Chapter 26

Dearest brother: You may want to sit down.

—from Selina to Will

It was easy to locate Peter. He was in his study—the room she'd found him in the first time she'd come to the residence, the night she'd arrived to tell him about Belvoir's. She'd had bookcases delivered, so at least now his books were no longer in stacks on the floor.

"Peter," she said softly. He looked up from his quill and the sheet of foolscap, and his face shifted into sweet pleasure as he took her in.

"Thank God you're here. I'm writing in circles, and have run out of synonyms for bad and wrong . How many times d'you think I can say evil before I sound as though I've come stumbling out of a Gothic castle with bats in my belfry?"

She supposed this feeling was heartbreak, as she looked at his beloved grin and felt the words on her lips that would crush everything that had bloomed between them.

"What's wrong?" he asked. He was so perceptive, curse him.

"We should sit down."

He came around his desk and took her hands. She shouldn't let him do that. She should pull back. She should pretend she did not need him.

Damn and blast her stupid eyes, she should stop crying . She reached up and dashed away her tears furiously.

"Selina, I am quickly losing any pretense at calm. What is the matter?"

"Belvoir's." She was trembling. She couldn't help it, though she fisted her hands at her sides and tried to steady herself. "I know who's been spreading the rumors. And worse, Peter—he knows now that it wasn't Nicholas at all."

He searched her face. That look—she was so silly over that look.

"You're right," he said. "Let's sit down."

She let him lead her over to the two chairs in front of the fireplace. Where they had kissed and touched. Where she had cried into his shirt.

This time she would not let him convince her that everything would turn out all right.

"Well," he said when they were seated, "it's fucking unfortunate timing."

A hysterical giggle tried to bubble up in her throat, but she choked it back. "It's not ideal."

"Who's found you out? Any chance we can hold them off?"

"No." Quickly she told him about Lord Alverthorpe—he swore again, rather graphically—Georgiana's novels, and her father's intentions.

Peter nodded, brown eyes sharp and focused. "We'll have to act promptly, then. Before the guardianship hearing."

"Yes," she said, and she curled her fingers onto the arms of her chair so that she would not reach for him. "Precisely yes. We must act now. I have considered our options."

"Excellent," he said. "Of course you have. What do you intend for us to do?"

She licked her lips. "You have the difficult task, I'm afraid."

"Anything. Whatever you need, Selina, I'll do."

"You must throw me out of the house."

One eyebrow arched, and he said drily, "Anything but that, I suppose."

"No, Peter, listen." She had to make him understand. "I cannot shield you from scandal entirely. It will be revealed that I am responsible for Belvoir's, and the hearing is in two weeks. We do not have time to wait for the scandal to blow over. You must be above reproach."

"You expect me to… send you away?"

"Yes. You will openly announce that you were unaware of my actions before our marriage. I have used some of the Belvoir's money to lease a small house in Cornwall. I have—been preparing. Just in case. And we—we should try to have the marriage annulled, if we can. That would be for the best."

It hurt. It hurt so much .

She had meant to help him. She had planned and plotted so that he might get the children. All these weeks, and he was worse off than before he'd ever come to her. Even if he did exactly as she said, he might still be denied the guardianship, for having been foolish enough to marry her at all.

A clean break. That was the only solution. Her heart felt split in half, and her fingers were locked to the chair arms so tightly that they ached.

Peter looked stricken, and she did not know how she could stand it. "You—leased a house?"

"Yes," she managed.

"And you expect me to send you away forever ?" His voice was incredulous.

"It is the only way. If you decry my actions loudly enough, publicly enough, it will give you some breathing room from the scandal. It will be clear to Eldon that you do not approve of what I've done."

"And if I do approve of what you've done? If I approve of it so damned much that I'd like to raise a toast in your honor on four continents?"

"It does not matter!" Damn him, why wouldn't he understand? "It does not matter what you believe. This is the only way for you to make yourself respectable enough. This is the only way I can save your family. I have thought through every option, Peter. I have considered every eventuality."

He locked eyes with her. "Then we'll think harder."

"No," she said. Desperation made her voice thin. "No, Peter."

"Tell me you want to go, then." His jaw was wire-taut, his whole body tense and vibrating. "Look at me, damn it, and say that you want to leave. Tell me you want nothing more to do with us."

She looked at his face and opened her mouth. I want to go. I don't want to be with you. I never wanted to be with you.

She couldn't do it. She couldn't make herself say the words.

"Selina." He reached across the empty space between them and covered her hand with his own. "I love you."

"You can't—Peter, you can't ."

