Chapter 27

Dear Selina—I think it an excellent plan. I wish I were there to help you see it through. Things grow tense here in Brussels—no more for now. Be brave! (Not that you need any encouragement on that front.)

—from Will to Selina, posted hastily before the regiment's departure

The next morning, she stood in the front drawing room at Rowland House, sick with dread.

Peter had offered to come with her—as he'd come with her to Belvoir's the night before—but she'd declined. "I want to do this myself," she'd told him. She needed to do it herself. It was a penance, she supposed, for lying to her family these last two years. For not trusting them. And if they cast her out onto the front step—if Daphne said she could not let Selina be around the boys any longer—well. Selina could understand that. But she did not want Peter to see.

They came into the drawing room in a whirlwind of chatter. Aunt Judith was speaking sternly to Nicholas, who appeared to be hiding slightly behind his wife. Thomasin dimpled at Aunt Judith, holding out her hand to the other woman as though inviting her to dance. The love and partnership between them glowed as bright as the afternoon.

All of her family. All of them but Will, and Selina felt his absence like a wound.

"Selina, there you are," Daphne said. Her chestnut curls were slightly more tamed than usual, and she smiled broadly at Selina. "We think Teddy has been missing Lu. He's been unusually fussy, and we're pretty sure he keeps saying ‘poke stick.'"

"Rapier, I rather think he means," Nicholas put in.

Selina bit down hard on her lower lip. "I'll bring her next time."

"Is something the matter, darling girl?" This was Thomasin—always Thomasin, gentle and serene. "Let me pour you a cup of tea."

Thomasin served them all as Selina gathered her courage. She seated herself on the blue chintz settee and wrapped her fingers around her steaming cup.

"Before the guardianship hearing," she said, "there is something I would like to tell all of you. It has to do with Will—and me—and something we did together two years ago, which I have been carrying on in his absence."

No one spoke. They watched her patiently, her family.

Please , she thought. Please don't be ashamed of me.

With a shaky indrawn breath, she told them about Belvoir's. She told them about Ivy Price, and the Venus catalog, and the house she and Will had bought for Ivy and her son. She told them about the Earl of Alverthorpe and Peter's audacious plan.

She didn't tell them about Georgiana's novels. She trusted them implicitly, but that wasn't her information to reveal.

And she didn't cry. It was easier this time, after telling Peter and Lydia. The story of Belvoir's was no longer a private thing, between herself and her twin. It was simply a fact, out in the world now with the Cleeves and Lydia's lady's maid and all those emerald-green books.

And now they knew.

There was a pause when she was done speaking, as though they all waited to see if she had more to say. No one looked at one another, and for some reason Selina took pride in that. They were not the kind of people whose reactions depended upon the judgments of others.

"Well," said Nicholas, "that explains a great deal."

Selina's throat felt dry, and she tried to swallow. "Does it?"

"Mm." He tugged at his cuff, an old familiar gesture that caught her heart. "Why neither of you ever asked for a larger allowance, for one. I'd rather wondered about that."

"Does this explain why your lady's maid is so attached to you, then?" asked Thomasin. "I've been trying to lure her into my service for years. Bribery, was it?" She made a sage little hum. "I should've tried that myself."

"And all those visits you made when we were in Gloucestershire at Broadmayne," Nicholas added. "To Ivy? Yes, of course, that makes sense. I did think it odd that you were suddenly so keen to shop in the village."

"And those gowns!" Daphne nodded. "I thought I'd lost all sense of fashion when you started buying up those eye-poppingly colored gowns." She paused. "Actually, no, I take it back. I still don't understand the gowns. I beg your pardon—perhaps I simply don't understand fashion." She looked chagrined.

Selina stared at them all. Daphne, Nicholas, Thomasin, Judith: All four looked at her placidly. Thomasin took a sip of her tea, then winced. Their cups had grown cold in the time it had taken to hear all of Selina's recital.

"Have you all lost your senses?" Selina demanded, almost incensed by their inexplicable calm. "Did you not hear me?"

"To be honest," said Daphne, "I think it's wonderful. I wasted a great many years suffering because of my ignorance on such topics. Before I married your brother I was terribly—" She blushed a little, but set her teeth. "Deceived. I was deceived, and if I'd had something like your catalog, I would not have been so naive."

Nicholas caught Daphne's hand in his and drew it into his lap, his expression very gentle.

"I, too," said Thomasin slowly, "could have benefited." She cast a glance to Aunt Judith, who had not, as yet, said anything at all about Selina's revelations. A smile caught at Thomasin's lips, but it was sad, somehow. Selina did not think she'd seen that expression on Thomasin's face before.

