She Was Forced to Wear Black and Sit in Silence… Until the Feared Duke of War Chose Her

Chapter 18

Nobody moved.

Lord Ambrose Vane came forward into the ballroom — into the light, into the middle of the floor where his daughter stood, and Rosalind watched him come with a face that gave away nothing at all.

“I was shown the letter,” he said, “two years ago. Not the second one — the one to her sister. The first one. Edgar had taken both letters from the room. He gave the first to the Harrow family instead of destroying it, using it as insurance while they helped keep the scandal quiet.” He swallowed. “I was shown it as insurance. So that I would understand what was at stake if I ever spoke. It is at my house. In my desk. It is in the Duchess’s own hand, and it names Edgar Marsh, and it is dated the eighth of October.”

The room began to make noise again — a rising, uneasy sound.

“Why?” the Duke asked. It was the only word he said, and he said it very quietly.

Lord Ambrose Vane looked at his daughter.

“Because I have been a coward for three years,” he said, “and I have just watched my youngest child pack a trunk to leave my house, and I find I have no taste for being the man who drove both of them out.”

He turned to the Duke and bowed — a full bow, deep, the kind a man makes to his superior or his judge.

“I expect nothing from Your Grace. I will have the letter brought to your house tonight. And I will say whatever you require me to say in front of the magistrate tomorrow, including my own part in this, which was four thousand pounds and the silence of a father.”

Seraphina Harrow made a small, sharp noise.

“A second letter,” she said. “There was a second letter and nobody told me—”

“You were not told,” Lord Ambrose said, “because you were useful and not trusted.”

Colonel Blackwood, whose hand had tightened on Edgar Marsh’s collar, said in a flat voice: “Your Grace. There are two people in this room who need to be in front of a magistrate before the night is out.”

“Yes,” said the Duke.

The rest of it happened quickly.

Lady Halstead, who had been standing near the orchestra with a face like a woman calculating whether a scandal this size would help or hurt her reputation, made the calculation and came down on the side of the house. She ordered her footmen to take Seraphina Harrow’s cloak and see her out, and she said it loudly, and everyone heard, and in London that is the only sentence that matters. Seraphina went. She went in silence, with her chin up, and at the door she looked back once at Rosalind.

Rosalind looked back.

There was no triumph in it. She thought about that afterward, for years — that the thing she felt watching Seraphina Harrow walk out of a ballroom in disgrace was not joy. It was the feeling of a woman who has finally, after three years, been allowed to stand up from a chair she never agreed to sit in.

Then she turned to the ballroom.

“I am going home,” she said, and it was to the Duke, but she said it loudly enough that the front rows heard. “Tomorrow we will do the rest. Tonight I have had enough of this room.”

“Blackwood,” the Duke said. “The carriage.”

“Nell is with me,” Rosalind said.

“I am not having you driven across London alone tonight.”

“I am not alone. I have Nell, and I have two footmen from your house, and I have the memory of everything that happened here, which is worth more than a guard. I want to ride home in the dark and think.” She looked at him. “And you need to see the letter before anyone else does. Go and get it. I will be at Ravenmoor when you come back.”

For a moment he looked as though he would argue.

Then he said, “Yes,” because he had promised her, at the start, that she would not be managed.

Rosalind walked out of Halstead House with her head high and her wine-red skirt sweeping the floor, and the crowd that had whispered about her at the top of the stairs parted for her at the bottom without a single folded card, and she did not look at any of them.

The carriage rolled away into the wet black streets.

And in the dark beside her, Nell said, quietly, “My lady. You were magnificent.”

“No,” said Rosalind. “I was honest. It is the first time in three years I have been allowed to be.”