His voice was steady, his eyes on hers. "You bring the morning with you. You're the light, sweetheart. When you walk into a room, I can't see the shadows. There is nothing in this world that could persuade me to send you away if I thought you wanted me half as much as I want you."

"You must." She tried to pull her hand away, but he would not let her. "You must, Peter. Or—if not—I shall go on my own. I shall put it about that you've sent me away of your own accord—or—"

"I will follow you. I'll let Lucinda chase you down with her rapier. The three of us will make camp in your stable and greet you with horse manure and tea every time you try to depart."

"Stop it," she said, and now she was crying in earnest, hot terrible tears that burned her nose. "Why are you doing this?"

"You are the heart of us, Selina. There is no family without you."

"There will be no family if you do not follow this course! They will take the children away!"

He stood, and then he dragged her to her feet as well, pulling her up against his chest. "Come here," he said. "Hush now. Hush."

Then he held her, hard and unwavering. "We will figure this out together. I won't let you go."

"You're making a mistake." She heard herself say the words and knew she was lost. She'd already given in. She was going to let him do this—hold on to her. Despite the cost. Despite everything. Despite the fact that surely he must someday come to regret it.

"Sweetheart," he said. "Loving you is not a mistake." He brought his hand to her chin and pulled her face up, a firm, hard pressure with his thumb.

She felt vulnerable and quite thoroughly wrecked as he stared down at her. Her nose was running. He could see—oh, every messy broken part of her. All the depths of want and hope that she tried to keep hidden, the catastrophic desires that drove her. He saw it all with that clear-eyed relentless gaze, saw it all and wanted her anyway.

He kissed her on the mouth. She felt his hurt and frustration in the hard pressure of his lips, the clasp of his thumb on her chin—and when her lips parted and her hands slipped around his torso, she tasted his soft groan of relief.

She kissed him back, fear and want in equal measure inside her.

And when his hand shifted to her hair, pulling her harder into him, all she could taste was love—his and her own, patient and abundant.

When he finally broke away, she whispered into his shirtfront, "I love you too, you know. I can't bear to hurt you."

"Then for Christ's sake stop talking about leaving." He stroked her hair back off her brow, and then kissed her there too. "Come here. Sit with me. Let's work this out together."

He sat again, shuffling her about in the brocade armchair with him. She ended up half curled atop him, her feet tucked between his thighs, her dress spilling in all directions.

"First," he said, "let's discuss the worst possible outcome. If we lose"—she started to speak, but he shushed her—" if we lose, which I very much hope will not be the case, it's not the end. We can appeal the ruling. We can bribe whoever it is they appoint. Hell, we can kidnap Freddie and Lu and sail to New Orleans before the ink has dried on the chancellor's writ of guardianship."

"But it's not what you want. Or what I want, either."

"Right." He brushed her cheek with his thumb. "That is why it's the worst possible outcome. But we'll survive even that."

She hated the very idea, hated that he would be forced to accept that result because of her. "If you do not cast me out, surely there is another way you can signal your disapproval of my actions? You could take out an advertisement in the newspaper, perhaps."

He directed a sardonic glance toward her.

"Perhaps not, then."

"I'm more likely to advertise how infernally clever you are, and you know it," he said.

"That would not be advisable."

"Rarely," he said, "do I do anything just because it is advisable. Or else I'd be married to one of your carefully selected candidates and as miserable as a stump."

She let herself lean into him, a luxury of warmth and solidity. "Iris Duggleby would not have brought this down upon your head, at least."

He snorted. "Is that right? Do you mean Iris Duggleby's not a member of your library, then?"

Indeed she was. In fact, they all were, all of the women she'd proposed that Peter marry—Iris and Lydia and even Georgiana, who evidently would have been as outrageous a duchess as Selina herself.

"Simply having a membership is no mark of shame, at this point," Selina said. "It cannot be. Half the ton are members by now." She spared a thought for the imminent wreckage of her business and sighed. "We are going to lose so many customers after this scandal breaks."

Peter tapped a finger on the arm of the chair, just once. "Is that right? Half the ton ?"

"I suppose. I've never done the figuring, but it's not so far off. We are inexpensive, compared with the Royal Colonnade, and our selection is larger. Plus, of course, we have a particular appeal for those who know of the Venus catalog."

"Selina," he said, a rather queer sound to his voice. "Are the Eldons members?"

She blinked. "Why—I'm not certain. It's entirely possible."

"The Cleeves are members. The Dugglebys, as you say. The Hope-Wallaces?"

"Yes, of course."

"What about Lady Jersey?"

