The Duchess War

“That’s better,” Eliza said. “We’ll handle this. Stevens spoke to me as well. He thinks you’re lying to us—he suggested, in fact, that you might not be who you claimed, that you were taking advantage of our kindness.”

“Oh, God.” Minnie put her head in her hands.

“No, no,” Caro said. “This story is easier to combat, because it is so clearly false. There’s no need for us to even lie. I said that I’d been there the day you were born, that I promised your mother on her deathbed that I would see to your wellbeing, and that I didn’t appreciate his poking his nose in where it didn’t belong. When I told him that there was no way that you were some cuckoo thrust into our nest unawares, he believed me.” Caro gave a sharp nod. “He knows you’re my great-niece—no question about that. He suspects that something is not quite right, but I’ve made him very uncertain. He won’t do anything.”

“But I’m not.” Minnie gulped for air. “I’m not your great-niece. I’m—”

Caro reached out her cane and rapped Minnie smartly on the leg. “Don’t you speak like that. You know how it is.”

She did. For as long as Minnie could remember, she’d called both Caro and Eliza great-aunt, even though Eliza was her only blood relation. Almost fifty years ago, the two women had gone to finishing school together. They’d come out in London society at the same time. And when they failed to find men that they loved after a handful of Seasons, they had refused to marry for convenience. Instead, they’d retired together to the small farm that Caro owned just outside of Leicester—friends and spinsters for the remainder of their lives. They were as close as sisters. Closer, Minnie suspected.

“Don’t you worry,” Eliza said. “I did promise your mother. We both did.” Her voice shook. “I failed her once, to my great shame. Never again.”

Minnie reached up and touched the scar on her cheek. When she was a child, she’d thought herself invulnerable. Other people might falter and fail, but she could not. The very brazenness of what she’d achieved was matched only by how far she’d fallen after. She could still remember lying in the dark, not knowing if she’d have the use of her eye again. That was when her great-aunts had come for her.

“If you come with us,” Caro had told her, “you’ll have a chance.”

They had offered not the glittering, glamorous life that most young girls dreamed about. If she came with her great-aunts, she could expect a frugal life. An assumed name. She’d have a few years of childhood, followed by a little time to meet the local men in town. She might marry and have children. There would be no fame, no adulation. They could provide her only one benefit: a future without angry mobs.

Her great-aunts had sacrificed so much to give her that bare, gray chance. They’d scraped pennies so that she could have a respectable wardrobe once she was old enough to go out in mixed company. They never complained, but Minnie knew why there was no sugar in their tea. She knew why they’d—regretfully—let their subscription to the lending library lapse. They’d sacrificed every comfort of their old age for Minnie.

And she didn’t even have the grace to want what they had so generously won for her.

“Maybe,” she suggested, “maybe if we tell Captain Stevens the truth…”

Her great-aunts stared at her in dismay. “Minnie,” Eliza said slowly. “Darling. After all this time! You know you must never do that.”

Caro picked up where Eliza had left off. “These rules we made for you—they’re not intended to be strictures. Or punishments. We made them because we love you. Because we want you to have a future. Isn’t Walter Gardley sweet on you? Because if you could catch him, and marry him quickly…that might be a good idea.”

“Yes,” Caro echoed, nodding. “That would be a very good idea. All Stevens’s wild imaginings will lose force once you’re married to a distiller’s son. Then it would be your own livelihood at stake should the workers organize. Marriage would secure not only your future, but your credentials.”

Nothing she hadn’t thought to herself before.

She’d known what a coup it was to get even that. For a girl with no dowry and only middling looks, any man was a catch. Even if he wanted her because he thought she would suffer his boorish behavior in silence. And yet she couldn’t muster even the smallest iota of enthusiasm over the prospect.

“I heard him talking,” Minnie choked out. “He said I was a mouse—that I’d keep my peace while he took a mistress.”

Caro and Eliza looked at one another.

“You don’t have to marry him,” Eliza said slowly. “Of course you don’t, if it will make you unhappy. But before you refuse, please consider what your other choices would be. I might counsel you to wait.” That was said with a dubious frown, one that said a second, preferable proposal was unlikely to come as Minnie aged. “If there’s the smallest chance that Stevens might hit on the truth…” She trailed off.

She didn’t need to voice the words. If the truth came out, there wouldn’t be another offer.

Minnie hadn’t lied to the Duke of Clermont. Gardley was the best she could hope for—a man who knew only that she grew quiet in crowds. A man who preferred her quiet. He hadn’t bothered to discover a single thing about her: her favorite color, her favorite food. But then, it would be safer to marry a man who wanted to know nothing of her.

Miss Wilhelmina Pursling would be pathetically grateful to Gardley for an offer of marriage. But Minerva Lane, on the other hand…

“He doesn’t even know who I am,” she said. “He called me a little rodent. Minerva Lane was never a rodent.”

“Don’t say that name.” Eliza’s voice was quiet but alarmed. Her hand pressed against Minnie’s knees, clutching.

“Keep quiet,” Caro said. “It never does to speak the truth.”

Keep quiet. Don’t panic. Never tell anyone the truth. She’d lived with their rules for twelve years, and for what? So that she might one day be so lucky as to be forgotten entirely.

The memory of Minerva Lane—of who she’d been, what she’d done—felt like a hot coal covered in cold ashes. It smoldered on long after the fire had been doused. Sometimes, all that heat rose up in her until she felt the need to shriek like a teapot. Until she wanted to burn the mousy shreds of her tattered personality.