The soprano launched into a Handel aria. Wrexham did not hear a note.
During the interval, he made his way through the crowd. Conversations faltered as he passed. Fans fluttered, eyebrows rose. He had not spoken publicly about Catherine, but the rumors had done their work. The ton knew he had been seen outside the Bloomsbury house. They knew he had dismissed his mistress.
He stopped before Catherine's chair. Mr. Thorne stiffened, but Catherine rose with unhurried composure.
"Your grace." Her tone was neutral, a masterpiece of social armor.
"I would be honored," he said, loud enough for the nearest guests to hear, "if you would dance with me."
A small circle of silence spread outward. Lady Carstairs' musicale had no dancing floor. The next set would not begin for an hour, but the request was not about the dance. Everyone understood that. Catherine studied him for a long moment. He saw the calculation behind her eyes. If she refused, she would seem petty. If she accepted, she would grant him a measure of legitimacy. She had always been a better strategist than he.
"I would be glad to," she said.
He led her to the space cleared for the musicians' rearrangement, and they took their places in a country dance that was forming. The other couples gave them room, whispers buzzing like bees around a hive. Wrexham barely noticed them. He was acutely aware of the warmth of her hand in his, the faint scent of lavender from her hair, the way her eyes refused to settle on his face.
"I have uncovered the truth," he said as they crossed hands. "The maid was paid, the letter was forged, I have a confession in writing."
Her step faltered, but she recovered smoothly. "Who?"
"My brother. Reginald envied the title. He wanted me isolated, childless, so that he might one day inherit. He is dead now, a fever 3 years ago, but the proof remains. I will publish it if you wish."
The music swirled around them. Catherine's fingers tightened on his for a fraction of a second before releasing. "This is what you meant to tell me," she murmured.
"It is what I should have told you 5 years ago, had I been less of a fool."
They completed the figure in silence. When the dance ended, he bowed over her hand and held it a moment too long. "Catherine," he said, low enough that only she could hear, "let me come home."
She withdrew her hand. Her eyes were bright, but her mouth remained firm. "There is no home to come to, Your Grace. There is only a house in Bloomsbury and two children who do not know your face. The proof is welcome, but it does not erase what was done."
She turned and walked back to Mr. Thorne, who had watched the entire exchange with a furrow between his brows. Wrexham stood alone on the dance floor, the stares of the ton prickling his skin. He had never felt more exposed, and he had never cared less.
Behind him, near a potted palm, Lady Honoria's voice rose in a theatrical whisper meant to carry. "The twins are footman's brats, you know. The old scandal was true enough. He is simply too proud to admit his wife cuckolded him."
A gasp rippled outward. Catherine, halfway to her seat, stopped walking. Her back went rigid. Then, without turning, without acknowledging the venom that had been flung, she continued toward Mr. Thorne, collected her shawl, and left the room with the quiet dignity of a queen quitting a hostile court. Wrexham watched her go, and the rage that filled him was not the cold, controlled anger of a duke. It was something far more primitive. He turned his gaze toward Honoria, and whatever she saw in his face made her smile falter and die.
Part five.
Three days of relentless investigation yielded the final thread. The maid who had testified against Catherine, a girl named Bessie Cole, had vanished shortly after the scandal broke. Wrexham's men traced her to a lodging house in Southwark, where she had been living under an assumed name on a modest quarterly payment that originated from a solicitor's office once employed by Reginald Ashby.
Confronted with the evidence of her perjury and the threat of prison, Bessie broke. She dictated a confession, signed it with a shaking hand, and admitted that Reginald had paid her to claim she had seen a man leaving Catherine's chambers during a house party. The letter that had sealed Catherine's fate, a note to a supposed lover, had been forged by Reginald himself, a man clever with pen and ink.
Wrexham carried the confession to Bloomsbury in a leather folio. Catherine received him in the parlor, her aunt absent for once. She read the pages slowly, her face unreadable. When she finished, she laid them on the table and sat without speaking for a full minute.
"He was your brother," she said at last, "your own blood."
"I know." He had spent the night since the discovery wrestling with that fact. Reginald had been his junior by three years, a boy he had taught to ride, a young man he had trusted to manage his affairs. The betrayal was an abscess he would carry for the rest of his life.
"I never understood why you would not listen," Catherine said, and now her voice cracked, the first fracture he had witnessed in her composure. "I stood in your study and swore on my mother's grave that I was innocent, and you looked at me as though I were a stranger. You did not even hesitate."
He had no defense. He offered none.
"You may see them," she said, rising. "The children, they are in the garden."
He followed her through a narrow corridor and out into a walled garden barely larger than a drawing-room rug. The twins were crouched beside a flower bed, the boy digging with a small trowel, while the girl arranged daisies in a pattern. They looked up at the sound of footsteps.