Lady Jersey was one of the patronesses of Almack's, nearly as terrifying as Aunt Judith. It had always amused Selina to see her name on the membership rolls. "Yes. In fact all of the Almack's patronesses are members. I like to imagine that they talk of vegetable-shaped phalluses over tea."

"About what ? No—never mind." He toppled her unceremoniously from his lap and leapt to his feet. "Selina—why has the Venus catalog not been more widely talked about before now? Why had I never heard of it?"

She watched him stride toward the window, his mouth curling, half a grin. "No one would admit to it. Not in public. No one wanted to say that they were members, that they'd borrowed books on delicate topics." Belvoir's in general was openly popular—the Venus catalog, on the other hand, was discussed in whispers, beneath hands, in the corners of ballrooms and behind hedges at country estates.

He bounded back across the room to her. "That's right. No one would admit to it. Ha!"

She shook her head against the spark of hope his enthusiasm engendered. "I'm not sure what you are suggesting."

"Perhaps I will take out an ad in the newspaper. We'll make it known that Belvoir's is yours and then—by God, Selina, we will brazen it out."

"What on earth do you mean?"

His grin was in full effect now, shatteringly so. "Will it cause a scandal that you run a circulating library? Perhaps. But think— no one will want to accuse you about the Venus catalog because no one will want to admit that they themselves are part of it. Imagine how those patronesses would feel to see their names in the gossip rags alongside your—your vegetable phalluses, or whatever you said."

"You suggest that I threaten to expose my membership rolls?" There was something sacrosanct about her library records: what the patrons had borrowed, the fees they had paid. It seemed rather a wrong thing to make that information public.

But Peter was still smiling at her, a pirate's smile. "You don't need to threaten. You only need to go about town like a cat with cream, nodding at everyone you meet and never once mentioning that you—the Duchess of Stanhope—hold their shocking secrets in your hand."

She had never thought about it that way. She was accustomed to thinking about Belvoir's as something to be ashamed of. A secret guarded so closely that she must never even be seen to enter the doors of the library. Not as something that made her a force to be reckoned with.

She tried to encourage her brain to action, to look for holes in his plan. "But—if even one person reveals the Venus catalog, it will still fall to me. What about Lord Alverthorpe? He might still want his retribution."

"He might. But think of what we know about the man. His damned English pride. Will he want it revealed that his own wife and daughter are members?"

Selina bit her lip, trying to think. "It need not be Lord Alver thorpe. It could be anyone—any of the members who've checked out books from the Venus catalog."

"Oh, indeed. And to whom will they reveal it? All the rest of the members will already know."

"Everyone will know it was I. They'll realize that I created the catalog."

He shrugged. "You made it, yes. But they partook of it. And if they try to take you down, well—you hold just as many cards as they do."

"More," she whispered.

He leaned back, eyeing her with delight. "Is that right?"

"I know—who's taken a lover. Which Tory politician has a daughter with a fondness for radical politics. I would not reveal it, of course—"

"But they don't know that you would not." He gave a small, startled laugh. "By God, Selina, if you had a mind to blackmail, you could make a fortune."

She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again. "I only wanted to run a library."

Peter pressed a quick, smacking kiss to her mouth. "Don't be modest. You only wanted to revolutionize female education. Makes blackmail look almost decorous."

She felt his kiss linger, imprinted on her lips. "Do you really think this could work?"

"Yes."

It was a perfectly dazzling, perfectly Peter sort of plan. No subterfuge or secrets. Everything out in the open, a kind of reckless honesty. She would take responsibility for Belvoir's. Her library would be hers , finally, after all this time. Everyone would know it. And everyone would know too about the Venus catalog— and perhaps, out of fear for their own reputations, they would not condemn her for it.

If this plan failed, it would fail spectacularly. They would be banished from every drawing room in London. Peter's political career would be in shambles; even the most open-minded members of Parliament would hesitate to work with him.

If it failed, they would not get the children.

But they might succeed. This was, perhaps, the only way they might succeed.

"I must go to Belvoir's," she said, rising. "I must see if the Eldons are on the rolls. I do not mean to blackmail them, Peter"—she'd caught the way his eyebrows had risen—"but I must know whether they are aware of the catalog. I think… oh, I think Lady Eldon is on our side. But I do not know if this plan will tip her toward us, or away."

Before she could leave the room, he caught her about the waist. "Don't be afraid," he said.

"I am, Peter. I'm terrified." His arms tightened, pulling her into him, and she went willingly. "But it's…" She fought for the words. "It's good. Not to be alone."

"Never," he said, his warm breath ruffling her hair. "Not if I have anything to say about it."