Page 50 of Five Nights to Claim His Duchess

Diana looked at the two women and let her shoulders come down, and when she spoke it was gently, and with a little catch in it.

“You are quite right,” she said. “I am against such immorality myself. I always have been. There is nothing so low as a woman who forces a man’s hand.” She drew a breath that shook, very slightly, at the end. “And I have no way in the world to defend my name. That is the trouble with a thing of this sort. A rumor cannot be answered. One can only bear it.”

She sniffed, and touched the corner of her eye with one knuckle. Just like Octavia would

This is what she does, Diana thought, with perfect calm. I may as well learn something from the woman.

“But it is not my own name that troubles me,” she went on. “It is His Grace’s.”

The elder woman blinked.

“Only consider it.” Diana lifted her wet eyes. “That the Duke of Rosewood was forced. That a girl of three-and-twenty backed him into a corner and made him do a thing he did not wish to do. That he was too weak to prevent it.” She let that sit. “I do wonder how he should take it, if it ever reached him. I have not the courage to imagine.”

The second woman’s throat moved.

“Stop — stop that,” she said. “Empty threats. We know how it stands. We know the Duke was weak in the business, and that you worked upon his reputation, and⁠—”

“And we are not speaking ill of him,” said the first, rallying. “We have said nothing against the Duke. Why in the world should we be afraid?”

“Because to speak ill of my wife is to speak ill of me.”

The voice came out of the dark at the end of the terrace. They turned. Valentine stood at the corner of the balustrade with Phillip a pace behind him. Neither man had made the least sound coming.

Both women sank into curtsies so deep and so sudden that the elder one very nearly went over; Henrietta dropped into hers, and Diana with her.

Valentine came forward and took his wife’s hands and drew her up.

“Not you, wife,” he said.

Then he turned.

“I confess I had not understood,” he said, “that my private affairs were in the keeping of two ladies whose names I do not know. It is a great relief to me. I have been laboring these days under the impression that I chose my own wife, and courted her, and married her by a license I paid for myself. It seems I was mistaken, and was forced into a corner instead. I am obliged to you both for the correction.”

The elder woman went down on her knees on the flagstones.

“Your Grace, forgive us, forgive our ignorance, we never meant⁠—”

“We meant no harm, Your Grace, upon my life⁠—”

The second woman was down as well now, shaking so that the beads on her sleeves chattered. But the first, even upon her knees, could not leave it.

“But we are not the only ones,” she said. “Your Grace, we are not — half of London says it. Half of London will tell you the same. It is everywhere.”

“What a very powerful rumor,” said Phillip mildly.

He came forward and looked down at the two of them with an interest that had nothing warm in it whatsoever.

“Everywhere,” he repeated. “And yet it must have begun somewhere. Where did you hear it?”

Neither woman spoke.

“Both their husbands are in your employ, Rosewood,” Phillip observed, to the night in general. “Ledgers at the Southwark works, I believe. And the other in the counting house.”

“Since there is so little respect for authority among them,” said Valentine, “they may be dismissed.”

“It was Lady Westleigh!”

The second woman’s voice cracked in the middle of it.