Katherine sat completely still, as though frozen hard in some internal conflict. Everything hung in the balance, and skill could not win this hand for her. After everything – after a whole day pulled to her will – she was forced to trust to luck.
She discarded three, which was playing well against the odds.
That was it, then.
It shouldn’t surprise him, really, that it would feel this way. He’d had the weight of a dukedom on him his whole life. Lifting it off would make him so light it was as good as wax and feathers.
He looked at BenRuin and Tom and saw dismay there. Lydia’s eyes were fixed defiantly on her sister, head high. Katherine sat entirely still, in that severe coat, her hair pulled clear off her white face.
‘If you hadn’t brought Jude into it,’ Katherine said, ‘I might have felt bad about this.’
She played the king of diamonds, and called seventy-six points.
Lady Marmotte, who had discarded her red suits, had no answer to it. Katherine played the suits against her, and forced every card from her, trick by trick. When it came to the last trick, Katherine played a six of diamonds, and called eighty-seven points. If she won this trick as well, it was worth forty points. It would win her the game.
Lady Marmotte didn’t look at Katherine before she laid down her last card. She looked right at Jude.
It was an ace of spades, and it was useless.
In the rage of emotion in him there was indignation because Katherine had
used
him to throw Lady Marmotte completely off the scent. Made him believe she couldn’t win it.
And then it hit him: Katherine had won Lady Marmotte’s entire fortune from her.
The room erupted.
Katherine stood, and her chair fell back behind her. Jude was crushing her in his arms, and their faces were pressed into each other, and she shook and shook against him.
‘Oh, thank God,’ he said weakly. ‘I really wasn’t looking forward to being poor.’
Kit had no sense of how long she had been asleep, only that her body seemed made of something denser than bones or flesh. She lay with her eyes closed, feeling how the breath was deep and almost painful in her lungs, and wondered idly at the mattress beneath her that could feel so soft and still buoy up the great weight of her, coming out of sleep.
When she did open her eyes some time later, she thought for a confused second,
I’m quite sure I didn’t die
. Heaven stretched away above her – gods, men, angels, all gilded in gold and white, the sky flushing crimson behind them.
She blinked and it was a ceiling, painted.
Her heart closed into a fist – opened wide in a gesture of joy – when she remembered where she was. She turned her body, and there he was, his eyes bruised and concentrated on sleep.
She pulled herself into his warmth. BenRuin had wanted her to return to his house, she remembered.
There had been nothing on earth that would have separated her from Jude.
She nuzzled her face against his, tucked her legs up against his stomach. His body pulled close around her in sleep.
She kissed his eyelids, his cheek, his lips. Her hand slipped into his hair and gently pulled. She watched the wonder of Jude waking up. His eyes, when they opened, were clear and uncomplicated for one miraculous instant. And then thoughts crowded in like stars in the infinite sky, and he was fully here with her; the dangerous, exquisite mind, the smile that ruined his face.
‘Katherine,’ was the first thing he said, and he drew the sound out along her neck, his body flexing warm and lazy against hers. Soft light painted the planes of his face and shoulders and arms.
‘I missed you so,’ he said, and pulled her closer.
He kissed her; she closed her eyes to take him in. For a while the only things to break the silence were the small noises they made, as they settled together.
He stroked her hair, her face, her neck. He told her between kisses how lovely she was, how necessary. He told her how he loved to kiss her, how her mouth opened him up, and how he loved to be so open when it was she who asked.
His words landed, passionate, in her chest. And there was nowhere else she was supposed to be.
He settled at last against her side, knotting her body up with his until he hummed deep with satisfaction. His penis was warm and furled against her leg.
Time passed, and Kit watched the sky above obstinately refuse to move or change. Heavy curtains were drawn across the windows, and it was impossible to say how late it was, or how long since she’d sat at that table risking everything she had, everything she wanted, for hours on end.
Something in her shied away from thinking too closely about it. It was a kind of nightmare, a cold shock to plunge herself back into the tight, clear processes of her brain in that room, learning Lady Marmotte’s face by heart.
