Page 32 of A Duke, a Spinster, and her Stolen List (Duchesses of Ice #1)

Chapter Twenty-Five

“ F ather, you’re wearing two spectacles at once,” Celine announced as she stepped into the study. “It’s no wonder your ledgers are a mess. Can you even see me through the fog?”

The Earl lifted his chin, his glasses perched one over the other on the bridge of his nose, and squinted at her. “If I can see you, my dear, I must be half-blind. Or dreaming.”

“You are awake. And I assure you, I am not a vision,” Celine said, not moving from the threshold. “Unless you count cautionary ghosts.”

He smiled—a real one, not the tired curve he reserved for tenants or creditors—and set his quill aside. “You sound just like your mother. Come here, Celine.”

She crossed the rug in four steps, her skirt brushing the battered sideboard as she went. “You have not redecorated in sixteen years, you know. There is a whole colony of dust mites who remember my mother’s day dress.”

“I wouldn’t change a thing if I could,” he replied, watching her the whole time.

He looked older than she remembered. Gray had taken over his hair, and the line of his jaw sagged just enough to age him two decades beyond his sixty years.

He wore the same battered velvet waistcoat and house slippers he used to wear when she was a child, as if refusing to let the years strip him of comfort.

She lowered herself into the chair opposite his desk, smoothing her skirts in a bid to stall. “You never listened to my suggestions, Father.”

“Never better, my dear,” he replied, using the old greeting from her schoolroom days. He peered at her with a sort of squinting affection. “I trust London didn’t eat you alive?”

“I escaped with only minor bruising.” Her smile was brittle. “And the wedding was… not as catastrophic as I thought.”

He snorted. “You must have worn them down, then. Your mother could clear a room with half a glance.”

The words dangled between them, a dare and a memory at once.

Celine set her reticule in her lap, twisting the cord between her fingers. “Father,” she said, and it came out much softer than she liked. “I need to know the truth.”

The Earl went very still, as if the next movement might shatter him. “About?”

She took a steadying breath. “Mother. The night she died. I’ve asked you before, but?—”

He shook his head, an abrupt, panicked motion. “Not here. Sit by the fire, please.”

He stood up, and his frame seemed smaller, more breakable than she remembered. He shuffled to the hearth, poured himself a brandy, and nearly sloshed it onto his cuff.

She followed, folding herself into the green wingback by the fireplace. She watched him with a tight, almost clinical interest, as if observing some rare bird who might take flight at any provocation.

The Earl drained half the glass in one go. “They told her not to try for another,” he began, his voice scratchy from disuse. “You know that, don’t you? After you, the doctors warned her—too much bleeding, too much strain. They said another pregnancy would be…” His mouth twisted. “A risk.”

She nodded, her jaw clenched.

“She wanted to give me a son. I think she cared about the title more than I did.” He snorted, the sound bitter. “Emma could be so damn stubborn. She wouldn’t hear of another heir in line.” He glanced at Celine. “She did it for me.”

Celine stared down at her hands. They were white-knuckled on the arms of her chair, and she forced herself to unclench them.

The Earl slumped, his shoulders folding inward. “You don’t remember, do you?”

“I remember the screaming,” she mumbled, each word a stone in her mouth. “I remember Mary locking me in the nursery and the midwife running for the physician. And I remember the silence after.”

He nodded, the glass trembling in his hand.

“She never told me she was sick,” he said. “She hid it. I thought the weakness was just… the way of things.” He managed a laugh, watery and useless. “She knew what would happen, but she wanted to please me. She thought—” He stopped, looking at the flames as if they might answer for him.

Celine swallowed. “What happened that night?”

The Earl set down his glass. “Your brother was stillborn. There was too much blood. By the time they called me in, she was already—already gone.” He squeezed his eyes shut, his hands shaking. “I killed her with my pride.”

The words hung in the air. Celine felt them settle in her chest, as dense as lead.

The Earl picked up his glass again and drained it fully, his fingers white on the cut crystal. “I’m sorry, Celine. I have never?—”

She stood up, surprising both of them, and walked to his side. She placed a hand on his shoulder. He stiffened, then relaxed beneath her touch.

“You mustn’t blame yourself forever,” she said. “Mother made her choice, too. She wasn’t a woman to be led by anyone, not even her husband.”

The Earl shook his head but didn’t speak.

Celine dropped to her knees by his chair, looking up into his face. “You have punished yourself long enough. I need to hear you forgive yourself, or I’ll go mad.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it. For a long moment, he stared at her as if seeing her for the first time since she was a girl.

She kept her voice steady. “I’ve lived in fear of childbirth since I was old enough to understand what it meant. I thought it would be the end of me, too. But it doesn’t have to be, not if we stop pretending we’re doomed.”

He managed a small, astonished laugh. “You really do sound like her.”

