The Duchess War

No reaction whatsoever from the duke. He simply sat in his chair and looked at her with those ice-blue eyes, tapping his fingers lightly against the arm. “You think a duke wrote that?” he finally asked, a note of humor in his voice.

“It wasn’t a worker.”

“You’d be surprised at the literacy that many—”

“I am involved in the Workers’ Hygiene Commission,” Minnie interrupted. “I don’t underestimate any of them. There’s a fellow with a memory like an encyclopedia, who reads the latest Dickens serial by night and recites it back to the others during the day. It’s not merely the first paragraph that gives you away. It’s the first taken in concert with the second.”

“Oh,” he said, still smiling. “There’s a second, much more damning paragraph. Of course, the flyer is only two paragraphs long. So by all means, read away.”

“I can’t do that.” Minnie set the paper down and removed her spectacles. “The second paragraph, Your Grace, is the one you failed to write. You wrote all about what the masters didn’t do. You never once mentioned what the workers did do. A laborer would have been focused on how he spends his day—what he did, who it benefited—not how someone else spends his. This was written by someone who, whatever his intentions, was thinking like a master.”

Clermont paused and tilted his head. Then he reached out, picked up the paper, and read it through. When he started, his lips were set in a frown. He read quickly, his eyes scanning down the page. But she could watch his expression alter—running from disbelief, to the quirk of an eyebrow in surprise. Slowly, his mouth curled in a smile. When he looked up, his eyes—so stark and cold before—were sparkling.

“Well,” he finally said. “I’ll be damned. You’re right.”

“Knowing that, it’s a matter of simple logic.” Minnie folded her hands. “A master wouldn’t write that—he has too much at stake. And once I subtract the workers and the masters, my choices are few. You were hiding behind the curtain last night. You’re not what you seem. You are the only possibility that makes sense of the available evidence.”

She expected him to deny authorship once more. What she presented was the feeblest pretense of proof.

But he didn’t argue with her. He glanced across the room at Lydia—who was sipping her tea and casting glances laden with curiosity in their direction. Then he lowered his voice even further. “If you intended to denounce me publicly, you would have told the magistrate, who would have come here with a handful of angry masters in tow, all demanding that I stop riling the workers. You didn’t. In fact”—he inclined his head toward Lydia—“you’ve taken pains to hide the true purpose of your visit from everyone. What is it you want from me?” His hand rested over his waistcoat pocket, where a man might keep a coin purse.

“I want you to stop.”

His eyes bored into her.

“Please.” She swallowed. “You see, these sheets put everyone at each others’ throats. Everyone is watching each other. And I am involved with distributing handbills for the workers’ charity—there’s nothing radical about those; they’re all about cholera. Still, suspicion might fall on me.”

“Surely, even if you came under scrutiny, you would be quickly vindicated.” He paused. “Unless you have something else to hide. Perhaps you don’t want anyone asking why a young lady on the verge of matrimony leaps behind a davenport when her suitor appears.” He raised an eyebrow.

Minnie couldn’t meet his eyes any longer. “That’s the way of it,” she whispered, looking into her teacup.

“What a surprise,” he said, his voice low and teasing. “Never say that you have something in your past you wish to hide.”

She stared into the brown liquid in her cup. “Easy for you to find this all so amusing. But my future is no game. I have worked hard to get where I am, and I will fight to keep what little comfort I’ve earned, small though it may be. I don’t wish to have my actions examined too closely. Neither, I suspect, do you. If you stop, we’ll both be safe.”

“Safe.” He drew out the syllable, as if savoring the word. “I don’t much care for safe, myself. And I’d be doing you a favor if I separated you from your suitor.”

She could hardly argue with that. But she shook her head. “It’s no favor if you make it impossible for me to find another. I live on fate, Your Grace. When my great-aunt passes away, the farm will go to her cousin. My Great-Aunt Elizabeth and I will have nowhere to go. I must marry.” She lifted her head now, and looked him full in the eyes. “I haven’t any choice.”

His gaze softened. “Your past… It’s so bad that you’re worrying that someone might poke into it because of a handbill?”

For one mad moment, she considered laying the whole story at his feet. He looked so open, with his head tilted in that welcome, beguiling manner. Surely, she could…

Even the thought of confession brought a chill to the air, a cramp to her lungs.

She looked back at her tea. “Do you know what it is like to be a woman in these modern times? Gentlemen marry less and less these days. I read that thirty-four percent of genteel young ladies reach the age of twenty-seven without marrying. I don’t need anything shameful in my past. Anything outside the ordinary, no matter how harmless it might seem, is a catastrophe.”

He sat back in his chair and considered this. “Then I see an alternate solution to our mutual problem. I, apparently, need a more believable reason to stay in town. If you didn’t believe what I said, others won’t either. You need to be in the top sixty-six percent of marriageable women, such as it is.” He shrugged. “So I’ll set up a flirtation with you while I’m here. You can reject me; I’ll moon about morosely. The whole thing will do wonders for your reputation. I keep writing; you get your husband.”

He said it so matter-of-factly, but the image that brought up—of him dancing attendance on her, of his hand resting over hers in a waltz—made her stomach flutter uncertainly. She gave her head a fierce shake. “That’s a terrible idea. Nobody would ever believe that you had any interest in me.”

“I could make them believe. Not one in ten thousand would have figured out what you just did. Not one. I could make everyone believe in the woman who saw that—quiet, yes, and perhaps a little shy in company—”