She made herself take in Jude’s bedroom instead.
‘Jude,’ she said weakly. ‘This is going to be my home, isn’t it? This ridiculous, opulent, cavernous —’ She came to a stop at the look on his face.
‘We don’t have to live here,’ he said. ‘I will live wherever you wish. It doesn’t matter.’
‘It’s just, I know I’ve made myself
seem
born to this, but you of all people know how desperately I’m not. I’ll never get used to it.’
He looked quickly at her, and whatever he saw there surprised laughter from him. ‘Katherine. You do realise you’re richer than me, don’t you?’
That had been the whole point, of course. One of the reasons she’d risked the key. Her connection to Barton hadn’t been enough – not given what Jude wanted to achieve. Not when she refused to be looked down on by society. She’d needed to win herself a dowry. But she hadn’t exactly thought about it in those terms. Richer than the Duke of Darlington. She. Katherine Sutherland.
‘Breathe,’ he murmured, his fingers tickling lightly across her stomach.
‘I once told Ma I could fleece you for two hundred.’
‘Did you indeed?’ He sounded surprised, impressed.
‘Not two hundred thousand,’ she said, realising suddenly that Jude dealt in a different order of magnitude than she. And that she would deal in the same, from this day forth. ‘Just two hundred. It seemed far-fetched to me then, that number.’
It was dizzying, looking across the gap between herself then, and herself now. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe quietly through it.
‘We’ll give it all away,’ he said, suddenly fierce, his hands rubbing warmth back into hers.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’re going to fight for reform, so that the people it affects can see you fighting. We’re not throwing that away.’
He made a sound of contentment, of assent, and kissed her shoulder.
‘Besides,’ she said, opening her eyes. ‘If I’m to become a force in this country’s industry, I can hardly have my workers starving because they can’t afford grain.’
His eyes snapped to hers, and he smiled, imperfect and slow against her shoulder.
‘My God,’ he said. ‘I cannot wait to watch you live.’
Katherine, Duchess of Darlington, sat in her breakfast parlour, toast forgotten on her plate. She was absorbed in the
Times
, and her staff worked in a quiet, practised way around her. Refreshing her cup, so that if she remembered to take a sip it would be warm. Doing the same with her toast.
The Duke took them to account maybe once a month for not making sure she ate a proper breakfast, and they listened in chastened silence, then blithely ignored him. No one had forgotten That Time Bessie Interrupted Her Grace While She Was Reading the Paper.
‘Seton’s selling his shares in the Hurst Brothers Trading Company,’ Kit said, without looking up. Her secretary, Isaac Cambridge, sat across from her and the boy didn’t miss a thing. He’d have notes for her in triplicate before lunch. ‘He’s panicking. If we rent
The Troubadour
to the Company at seven thousand per quarter, his shares will be worth a good forty per cent more to us than he’s asking, and my involvement will increase general confidence. Actually scratch that. We’ll rent her for six and a half in exchange for shipping our cotton to Boston. It’ll mean less immediate profit, but we’ll be able to tell Haggart to shove his condescension into some unspeakable place. Except I might speak it when I tell him so.’
She scanned the page with an experienced eye, and turned it when she saw nothing more to capture her attention.
‘There’s the bloodthirsty wife I know and love,’ said Jude, entering the room. Her attention was immediately caught by him. ‘Draft a letter to Mr Travis,’ she said, absentmindedly, as her heart thumped. ‘The contents of Easterbrook Park are being sold off, and I want the late Viscount’s scientific manuscripts.’
He leaned in the doorway and watched her. She had been married to him for more than a year, and she still could not guess what was going on behind those midnight-blue eyes.
It made her ache, as it always did when she realised how separate they were. It made her heart speed, because she would never know him completely; she would never have her fill of him.
He stroked his thumb idly over his lips.
‘Shoo,’ she said. ‘I’m busy.’