She patted his hand. “That’s the best thing you could say to me.”

They sat in silence, the only sound the hiss of the fire and the soft tick of the clock on the mantelpiece.

She looked up, a new resolve brightening her eyes. “There’s a musical soiree at Lady Eliza Ashford’s next week. You’re coming with me.”

He gaped. “I haven’t left the house for a year, Celine.”

“It’s time. You’re an earl, not a hermit.”

He made a sound that might have been a protest, but she cut him off with a shake of her head.

“You’ll wear your best cravat and shave your beard, or I’ll enlist the staff to tie you to your armchair.”

He stared at her, then at the dying fire. “You mean it?”

“I do.” She gripped his hand, squeezing hard. “We’re done being ghosts, Father. I’ll send a carriage for you, and you’ll be the most handsome man in the room.”

He barked a genuine laugh, the sound echoing off the old study walls. “You are impossible, Celine.”

She rose, smoothing her skirts. “It runs in the family.”

At the door, she paused. The portrait of her mother—in soft blue satin, her smile secretive and half-wild—hung just above the piano. Celine studied it, then touched her own cheek, tracing the same stubborn curve.

“I think she would be proud of us both,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

Her father stood beside her, gazing at the portrait with something like peace in his eyes.

For the first time, Celine saw their reflections mingled in the glass—mother and daughter and father, all together again.

She smiled, and for a moment, the house was alive with more than just memory.

Celine arrived at Wylds House as the sun was setting. The front steps were crowded with porters shifting a trunk so large that it could have smuggled two fully grown governesses and a misbehaving cousin.

She paused with one gloved hand on the banister and arched a brow at the commotion.

“Careful,” called Mr. Jenkins, the London butler, as he supervised. “His Grace will have your heads if you chip the wainscot.”

Celine raised her voice above the din. “What is going on here, Jenkins?”

He turned, blinking in surprise, before bowing just the right fraction. “Your Grace. Welcome home.”

She eyed the trunk, then the small crowd, then the butler. “Is Rhys planning an expedition? He never mentioned a need for additional deadweight. Has he acquired a taste for foreign entombment?”

Mr. Jenkins stifled a smirk. “Not to my knowledge, Your Grace. The trunk is His Grace’s, but he instructed it be taken to the blue drawing room.”

A puzzle. Rhys hated the blue drawing room.

She took off her gloves and handed them to a passing footman, who nearly fumbled them in his haste to bow. “And where, precisely, is His Grace?”

Mr. Jenkins glanced toward the empty stairwell.

“Out, Your Grace. He left orders that you were to be shown directly to your rooms upon your return. And that you were not, under any circumstances, to engage in strenuous activity before supper.” He hesitated, as if weighing whether to say more. “He was most emphatic.”

Celine narrowed her eyes at him. “Did he specify what constitutes ‘strenuous activity?’”

“I believe he was referring to the ledgers, Your Grace. And perhaps the chemistry set.”

She smiled, just barely. “Thank you, Jenkins. Please send up tea, and see that my father’s letter is delivered to the morning room.”

Mr. Jenkins bowed again. “At once.”

Celine made her way upstairs, her footsteps echoing in the grand, hollowed silence. For all its opulence, Wylds House often felt too large for just herself and Rhys. Tonight, it seemed more cavernous than ever.

At the suite’s threshold, she found Mary arranging a garment on the chaise, her pinched expression fixed with professional worry. She curtsied, then gestured to the open wardrobe, where Celine’s dresses hung in orderly procession.

“I took the liberty, Your Grace. The blue velvet dress arrived not an hour ago.”

Celine frowned at the chaise. “That isn’t mine.”

Mary looked pained. “It is now. The delivery came with explicit instructions.”

“From Rhys?”

Mary nodded, the lines in her brow deepening. “And this, as well.” She produced a small cream envelope from her apron pocket.

Celine took it, breaking the seal with her nail. The note was written in Rhys’s brisk, unruly hand:

Wear this to your first event as the Duchess of Wylds.

She read it twice, a slow warmth blooming from her chest to her fingertips.

“He never did know how to sign his notes,” she muttered, but could not keep the smile off her lips.

Mary hovered, uncertain. “Will you require my assistance for supper, Your Grace? Or…”

Celine waved her off, her eyes never leaving the note. “I’ll dress myself tonight, Mary. Thank you.”

Once alone, she crossed to the chaise and ran her hands over the velvet—soft, midnight blue, and cut to scandalize half of Mayfair.

She imagined herself gliding into Lady Eliza Ashford’s soiree, every eye drawn to the new Duchess, and the memory of her father’s words made the prospect less terrifying than it might have been yesterday.

She glanced down at the note again, her heart pounding with something she could not name.

Rhys had signed it with nothing but a command and a promise. Her pulse would not slow.