All is Fair (13 page)

The tears stopped and she twisted to look at him. “You’re making a mistake, William. She isn’t capable of being a decent Duchess and you know it. Forgive me, forget her and make
me
your wife. I’ll give you everything you could ever need or want from a woman.”

Will smiled sadly and shook his head. “No, you can’t, Amelia. There wouldn’t be any trust.”

He left the room and closed the door behind him. The matter was almost finished. Once he had a full report from Faulkner there would be only one decision left with regard to the former Alba-Rosas: the manner of Cornelius’ death.

8

Sam sat in the doorway of the forge, cradling the cup of tea in his hands. The birds were singing and the breeze was fresh and cool. He wiped his forehead and looked at the grimy sweat on the back of his hand. The only time he’d ever got this dirty through hard work had been the day he’d helped his grandmother clear out an old shed when he was a boy. She was long dead and he hadn’t thought about her for years. She was just a collection of fragmented impressions now: blue-rinsed hair, the smell of lavender soap and camphor mothballs, and a jar of pear drops that never seemed to run out. She died when he was seven, the same summer he’d cleared out the shed. He could still remember seeing all the things that he’d pulled out for her on the grass in the back garden when they went back to her house after the funeral. He had no idea what had happened to it all. The house was probably sold and other people lived there now, people who had no idea who she had been.

That was the thing about death, he thought as he sipped the tea. It made everything seem so poignant. He couldn’t remember anything now without some reference to it. Leanne was still on his mind for what felt like every minute of the day he wasn’t hammering the iron. He knew, intellectually, that his life had once been normal but it was so hard to recall. The bereavement was like the camphor in his grandmother’s clothes; it perfused everything and the smell just lingered on and on long after the mothballs were gone.

The heat from the forge felt good on his back. It was like sitting between two worlds, one cold, one hot, and on the threshold between the two was his aching body. He’d become aware of muscles in his arms and back and shoulders that he never knew existed. Iron had hired a masseuse to stay as long as Sam needed her and three times a day she worked the knots out and made him groan in the place between pain and relief. Every day he got up, he walked to the forge and he hit metal all day long.

What surprised him was how much he’d taken to it. He’d never been particularly practical and always avoided the DIY jobs around the house until Leanne got impatient enough to hire a bloke to come and do it for them. He wrote code in front of a screen all day and then most evenings she was out and he played games on another screen. He hadn’t looked at a computer or a TV since the funeral. Nothing seemed as real now as standing over the anvil, beating the shit out of lumps of iron.

He finished the tea and set the mug down. He stood and stretched, worked a crick out of his right shoulder and decided that once the piece he was working on was finished, he’d open the letter Leanne had left him.

Cathy took her seat in the carriage as Will spoke to the footmen. It reminded her of when they’d been newly married; she was dressed far more extravagantly than she’d ever choose for herself and feeling sick with nerves. Will didn’t seem nervous on the outside, but he was more withdrawn than usual. She’d hardly seen him in the week since he gave her the library and it felt like the little moments of closeness they’d had were distant memories. But she was used to feeling awkward. In fact, it was comforting and the less at ease with each other they were, the less likely the chance of pregnancy.

“Would you like me to ride in the carriage with you, your Grace?” Carter asked him. Cathy sighed. Carter was a nice enough man, from what she could tell, but Will still hadn’t dismissed him even though he knew Thorn couldn’t attack her again.

“Take the place of the second footman,” Will replied and Carter obeyed. The carriage rocked when he climbed onto the back.

Sophia came running out of the front door calling Will’s name for a last-minute goodbye. As he embraced her, Cathy ran through her mental checklist: arrive, smile, say nothing stupid, swear oath to the city, survive the first Court, don’t trip over anything and avoid the food. “I can do this,” she whispered to herself. “I can do this.” She groaned. Lucy’s advice wasn’t working. Perhaps positive self-affirmations were for Californians only. Perhaps the sarcasm and perpetual doubt wired into her British brain had made her immune to such tricks.

