Page 134 of The Duke Undone

“Do you know why else I can’t dissolve the Sisterhood?”

Kate swept off her hat and fanned herself with it, waiting for Lucy’s reply. But Lucy could only blink at her.

“Because we’re a proper Circle now. As soon as I heard we were all exhibiting, I marched right up to Gwen and laid it all out, gave her no quarter. You need us, and we need you, I told her, and she agreed! We must write a better manifesto. That’s the first order of business. Something to goad the critics. Gwen will help enormously, don’t you think? Where is she?”

She scanned the dense crowd.

“I told her I was going to look for you and that she should come find us. Oh well. She probably ran off to hide in the library. I suppose that’s fine. I’ll be the radical. You’ll be the romantic. And she’ll be the obscure. We’ll make it work for us. Still, I wish I could figure her out.”

Lucy shrugged, as if in agreement, although she’d already figured out two things. One, that Gwen had lost at least some portion of her hearing, and two, that Gwen wasn’t yet ready to share that fact.

“Give her time,” she said, suddenly pensive; then she scowled at Kate. “And what’s this about the romantic and the obscure? Each Sister determines her own character, thank you very much.”

The romantic. Indeed. But, actually, maybe . . . it fit. Heavens above, all of her passions had arrived.

She knocked Kate’s hat out of her hands, unable to restrain herself. She felt as giddy as a child, laughing as Kate tried to catch the hat and batted it instead, so it bounced off of a passing larva.

She couldn’t focus on Gwen, on the Sisterhood, on anything but the electrified field immediately surrounding her body, that strange glow of realized potential, of the future arriving.

She was going to show in the Summer Exhibition, show her very best, her most daring and obsessive picture, painted at the very limit of her technique.

Anthony hadn’t destroyed it. He’d preserved it, framed it, submitted it on her behalf. He’d trusted her talent. He’d tried, since she’d known him, to do the right thing, and failed, and tried again. He’d kept his promises.

He’d asked her to marry him, and she hadn’t said yes.

“Now where are you going?” called Kate, rising, slapping her hat against her trousers to knock the dust off.

But Lucy had hiked her skirts to speed her pace and she was already turning onto Piccadilly.

• • •

Anthony was standing in the back garden, pausing to drop his watch back into his pocket, when an unexpected sight met his eyes: Lucy, running full tilt down the camellia walk.

She threw down her bag, then bent over sharply, one hand on her hip, the other arm under her ribs. It took a moment for her to unfold. Her hair was a windblown halo. And yet, the wind didn’t gust. The day was exceedingly still.

How far had she run at that speed to produce such disorder?

Anthony took a step closer. “Is there a fire?”

Her face was flushed with color, cheeks rosy beneath the constellations of freckles. Sweaty curls stuck to her temples. Her lilac dress was hopelessly rumpled. She looked ravishing.

“You could have come to the front door,” he said. “I have a new butler, and the footmen, as you know, like to race.”

“I’m used to coming this way,” she panted. “My feet carried me. What—what are you doing here?”

She straightened up, the slightest shadow of apprehension dimming her expression.

“I was in the stables mixing ale into an elderly thoroughbred’s water trough.” He grinned. “He needs the fortification.” The only alcohol in the back garden these days went to Snap. “I have a meeting soon, though, with Mr. Purinton, my solicitor.” Finally, he’d hired a lawyer of his own. A young man with level brows, right-minded and methodical, who, best of all, had never met his father or Robert Yardley. “He lodged the caveat against the validity of both my father’s codicils in the court. He wants to discuss news—good news, I believe—about the proceedings.”

She looked a question. He felt as though he’d never seen her eyes before. Lit by the sun, they were the color of some fantastical liquor, a mixture of malted lilies, bulrushes, and gorse.

“You found it, then. The alternate will.” She hesitated. “The one in which your father made an heir of a hunting dog.”

“Humphreys found it,” he said. “Stuffed in the ottoman. Not a valid document, of course. Signed without witnesses. But dated, and clearly demonstrating that my father suffered delusions at the time he amended his legal will.”

It hadn’t been a pleasant read, that single sheet of paper, the angular script going jagged in numerous places, words crossed out, sentences begun and abandoned. Their father referred to Effie only once, as my daughter who died shortly after my son and heir, and to Anthony twice, once as the young idiot and once as that young idiot and coward.

He drew strength from Lucy’s brilliant eyes, and he continued.