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Charity shivered, sniffling. “I hope you are right because he has used up at least six lives already.”

Selina slid closer to Charity, letting their shoulders press together. “You need to control your fear. I will not ask you if you are all right, because you are. You are alive. You are breathing. You can move, and you can reason.”

“I—I cannot stand the feeling of being trapped in small spaces. Not since Lady Fitzroy had me kidnapped last year.”

“You can,” Selina said mercilessly. “You indulged your moment of doubt. Anyone would. But now it is time to move on. You cannot think if you are afraid. And if you cannot think, you cannot make a plan to act. Don’t be afraid.

You are not a little lamb. Don’t be their prey.

Be cold and angry , like a dragon. Hoard that feeling to yourself as you coil up and wait for your turn to strike. ”

Charity could do that. Had she not done that for most of these last months, imagining how she would destroy the Fitzroy family? All she had to do was hold her temper a little bit looser instead of pushing it down.

Temper is for tradesmen, her mother said disapprovingly. A lady endures.

Shut up , mother! She shouted back in her thoughts. You and grandmama didn’t ‘endure’ when my father did not want to marry you! And was enduring his cruelty when he was so upset about your treachery worth what it did to us? To all of us?

“Feeling better?” the marchioness asked, her voice amused.

She realised that she was. Her breathing was unfettered by the tight bands of hysteria, and her mind surprisingly clear. “It helps that I am making a list of people who I want to destroy. Starting with Lady Fitzroy.”

Selina chuckled briefly. “I can see why Peregrine is fond of you.”

“It might be better for him if he wasn’t fond of me—either of us,” Charity said hastily, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear. “Although I am glad that you have cared enough for him to do so much to protect him. Even when the results were… unpleasant to experience. ”

“Are you attempting to thank me for my nasty manipulations, Your Grace?” the older woman asked Charity archly, but the slightest of smiles was hovering at the corner of her mouth.

“I do believe I am, Lady Normanby. As well as your excellent advice about pickpockets.”

“What passes for Marian’s affection left her son with sharp edges,” the marchioness said darkly. “But don’t wish that he did not have feelings for you. Given his bloodline, it is a mercy that he has found love.”

“You don’t—” Charity stuttered and gave a short, disbelieving laugh, her heart seizing in her chest. “Affection, yes. But… it has been such a short time. You think he might actually love me?”

Selina tilted her head to give Charity a stern look.

“Do you jest? You haven't said the words, but the two of you are both so utterly gone on one another, it’s as obvious as the sun.” Her eyes sparkled once with mischief, before growing solemn again.

“Not that recognising this fact will smooth the way entirely. If you think Marian hates you now, imagine what she will do to you if she learns you threaten to usurp her title and become the new Lady Fitzroy.”

Charity’s lips parted, her mouth hanging open in horror.

“You cannot tell me that thought hasn’t crossed your mind, truly,” Selina said, astonished.

“Not in such words, no.” Her voice was strangled. Both the title of duchess and the obligation of caring for the duke’s young heir had been cemented into her thoughts, since that had been the arrangement. But guardianship didn’t necessarily preclude the possibility of remarriage.

And then she thought about their society debut. “We went to Vauxhall. To deliberately provoke whoever Marian’s agent was with rumours that we were courting.”

Despite the grim reality of their situation, Selina actually laughed in a sharp, short bark.

“When we get out of this—and mark my words, we will because I will be the one to throttle Chandros and Goldbourne with my own two hands even if I have to sell my soul to the devil to do it—you and I will need to go off for a little feminine confidence.”

“You may interrogate me to your heart’s content if we manage to escape in time to warn Perry that Chandros is also our enemy,” Charity told her.

“Well then, Your Grace,” Selina said thoughtfully, examining the room, “I suppose we should bend our wits to this end.”

Charity joined her in examining their surroundings, still feeling dizzy from the aftereffects of the laudanum, but the crawling shadows had stopped moving for now.

The door was forbiddingly sturdy looking, and the only other possible means of egress was a coal chute high on the wall above a rather depleted coal pile.

“Is there someone guarding the house?” Charity asked her. “I was taken by a dark-haired man in a hooded cloak. He got into the carriage with me and forced me to drink the laudanum. Is he here?”

The marchioness shook her head. “I know the fellow you mean. He’s the one who brought you in.