Will opened the door and climbed in, laying his top hat on the seat next to him. He was dressed in a rather austere Victorian-style morning suit with a deep blue cravat and waistcoat embroidered with subtle fleur-de-lys. It was the same colour as the trim on her dress, also in the late Victorian style and high-necked to cover the scar.

There was no more pain, thanks to some salve sent by Dame Iris. It was an expensive gift, the nurse had told her, and, whilst Cathy didn’t want to accept it, she knew the Dame would be informed of her recovery. The note sent with it had said Dame Iris was delighted to receive the invitation to the first Court of William’s Dukedom and hoped the salve would make the evening easier for her. It hadn’t fooled Cathy; no doubt there was another agenda at play, as there always was with Dame Iris.

Will knocked on the roof of the carriage and they pulled off. Cathy waved to Sophia, who was sitting on her uncle’s shoulders and waving a lace handkerchief. Cathy hadn’t told anyone that every time she looked at Sophia she saw the thorns about her neck and felt the pain in her hands again. It wouldn’t make the memories fade any faster.

“We’re not going directly to the Tower,” Will said. “Don’t worry, we’re just taking a more circuitous route.”

“Are you worried about another attack?”

“I discussed it with Carter. It’s best to be unpredictable.” He looked at her properly for the first time. “I like your gown. How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” she replied, resisting the temptation to make a comment about what he’d said to her before: “If you’re well enough to gallivant around London causing chaos, you’re well enough to be Duchess.”

For a few minutes they sat in silence. She wanted to tell him about Bennet, but merely taking a breath to start made her cough. The curse was too strong. After a brief concerned look, Will stared out of the window into the mists, his mind evidently far away from the carriage. “Are you still angry?” she asked. “About the Animation Charm?”

It took him a moment to look at her with any focus. “What?”

“Because, like I said, I’m sorry. I should have done something more subtle.”

“It’s behind us now.”

He’d been furious but it wasn’t anything like her father’s rage. Where her father rattled like a pot filled with boiling water before blowing up and beating her, Will just got colder and asked piercing rhetorical questions to make her feel like a total idiot. He accepted that both she and Carter had had to do as the Arbiter had asked but he still made the point that she could have chosen something that wouldn’t have caused a viral YouTube hit. And he was right, she hadn’t been thinking like an Iris. She hadn’t considered the family and the impact it could have on their reputation. She’d had the feeling there was a lot more on his mind than he’d said but she hadn’t wanted to draw it out any longer. She’d learned from her father that it was best to admit fault and apologise to make the storm pass as quickly as possible.

She didn’t actually regret any of it, but she had to get him on side if she was going to achieve any real change in her new role. Will was looking out of the window again. He was so quiet. “Are you nervous?” she asked and he shook his head.

“I don’t get nervous about things like this,” he replied. “Everyone knows what they’re supposed to do and when.”

“But what about after the ceremony?”

“What about it?”

“Well… that’s not scripted.”

It was one of the many, many things that terrified her about the evening ahead. Small talk was bad enough but small talk with absolutely everyone watching and paying attention? She couldn’t imagine a social situation harder than that. She started to shake and clasped her gloved hands tight on her lap. It all seemed too soon. Once Will had decided she was ready to be sworn in, the huge social machine had gone into motion. Poor Tom had only just moved to the city and had had less than a week to come to terms with the new position. He’d still looked pale when she saw him that morning to go over the last details of the ceremony.

“You’re more capable than you think,” Will said. “Remember, you’re the Duchess. You don’t have to seek their approval. They should be seeking yours.”

“I’m only Duchess because I’m married to you, not because I’m better than them.”

“Irrelevant,” Will replied.

She wanted to bite her nails but they were trapped under silk fingertips. “What if someone says something about the new venue?”

“What are you worried they’ll say?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I think Tom had a point.”

“Your brother’s an academic, he sees things differently.”

“No, I think he was talking sense. The Tower was built to crush the rowdy Londoners and lots of people know that.”

“Somerset House was built to run an Empire that only exists in the Nether now,” Will replied. “It reminds everyone of what we’ve lost in Mundanus. Everywhere has a history. And the White Tower is perfect for us. Lord Iris himself made its reflection in the Nether and it was the first property in Londinium. The Rosas never used it because of its Iris roots but we can feel safer there than in any building they commissioned.”