‘You’ve forgotten again, haven’t you?’ he said, and came to stand beside her.
‘What?’ She never forgot anything important. It was why she’d been able to take Lady Marmotte’s fortune and almost double it in a year.
Her husband’s hand came easily to the back of her neck, and he leaned over her shoulder to scan the
Times
. ‘Your family,’ he said. ‘They’re taking tea with us on the lawn in half an hour.’
She had forgotten.
‘Isaac, you’ll have to reschedule my meeting with Grover to this afternoon.’ A cough from Jude as he turned the page, and she could just see the fall of his hair, the lovely curve of his lips because she amused him, drat the man. ‘To this evening.’
‘What about the mining contracts with Aloysius?’ Isaac asked.
‘You’ll have to go yourself. Make him sign the damn things if you have to tie him to a chair to do it. And please don’t flirt with Rosamond. It upsets him.’
‘Of course, Your Grace.’
‘And don’t lie to my face. You know I don’t like it.’
Her secretary smiled at her, gathered up his papers into a neat stack and left with a short bow.
‘I had a letter from Albert,’ Jude said, idly turning another page. ‘He enclosed a miniature of The Little Heir. Looks a pudgy, hairless thing, but Albert’s smitten.’
She opened her mouth to reply and Jude ripped the paper in half in his attempt to pull it off the table.
‘Fuck! How did that baboon-arsed piece of shit get wind of this? That was a private conversation. Is nothing sacred?’
Kit, who hadn’t yet reached the political pages, made a wild guess. ‘Would that be a private conversation between you and some other gentlemen that neatly circumvented the democratic process?’
With no paper in front of her she was free to look about her and noticed with some surprise the piece of toast she’d spread with raspberry jam an hour or two ago. She shrugged and took a bite. Delicious.
‘We were speaking on private matters,’ Jude said, his voice all icy duke. ‘That old fool Caignton is the one interfering with the democratic process. Thinks we’re still fighting the Seven Years War – which makes his grasp of mathematics appalling, by the by. I was simply sharing ideas with like-minded individuals on how we might get some decisions made. I was doing my job.’
‘And your favourite reporter was doing his.’
Jude fell into a sulk on the chair beside her. She pulled the half of the paper from him that she hadn’t yet finished reading, and left him the other.
She caught the eye of their butler, Gervaise, and mouthed,
Coffee. For the love of God, bring him coffee
.
She and Gervaise had grown quite adept at conducting whole conversations without speaking a single word aloud.
‘You two didn’t have another fight, did you?’ Lydia said, whirling in to kiss her on the cheek. ‘He’s in a right sulk.’
‘Nothing that dire. He’s still a little confounded by the whole above-board approach to living, that’s all.’
They stood side-by-side and watched Tom and Crispin arrange the blankets to Jude’s satisfaction. He’d long since scared the servants away. Crispin handed their mother to her seat in the shade, and Jude curled up by her side, his head on her knee. He looked forlorn, and they all knew she wouldn’t be able to resist showering him with compliments.
‘Christ,’ said BenRuin. ‘I’ll never forgive the two of you for making me that man’s brother-in-law.’
He strode down the hill, looking determined to undo all of Ma’s good work by teasing Jude into a tantrum. They were like two schoolboys throwing punches in the dirt sometimes. It had worried Kit at first, until the day she realised they had both grown up without the company of siblings. After that she left them to bond or whatever it was they were doing.
‘Do our fights seem so bad to you?’ she said, shading her eyes against the sun.
‘Darling, it would be impossible to be married to him and not fight. He’ll never give up trying to get the upper hand, and you’ll never let him. There’s no way to do that peacefully. Besides, is peace really what you want?’
She thought about his pale, naked form flinging out an accusatory arm, and the tender mess of him when she refused to give in to his arrogant demands.
‘No,’ she said with a small, private smile. ‘I suppose not.’
‘Wife,’ Jude called plaintively up the hill. ‘I need you. The Scottish oaf is accusing me of all sorts of awful things.’
