selina's eyes burned, tears threatening to spill over. "Thank you," she managed, her voice catching in her throat. "This is what I want, Thomasin. It truly is."

"Then all will be well," Thomasin said. "I promise."

From beside them, Lydia put in, "Don't act as though you are surprised, Thomasin. I know you saw through her as long ago as I did. The sheer passion Selina displayed for Stanhope's bridal prospects was not particularly subtle."

Selina blinked.

Before she could reply, Daphne added in her soft voice, "Surely I cannot have been the only one to notice the way she ogled Stanhope's hands over dinner."

"I—"

Oh, she had . It was true. The man had beautiful hands, curse him.

"Personally," offered Aunt Judith, "I rather thought she wanted Stanhope for his buttocks."

Selina's mouth fell open.

Hers was not the only one.

Daphne and Lydia were still recovering themselves when Thomasin plucked a headpiece from the pile and presented it to Selina. "This one, darling. This is the right one, I think."

Selina looked down dizzily at the coronet of pearls and little stars made from delicate brass wire. "Yes," she said. "Yes."

They were on their way out—Thomasin having bundled eleven separate items of nightwear into their purchase of Selina's wed ding dress—when they encountered the dowager Marchioness of Queensbury and the Countess of Alverthorpe.

The two women appeared to be on the point of entering the modiste's shop, and so Selina stepped back to let them in.

She tried to hold in a wince at the sight of Lady Alverthorpe, Georgiana's mother. The last time she had spoken to the countess was in the Park, when she had been busily organizing the courtship of the woman's daughter to the man Selina now meant to pledge herself to in roughly eighteen hours.

Of course Lady Alverthorpe knew about the impending marriage. Everyone knew.

But Lady Queensbury and Lady Alverthorpe didn't enter after all. They looked into the shop, their gazes sliding over Selina and her family as if they did not see them, and then stepped delicately back into the sunshine of Portman Square without a word.

Selina stared after them, agog.

"Did they—" Her voice cracked, and she started again, furious with herself. "Did they not acknowledge us? Are we to be cut simply because Stanhope has decided to marry in haste?"

She had not anticipated this at all. Surely the precipitate wedding would be seen as romantic , would it not? At least to Lord and Lady Eldon?

She did not care, really, for the opinions of a couple of matrons. Only—she did not want anyone to think less of Peter.

But Daphne pinched her lips together, her face paling. "It's not about you and Stanhope, I promise. No doubt Lady Alverthorpe is listening to that miserable husband of hers. It's—" She cut herself off mid-sentence and shook her head. "It's something to do with Nicholas. An idle political rumor. Ignore it and it shall dissipate on its own in time."

"A rumor? About what?"

But Daphne only shook her head and did not answer, directing the conversation rather forcefully to what she had planned for the wedding breakfast at Rowland House on the morrow.

Once they made their way into Portman Square, however, Selina dropped back behind her family and caught Lydia's arm. "Do you know what Daphne meant? A political rumor—about my brother?"

Nicholas was often the subject of debate, what with his progressive politics within the reactionary Lords, but he had never before been the subject of enough scandal that his own family was given the cut indirect in public.

Lydia grimaced. "It's stupidity."

"What? Tell me, Lyddie. I want to know."

Lydia lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "Lord Alverthorpe has never been fond of your brother, not since Nicholas defended the mill workers' riots in Nottingham two years ago. Alverthorpe thought they all ought to be shot."

"Of course he did." Selina refrained from rolling her eyes.

"Alverthorpe is just one of a group of peers who've taken up against your brother in the Lords, only this time it's grown rather personal. It's foolish, Selina—I scarcely believed my ears the first time I heard the latest rumors. Nonsense, all of it."

Selina felt a sudden anxious tilt of the pavement beneath her feet. "Rumors?"

"Indeed. It's recently been put about that your brother secretly owns Belvoir's Library and is using it to distribute seditious political pamphlets."

" Nicholas? "

"Absurd, I know."

Selina pressed her fingers hard against her mouth. "Oh," she said. "Oh no."

In all of the times she'd imagined her secret coming to light, she'd never once thought the blame would fall upon Nicholas. If someone discovered that Will owned Belvoir's, then surely suspicion would fall to her . She was his twin. She was a woman, had free time in abundance to organize a salacious circulating library for ladies.

But—she was a woman . Of course they would not think her capable of such a thing.

Lydia set her fingers atop Selina's arm. "I have no idea what has instigated this bizarre new infamy, but truly, Selina, don't let it worry you. Like all nonsense, it will flare up brightly and then die down just as fast."

Selina tried to compose her face, even as her stomach clenched. Nicholas. She had never predicted this turn of events, not once in the last two years.

Will had known all along, had plotted it out with her. He had been part and parcel of the arrangement, as willing and consenting as she to take the damage to his reputation if necessary. But Nicholas—who loved his work, who believed in his work—who had already made a difference for the lives of British citizens—

He had no part in her scheme. She could not let him suffer for her choices.

But no more could she let Peter and his siblings suffer. She could not reveal herself as the responsible party. Not yet, at least. Not until the guardianship hearing was over.

"Of course it will," she made herself say.

Lydia blinked up at her, a line forming between her brows. "Perhaps I shouldn't have told you. This won't spoil your day tomorrow, will it? Because I mean to compliment you for several straight hours and call you Duchess enough times that your cheeks catch fire."

"I shan't let it spoil anything," Selina said. Her voice sounded strange and far away, and she hoped Lydia would not notice. "As you said, it's only a rumor, and an absurd one at that."

Even as she said it, she felt the cold terror in her belly. It had been almost thawed by Peter's reception of her revelation about Belvoir's, the errands and minutiae she had been swept into with her family these last two days.

But it had not gone away.

Perhaps this rumor would die down. Perhaps nothing would come of it; perhaps no suspicion would be turned in her direction before the hearing. But someday she would have to face the situation head-on. If the rumors about Nicholas turned more poisonous, she would be forced to reveal herself to clear his name.

And in doing so, she would hurt Peter. She thought of the warmth in his eyes as he'd looked down at her in his study, the pride on his face as she'd told him of Belvoir's, and she felt sick with it. Someday he would realize what a terrible position she had put him in. Someday, she thought, he would regret it.

Not yet , she said in her heart, a silent gritted-teeth prayer. Not yet.