“Oh, come on.” Cathy wasn’t willing to be fobbed off. “I’m not stupid, Will. Your ancestor – your namesake – had that Tower built for a specific reason. It’s a statement.”

“Is that a problem?”

“Is it really the kind of statement you want to make? ‘The Iris family will crush any resistance just like the good old Normans did’ is a bit… I don’t know… brutal, isn’t it?”

“A strong statement is the best way to begin a new reign.”

“You don’t have to distance yourself from Bartholomew this much, though.” The brief creasing between his eyebrows showed her she’d struck a nerve. “It wasn’t your fault. If you’d known what that bastard Cornelius did, you never would have duelled Bartholomew. You only acted on the information you had at the time. You thought you were doing the right thing.”

“Did I?”

She found it hard to remember the warmth she’d seen in him. When he told her what the Whites had done, he’d shaken with rage, and he hadn’t been anything but tense since then.

“Will,” she said softly, leaning across the gap to take his hands, “why don’t we tell Margritte what happened? She has a right to know and you need to be free of this guilt. His name should be cleared.”

“We’ve been through this,” he said but he didn’t push her away. “If anyone else finds out what happened they could argue I have no right to the throne.”

“But it doesn’t change the fact you won the duel and that’s why you have the throne, not because of what you thought he did.”

“It changes the reason why I challenged him and then I’d be known as the fool who’s easy to trick. And not only me; Lord Iris would be seen as fallible too and that is simply unacceptable. He wants me to rule here and that’s what I must do. He didn’t want me to just take the throne, Cathy, he wants me to keep it.” He squeezed her hands. “Don’t tell anyone. Swear it to me.”

“I just don’t think that–”

“Swear it!”

She saw the fear in his eyes and felt the desperation in his touch. The guilt was chewing him up inside. It wasn’t the time to talk about Bartholomew’s honour. “I won’t tell anyone,” she said, but there was no relief in his eyes. “You can trust me, Will.”

“Can I?”

She knew that feeling. She’d tasted that fear, that need to have someone on her side and how bitter it was to be alone. A thousand times in her childhood she’d looked for someone who’d stop her father’s violence but there was no one willing to help her. Tom was just as frightened of him, and her mother and sister didn’t care. She knew the loneliness of struggling to find a way out, not being able to tell a soul of her plans and the sheer terror of seeing them through. He didn’t want to be Duke, she could see that, no matter how hard he tried to look like he was born into the role. He was only avoiding Lord Iris’ wrath, as they all were. The system held him as tightly as it held her and she didn’t want him to feel that he was just as alone as she had felt.

“Will, I want to tell you something but I don’t want you to freak out or anything until I’ve finished, all right?”

He gave a single nod, still holding her hands as tightly as she held his.

“I was planning to leave you. I was trying to find a way back to Mundanus with enough protections so that Iris couldn’t find me. I managed to hide from Poppy before, for a couple of years before the engagement was announced. That’s why everything was so tense at the first ball in Aquae Sulis; my family only just managed to get me back before you came home. I wanted to do it again. That’s why I was so angry with you for wanting to marry sooner. But I’m not going to try to run away again.”

He felt like he was really there with her for the first time since they left the house, staring deep into her eyes as if searching for something. “Why not?”

“Because I want to change Society rather than run away from it. And I’ve been thinking about being Duchess and it scares the living shit out of me and I’d rather go and live with my parents again than have to be on show in the Court but I’ve started to think this might be a chance to change things.”

“What things?”

“How women are treated, for a start. Look, in Mundanus everything changed in the last hundred years or so because of external factors like the world wars and the industrial revolution and all kinds of other stuff. But in the Nether there aren’t the same pressures. It’s a closed system that endlessly propagates itself, do you see? People aren’t supposed to live for hundreds of years and the way they think isn’t supposed to dominate for as long as it does here. It’s a stagnant pond, so we have to change it from within. We could do that. Together.”