The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister 1)

It struck her, that want, like a sharp fist to her solar plexus—painful and paralyzing. She didn’t just want. She hoped. She needed. She dreamed that this time, when she was revealed to the crowd for what she really was, they wouldn’t mob around her and throw stones. This time, they wouldn’t call her a beast or the spawn of the devil. This time, instead of stripping her of everything, someone would love her for who she was.

A yearning like that was too big for the person she had to be.

Damn the Duke of Clermont, for giving her that hope. Damn him for his admonition to look up. Damn him for making her believe.

Her eyes stung. She aimed her fork at her plate and stabbed blindly.

“Minnie,” Eliza said, her eyebrows drawing down in worry, “are you well?”

“I am—” Perfectly well.

She was supposed to say those words. Ask for nothing, admit to no discomfort. That was the way of a lady.

But the lie could not pass her lips. She was full to bursting with emotion. And somehow, instead of murmuring her excuses and leaving the room as she ought to have done, she felt her fork fly from her hand—clear across the dining table, striking the far wall with a metallic clang.

“No,” she said. “No, I am not well.”

“Minnie!”

“I am not well,” she repeated. “I am not well. How could you do this to me?”

Eliza shoved to her feet and took one step toward her. “Minnie, what is the matter?”

“You did this to me,” she repeated, her voice quivering with all those years of unshed tears. “You both did this to me. You made me into this—this—”

She found her spoon next to her plate, and flung that bit of pewter across the room, too.

“—this nothing!” she finished. “And now I am stuck in it and I cannot find my way out.”

Eliza and Caro exchanged a stricken glance.

“I have all of this inside of me—all these thoughts, these wants, these ambitions.”

Caro winced at that last word.

“And they are nothing,” she said. “Nothing, nothing, nothing! Just like me.”

“Oh, Minnie,” Eliza said, gently—as gently as a stable-hand to a rearing horse. “I’m so sorry. I promised your mother I would look after you when she passed away. Had I kept that promise, you would not feel that way now. You would never have known…”

It wasn’t the words that worked, but the tone—cool and calming. She could feel her anger ebbing away in response. In another few minutes she would be placid again, with nothing to show for the evening but a few nicks in the wallpaper where the tines of her fork had left their impression.

But she could still hear his voice. She could still see his eyes, so brilliantly blue, the intensity of his expression. That letter might have been a nothing-gesture for a man who could indulge in such things. But there had been just enough truth in what he said that she could not help but cling to it.

You could have had this, the memory taunted, if only you were someone else.

You could have had him if you were yourself. But you aren’t. You aren’t.

Eliza crossed the distance to her and set her hand on her shoulder. “You should never have known,” she repeated.

And that memory of herself—of that brash confidence, of that youthful excitement—seemed so distant that Minnie could feel herself nodding.

You’re nothing. Nothing doesn’t feel.

Eliza pressed on her shoulder, and Minnie collapsed back into her chair.

“There, there,” her great-aunt whispered. “It’s nothing. It’s nothing.”

“Of course it’s nothing,” Minnie whispered. “That’s all I have ever been.”

After that, there was no holding back the flood of ugly tears. She cried until she’d expunged all the want from her heart—her wistful longing for the past she’d lost, entwined with the future she could not contemplate.

“Maybe,” her great-aunt said, when her tears tailed off, “maybe you need to take some time away from the whole…marriage…thing. Just stay here on the farm. A few weeks. What do you think?”

She didn’t have a few weeks. She had his letter, though—the proof that she needed. She could end the suspicion Stevens held toward her tomorrow.

So why wasn’t she doing it?

Minnie shook her head. “It won’t help,” she said. “It never helps. Nothing helps any longer.”

THE TABLE AT THE HOTEL could have been laid for eight, had it been necessary. Today, it accommodated Robert’s mother at one end, and at the other, separated from her by six feet of polished mahogany, himself. It seemed as if every silver fork that the hotel owned had been laid out for them, and most of their spoons beside. He could have constructed an entire clock tower out of the assembled cutlery.

From across the length of the table, Robert’s mother laid her fork down gently.

This was his mother’s way of sending a signal. She’d changed the date. She’d agreed to the meeting, knowing Sebastian and Oliver were both in town. That meant that this was not just a meal, but a palaver—two independent, faintly hostile parties meeting to come to an agreement on the tariffs between their nations.

As always, she had not a single hair out of place. She dressed in what he supposed was the height of fashion, if he’d bothered to follow it. Her gown was a dark blue, the hems embroidered in a white-and-gold pattern two inches thick. Her waist was slim, but not too tightly laced; a shawl of black lace looped over her shoulders.

She had always seemed imposing, like some faraway castle tower looming on the horizon. Even when she’d visited him when he was a child, she had been distant.

Now, the two yards between them could have been a furlong. In the years since he’d gained his majority, they’d come to a comfortable accommodation. When they were both in town, they had dinner together—no more than once—and talked of nothing. Her charitable work, his work in Parliament. Everything they said at those meals, they might have found out about one another through the society pages. He had no expectations of her and she no longer disappointed him.

But her coming to see him…this was new.

“Well, Clermont.” She set her spoon down as a servant removed her soup bowl. Her gaze was fixed on him—affable, polite, and unexceptionable. “You must know why I have come.”

“No,” Robert said. “I don’t.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You don’t recall? The last time we spoke, you mentioned that you were planning on taking a wife.”