But he’s not the one who has been tending to me these last few days.

There’s another little tyrant serving as our guard.

Godfrey Bellrose is the sort of pompous little man who likes to prove his manhood on someone even softer than he is.

” She pointed to the bruise on her cheek.

“I got this when I slapped him for taking liberties. He took it as an invitation to slap me back.”

Selina was blithe about it, but Charity blinked at her, horrified. “You know him?”

“Vaguely. He is a deputy in the treasury. Or he was. Perhaps he was dismissed from his posting.”

Charity considered that, frowning. “A man from the treasury as our guard? How… strange. ”

“It is not so strange now that you have told me about Goldbourne and the counterfeiting,” Selina murmured. “He is clearly complicit in this scheme, somehow. If I had to guess, he likely thinks the blame for what is to happen will fall on his superiors, and hoping that his absence will absolve him.”

Unsteadily, Charity resolved to have a look at this Mr Bellrose herself. The door was locked. So Charity began to pound on the wood with her fists, wondering if the man would hear them.

Selina watched Charity, but did not argue. “Be meek and ignorant, Duchess,” she suggested.

It took a long time—at least by the reckoning of Charity’s aching hands—but finally a man’s voice sounded through the wood. “Stop rattling the bloody walls, or I will make you silent!”

“I just want to talk,” Charity told him softly, and after a long moment, the rattle of a key in the lock sounded.

She stepped back just in time to avoid being clipped by the door when Bellrose flung it open. After a quick glance at the marchioness to make sure she wasn’t waiting to escape, Bellrose took a longer, contemptuous look at Charity, his eyes lingering inappropriately on her bosom.

Charity felt her face flame, but she followed Selina’s advice, cowering slightly.

And as she did so, she studied the man in return.

He was pale, fussy looking, and unremarkable.

Perhaps thirty or thirty five, but his thinning brown hair combed flat against his skull made him look older than his face suggested.

The only interesting thing about him was a pointed chin that might have been permanently lifted in petty condescension.

That, and the way his lips pinched peevishly.

Bellrose sneered at her, his eyes cold. “What do you want, Your Grace?”

“I want to know what I might be able to offer you to let us go,” she said softly. “Money? I can get you money. My father can get you more. Connections, perhaps? ”

“I don’t need your pathetic offerings, Your Grace. Money and power are already at hand. All I have to do is ensure that you and the Order’s bitch are fed and watered for a handful of days more.”

Charity watched as the man dismissed her, and then the way his eyes flared contemptuously when he looked Selina’s way again.

He hated the marchioness, and it was clearly more than her standing that was the cause of his resentment.

There had been entitlement in his possessive gaze as it had lingered on Charity’s chest, but her passivity had mollified him.

Selina was off to one side, but she stood with a hip canted, her arms crossed over her chest. And the marchioness’s unbowed stance provoked him into a smouldering anger. Charity marked it well. That was why Selina had told her to be meek—so she would not draw his ire.

“You are better than the people you are working for,” Charity tried again, but Bellrose ignored her.

“You are filthy ,” he scolded the marchioness, raking a look over her.

“I apologise, sir. There is a great deal of coal dust down here, and you have given us no water for washing.”

His nostrils flared as he picked up on Selina’s sarcasm, though her voice had been neutral. And then he slammed the door in Charity’s face. There was click of a padlock closing, and then the sound of boots stomping away, up the stairs.

“Well,” the marchioness murmured. “You see what we are up against. He is not much to look at, but he has a strength in his violence.”

“He seems to despise you.”

“He does, rather. I tried to prevent his appointment, and he knows it. Chandros seems to have promised me to him as a reward for his work, and it raises Bellrose’s passions to envision how he will work the kick from my gallop.

If I present the greater threat to his masculinity, hopefully he will not develop such imaginings about doing the same to you. ”

Charity slid down the wall again, exhausted and nauseated.

“Sleep for a while,” the marchioness ordered her, pushing the straw into a sorry pile with her hands. “We cannot escape anyway while you are fainting and plagued with visions, and we need time to come up with the bones of a plan.”

Shivering, Charity curled up on one side of the pile, wrapping her arms around her, and the marchioness lay behind her, their backs touching. It was far more comforting than Charity expected, and the warmth of Selina pressed against her helped her tumble quickly back into vivid dreaming.