“That won’t be necessary. We have our own—”
“You have a hired hack that smells of tobacco and despair,” he interrupted. “You will take my carriage.”
And with that, he was gone, leaving behind only the faint scent of his cologne and a contract bearing her newly dried signature.
“Well,” Lucy said after a long silence, “he’s actually quite handsome, in a terrifying sort of way.”
“Lucy!” their mother protested.
“What? He is. All sharp edges and winter storms. Rather like one of those heroes in Celine’s novels—the ones who begin dreadfully but turn out to have hidden depths.”
“This isn’t a novel,” Celine said, staring at her signature on the contract.
“No,” Lucy agreed. “But that doesn’t mean it cannot have an interesting ending.”
Chapter Five
The week that followed passed in a blur of preparations that felt increasingly unreal. True to his word, the Duke’s man of business managed every financial matter with an efficiency that left the Beckett women slightly dazed. Bills that had languished for months were suddenly settled. Merchants who had long stopped calling arrived with their finest wares. A modiste appeared to fit Celine for a wedding dress—a soft dove-grey silk that made her skin luminous and her eyes appear almost violet.
“His Grace suggested this colour,” the modiste said, pinning the bodice with brisk competence. “He has excellent taste.”
“He chose the colour?” Celine asked, startled.
“He was very specific. Dove grey, minimal ornamentation, elegant but not ostentatious.” The woman stepped back to inspect her work. “He said you required no frills to enhance your beauty.”
Celine stared at her reflection, uncertain what game the Duke was playing. Compliments delivered secondhand through dressmakers? Asserting control over her appearance before they were even wed?
Yet when the dress was finished, she had to admit it was perfect—sophisticated, flattering, precisely what she might have chosen herself if she’d possessed endless funds and exquisite taste.
“It’s as if he knows you,” Lucy said during the final fitting. “Or at least knows how you should look.”
“He knows how his countess should look,” Celine corrected. “There’s a difference.”
But Lucy’s comment lingered. In the few times she and the Duke had met, he had observed her with unnerving intensity. What had he seen? What had he deduced about her character, her preferences, her very self?
The night before the wedding, sleep eluded her. She stood at her bedroom window, watching the gaslight flicker on the damp street below, trying to imagine what tomorrow would bring. By this time tomorrow, she would be the Countess of Rothwest. A new name. A new home. A new life.
A soft knock interrupted her thoughts.
“Come in.”
Her mother entered, carrying a velvet box. “This was your grandmother’s,” she said, opening it to reveal a strand of pearls, glowing softly in the candlelight. “She wore them on her wedding day.”
“The grandmother who died without ever hearing she was loved?”
A sad smile. “The very same. But she also raised six children, managed a vast estate, and was respected by everyone who knew her. There are worse fates than a loveless marriage, my dear.”
“Are there?” Celine took the pearls, letting them slip through her fingers. “Sometimes I wonder if it might be easier to feel nothing at all.”
“Is that what you expect with His Grace? Nothing?”
Celine thought of the heat in his eyes, suppressed yet unmistakable. The way the air shifted when he entered a room. The dangerous thrill that skittered along her spine when he smiled that knife-edge smile.
“No,” she admitted. “I don’t think it will be nothing.”
“Then be careful.” Her mother kissed her forehead. “Whatever it is, be very, very careful.”
***