"I felt," Thomasin said softly, "so alone, for so long. I felt—oh, peculiar. Abnormal. I thought I would never be quite—quite happy, you know. It would have been good. To know that I was not alone."

Selina turned her face toward her aunt, half blind with tears. "Aunt Judith, you must make them see sense!"

"Child," Aunt Judith said, "you have been very foolish."

"Now, Jude—" Thomasin tried to cut in, but Aunt Judith laid her hand on Thomasin's knee, and Thomasin halted.

"I cannot pretend it's not so. She has been foolish. She will have made her path much harder for herself with this library, with this scandal." Aunt Judith's eyes fell on Nicholas and Daphne, on Thomasin. "I begin to fear that no one in this fam ily knows how to take the easiest road." Her voice was stern but her expression was rather at odds with her tone. The firm press of her lips softened by degrees. "Foolish," she said again, "but brave too."

"Like a Ravenscroft," said Nicholas drily.

"Indeed." Aunt Judith put her hands together in her lap. "Now then, child. Let us put our foolish heads together and work out how to enact your husband's plan."

Selina heard herself make a choked wordless sound. She set the teacup down in its saucer on the table beside her. She turned it carefully so that the handle of the cup was parallel to the edge of the table. And when she had her voice under control again, she looked up at them.

"You are not angry with me?"

"Well, yes, rather," said Thomasin mildly. "You have done a great deal of lying, you know. You might have trusted us."

"I suppose I should have liked to have been warned," offered Nicholas.

Daphne made a delicate snorting sound under her breath. "As though you would have let her do it, had you known."

"Come now," he protested. "No one lets Selina do anything."

"For my part, I'd like a free membership to Belvoir's," said Thomasin. "Consider it your recompense."

Selina let out a shaky breath. "Can't," she said. "No nepotism. Wouldn't want to ruin my reputation."

Thomasin—bless her—was the first to laugh. And then they all did, even Aunt Judith, and Selina felt love and relief swamp her. They did not hate her. They were not going to throw her out.

Perhaps she had not expected that they would, not really. Not her family. But she had not expected this either: their solid, steady acceptance of her, in all her turmoil and mistakes.

"My darling," said Thomasin, "don't cry."

They had just begun to work out the details—Nicholas would visit Alverthorpe at his home, Aunt Judith would call upon Faiza's very well-connected mother, Mrs. Khan—when the liveried butler entered the room.

"Your Grace," he said blandly.

Selina looked up. So did Daphne and Nicholas.

She sighed. There were, surely, an implausible number of dukes and duchesses in her social circle.

"You have a number of callers. Shall I tell the Duke of Stanhope and his companions that you are at home?"

Selina stared. Peter… and his companions ? Whom could he have brought with him? Freddie and Lu, perhaps?

Daphne nodded, still holding the quill she'd retrieved from her office between her fingers. She appeared to be keeping minutes of their discussion.

The butler vanished and then reappeared with Peter, who wore the buoyant, slightly hopeful expression of someone delivering a gift. Arrayed behind him were five more people and one white dog. Selina identified his barrister, Mohan Tagore, arm in arm with a lady that Selina did not recognize. Beside Mr. Tagore stood Lydia, looking not at all green, Iris Duggleby, and Lady Georgiana Cleeve.

"Good morning, Ravenscrofts," Peter said. "Looks like you've finished conversing? Good. I've brought reinforcements."

Daphne, who had risen as everyone entered her drawing room, appeared to be smothering an expression of pure delight. "I believe we'll need more refreshments."

"Peter," said Selina, "where—why—"

Words failed her. She blinked stupidly at the small crowd he'd marshaled.

Peter grinned. "I knew they wouldn't toss you out. I've brought some friends for our morning of strategizing. If we're to perpetrate this scheme upon the ton , sweetheart, I thought, well—the more people on our side, the better."

"You—told them? About Belvoir's?"

Peter looked steadily at her. "I told them you needed them. And so they've come."

So, for the second time that morning, Selina told the story of Belvoir's. Lydia and Georgiana, of course, already knew. Mr. Tagore was not a member of Belvoir's, as it turned out, and the lady with him—his soft-spoken wife, Anne—had never heard of the Venus catalog. She looked, Selina observed, quite mightily intrigued.

Iris Duggleby, seated on one of the extra armchairs that Daphne had hastily ordered brought in, gave Selina a lopsided smile. "Oh, well done," she said. "Perhaps later I can make some suggestions for your antiquities selection—it's terribly thin."

Selina strangled her amusement. "I would appreciate that."