‘Better you than me,’ Lydia muttered.
When Kit sat beside him, Jude slipped his hand into hers and though so much of him was for show, he relaxed at the touch. It made her feel like his one true ally, even among these people they both loved.
The footmen hovered on the other side of the lawn, and Kit motioned them over to pour the tea. Jude smiled benevolently at them all, as though the whole world was a lovely treat made especially for him. Kit watched their footmen melt under the attention, and shook her head in despair.
‘You’re a terrible correspondent, Lydia,’ Tom said, lounging back against Crispin’s chest. ‘I was longing for descriptions of the dramatic Scottish countryside, and instead I got one letter full of statistics and estate matters. And it looked as if you bullied a three-year-old into writing it for you.’
Lydia responded with two fingers, and Ma pretended not to see. She looked far too comfortable to bother reprimanding her wayward children.
‘You could accompany us at Christmas,’ BenRuin offered. ‘You’re much more likely to see the drama in a hill than either Lydia or I.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Crispin would be welcome to come, too, of course.’
The only truly dangerous fight Jude and BenRuin had had since Kit’s wedding had been over Tom and Crispin. BenRuin was not a man to easily understand what was between them, and Jude had been implacable. Kit remembered walking into the room, and seeing him, and realising he was out of control.
But BenRuin was trying, and Crispin accepted his invitation with no self-consciousness.
A loud squeal broke the relative peace of the morning, and Porkie came tearing down the hill towards them. He was huge and fat in his jewelled collar and silk coat, like an old roué who refuses to put away his powders and perfume. He came to a halt at the edge of the blanket, snuffed the cakes, and started humping the nearest tree.
‘That pig gets more indecent every time I visit,’ Lydia said, watching him with appalled fascination. It was a familiar expression, when it came to Porkie.
‘Jude refuses to have him castrated. I keep telling him this is a farm animal, and he remains as uncomprehending as the moon.’
‘I comprehend everything. I am perfect. In fact, I have ordered him some she-pigs, so that he may rut to his heart’s content.’
Lydia and Crispin dissolved into giggles, and Kit counted slowly to sixty. Porkie lowered himself to the grass, and became catatonic in the sunshine. The quiet particular to a summer morning resumed.
‘I’m dying to read the new book,’ Jude said. ‘Couldn’t I have just a peek? I promise I’ll be good. I won’t let a single word cross my lips. But I must, I
must
know what’s to become of Ferdinand. I am dying, Thomas.’
Tom laughed, and Crispin looked down at him with that look on his face, and kissed the top of Tom’s head.
‘You’d deny a man water in the desert. Ungrateful scamp.’
Tom rolled his eyes. ‘You’re only four years older than I, Darlington.’
‘Yes, but I’m a duke, and you’re only a mister.’
‘Oh, Kit,’ said Lydia, coming up onto her knees, her eyes bright. ‘I forgot to tell you I saw Lady Marmotte at Sinistra’s luncheon the other day. She’s like a cockroach. Can’t keep her down no matter how you crush her.’
Kit smiled. ‘We see one another so often at auctions and meetings I sometimes think it’s a friendship of sorts. Liverpool was clever to take her on as he did. The country would be in far worse debt without her.’
‘Pish. You paid more taxes this year than she made money.’
‘But next year she’ll make more. She bought out Gentleman Jackson’s from under my nose. There’s no question she’s clever.’
‘This is what our country’s reduced to, gentlemen,’ said Jude. ‘A scrap fought over by two women.’
‘Hush,’ said Kit. ‘And I’m richer than you, so you have to do as I say.’
He stretched out and lay his head in her lap. ‘Will you buy me a present? There’s a horse I particularly fancy. Seventeen hands, roan with a white stocking on her right foreleg. Daughter of D’Artagnon, races like a dream.’
‘But that’s my horse,’ said BenRuin, and the poor man actually sounded shocked.
Kit stroked Jude’s messy black hair off his forehead. He smiled up at her, and it was a smile to light dark places.