She turned to look at Georgiana, who was motionless on the sofa, the little white dog from the Serpentine curled up in her lap. She had not breathed a word of Georgiana's novels, of course, but it had been difficult still to describe Lord Alverthorpe's involvement without turning too much attention in Georgiana's direction. She hoped she'd done all right.

Georgiana took a slow breath and glanced at the door, as though pondering escape. Then she looked back, examining the Ravenscrofts cautiously. "This is very unwise. This is—" She swallowed. "I had not thought it would come to this. But if there's anyone in the world I can trust, I suppose it is all of you."

And then she told them. About her novels, her false front to avoid discovery, her plan to achieve independence for herself.

There was a little stunned silence.

"All right," said Lydia, whose typical reserve among strangers seemed to have fallen by the wayside in light of the day's epiphanies. "Anyone else have something shocking to reveal?" She turned to Mohan Tagore. "Are you a secret vigilante when you're not arguing the law?"

"Sadly, no."

Lydia turned to Daphne. "How about you?"

"I assure you, when I am not managing our estates or taking care of my children, I spend the eight precious minutes that remain in each day exclusively in bed."

Nicholas choked on a snicker, and Daphne blushed to her hair. "Sleeping! I meant—I—oh, you are all dreadful."

"Perhaps Selina can recommend you some light reading," said Aunt Judith drily.

Amusement tickled Selina's throat, and when she laughed, it felt like champagne bubbles popping, little bursts of mirth she hadn't imagined she could feel so soon.

They worked out a plan together. Daphne took very detailed notes.

Mr. Tagore was going to prepare for any whisper of legal action against Selina—another angry father, perhaps.

Lydia meant to use her ubiquitous network of social gossip belowstairs to spread the word that Selina and Will owned and ran Belvoir's. She briefly related her maid Nora's connections to all the most popular families of the ton , and even Selina, who'd known about Lydia's powers for years, felt impressed.

Iris Duggleby offered to have her parents host a soiree. "My mother will be delighted if I express interest in a ball," she said, looking rather grim about the mouth. "We shall use the event as an opportunity for you to stroll around, looking quite knowing and smug and alarming. We can time it so that the gossip will have made its rounds."

"Everyone will be eager to attend," said Thomasin. "They'll want to see how you react. If you try to cower."

"She won't," Peter said. "Not my girl."

"I won't." Her voice rasped a little, but she steadied herself. "I won't cower. We must invite the Eldons."

"To be sure," said Lydia.

"For my part," said Georgiana, "I think it wise if we do not appear to be great friends, Your Grace." She offered Selina an apologetic smile. "For both our sakes. However, I know many people will be eager to speak of you in the coming days. My mother and I have several social events already on our schedule."

She did her teeth-and-eyelashes routine again. "But whyever would the duchess tell us about her library? I certainly would never talk about books in company. It's not fit for polite society to discuss literature . Surely Her Grace has more interesting topics to discuss." Her nose wrinkled adorably. "Hats, I imagine. I hear she's very fond of trimming hats. With fruit, I believe? Little cherries and peaches on her bonnets?"

"Goodness, child," said Aunt Judith. "Stop that at once."

An hour later, Nicholas and Daphne's older son tumbled into the room with a china teacup and a decided lack of trousers, and the conversation quickly ran down.

The Tagores offered to escort Lady Georgiana and her dog back to her residence. Iris summoned the Duggleby carriage.

Lydia, before she walked down the street to the Hope-Wallace house, caught Selina's eye, her face contemplative. "Perhaps," she said, "when this is over, you will put me in touch with your publisher."

Selina blinked. "With Laventille? Why?"

Lydia drummed her fingers on her reticule for a moment before speaking. "I find that I am inspired by you and Georgiana. I have some things I would like to say."

And despite everything, Selina felt a warm rush of pride in her chest at the bravery of her friends.

When they were finally alone in the drawing room, Selina let herself soften against the hand that Peter had placed at the small of her back.

She didn't know if his plan was going to work. It seemed somehow impossible—nothing like it would have ever occurred to her. Nothing like this bold offensive maneuver ever had occurred to her, not in the two and a half years since Will had bought Belvoir's. It had taken Peter, with his wide-open heart and his stubborn, headlong determination, to see a new path.

No secrets. No hiding. Not any longer.

And she wasn't alone. That was the part that pulled at her heart, that made her eyes burn as she thought of it.

All these years, she had thought herself alone in this project. Yet Peter had asked for help—had told them that Selina needed them—and they'd come. All of them, unquestioning, had come.

She leaned against Peter, felt his cheek touch the crown of her head. Felt the warm pressure of his hand all the way out the door and to the carriage, until he handed her up and they went home together.