Chapter 4: The Duchess's Bargain
The clock in the hall ticked through the floorboards, a taunting metronome counting down the hours until Thursday. Kate moved through them like a ghost. She praised Edwina’s new watercolor with a hollow enthusiasm. She nodded at her stepmother’s plans for the wedding breakfast. She ate without tasting, spoke without thinking, her mind a trapped bird beating against the cage of Daphne’s command.
Sturdy desk.
The words echoed, grotesque and specific. They painted a picture Kate couldn’t scrub from her mind.
When Thursday arrived, she dressed with mechanical precision. A simple afternoon gown. No unnecessary adornments. Her hair was pulled back severe and tight. She looked like a woman going to her own execution, which, in a way, she was.
Hastings House loomed, a fortress of pale stone. The butler showed her in with polite indifference, leading her through corridors that spoke of muted, masculine wealth. Trophies from hunts. Landscapes in heavy frames. The air smelled of lemon polish and, underneath, something darker: aged paper, tobacco, power.
The door to the Duke’s study was ajar. Kate’s step faltered. From within, she heard the soft scratch of a pen.
She pushed the door open.
Daphne was not at the desk. She was seated in a high-backed leather chair beside it, one leg crossed elegantly over the other, a ledger open on her lap. She looked up, a faint smile on her lips. “You’re punctual. I appreciate that.”
The room was exactly as Kate had imagined, yet worse. The desk was a behemoth of carved oak, its surface a vast, empty plain of polished wood, save for a silver inkwell and a crystal decanter half-full of amber liquid. Bookshelves reached to the ceiling. A fire crackled low in the grate, despite the mild day, casting a hellish glow on the leather furniture.
“Sit,” Daphne said, nodding to a smaller chair facing the desk.
Kate remained standing just inside the door. “Why am I here?”
Daphne closed the ledger with a soft thud and set it aside. She uncrossed her legs, then slowly, deliberately, spread them wide beneath the fall of her skirts. The movement was vulgar, shockingly intimate in the solemn room. “You know why. Come here.”
“No.” The word was a reflex, a last grasp at a cliff edge.
Daphne’s smile didn’t fade; it hardened. “Do you think I’m playing a game, Kate? That I summoned you here to take tea and discuss the weather?” She leaned forward, her voice dropping, each word a drop of ice. “Your sister is at Gunter’s this very moment, is she not? Licking an ice, dreaming of her viscount. One word from me, whispered in the right ear, and that dream curdles into the scandal of the season. She’ll be pitied, then shunned. You’ll both be ruined. And Anthony…” She sighed, as if discussing a minor inconvenience. “He’ll marry her anyway, out of that tiresome honor. And he’ll hate you both for it every day for the rest of his life. Is that what you want?”
Every scenario was a knife twist. Kate felt the ground beneath her crumble. There was no right path, only varying depths of wrong.
“What do you want from me?” Kate whispered, her defiance seeping away, leaving only a cold, heavy dread.
“Right now?” Daphne said, her eyes locking on Kate’s. “I want you on your knees. Here.” She tapped the floor between her spread legs.
Shame, hot and liquid, flooded Kate’s veins. Her body felt both heavy and weightless. She took one step, then another, the Persian rug muffling her footsteps. She stopped a foot away, the scent of Daphne’s perfume—a floral, expensive thing—clashing with the room’s musk.
“All the way down,” Daphne instructed, her voice smooth as the whiskey in the decanter.
Kate’s knees hit the thick rug. The position was one of utter submission, her face level with Daphne’s lap. She kept her eyes fixed on the intricate pattern of the carpet, the wool rough under her palms.
“Look at me.”
She forced her gaze upward. Daphne was watching her with an unnerving blend of scrutiny and boredom. “You think this is about pleasure for me,” Daphne said, her hand coming to rest on Kate’s head, not caressing, but possessing. Her fingers threaded through the tight coils of Kate’s hair, gripping just enough to be felt. “It’s not. It’s about balance. Anthony took something that wasn’t his to take. He created a debt. And now, you’re the payment.”
Her other hand gathered her skirts, lifting the hem slowly. Kate saw the delicate lace of her drawers, the pale skin of her thighs above her stockings.
“My brother believes he’s the only force of nature in a room,” Daphne murmured, her gaze distant for a moment. “He fucks with the subtlety of a thunderstorm. All sound and fury.” Her eyes sharpened, returning to Kate. “This is different. This is quiet. This is mine.”
The hand in Kate’s hair applied pressure, guiding her forward. “You know what to do,” Daphne said, her voice devoid of warmth. “Unless you need me to spell it out for you, like the maid you’re pretending not to be.”
A sharp, ugly thrill shot through Kate at the insult, mingling with the dread. She closed her eyes, but the scent—perfume, starched cotton, a faint, clean musk—was overwhelming. She leaned in, her lips meeting the fine linen. Daphne let out a soft, satisfied sigh.
It was nothing like the frantic, messy heat of the music room. This was calculated. A performance. Kate’s movements were awkward at first, her mind screaming in revolt even as her body, traitorously, began to map the territory. Daphne’s breathing remained even, controlled. She gave quiet, precise directives. “Slower.” “Use your tongue.” “Don’t be timid. You weren’t timid with him.”
Each mention of Anthony was a prod, a reminder of the chain linking them. Kate’s shame began to warp, twisting into something darker, more complex. There was a power in this degradation, a terrible, inverted agency. She was here to save Edwina. To save Anthony from himself. The nobility of the cause curdled into a bitter fuel.
Daphne’s composure finally fractured. A sharp gasp escaped her, her thighs tightening around Kate’s head. Her hand fisted in Kate’s hair, holding her in place as she rode out the wave of her release, silent except for the ragged pull of air into her lungs.
When she finally went slack, she pushed Kate back, not roughly, but with finality. Kate collapsed back onto her heels, her mouth tasting of salt and linen, her mind a roaring static. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand, unable to look up.
Daphne adjusted her skirts, standing smoothly. She walked to the decanter, poured a finger of whiskey into a glass, and downed it. She didn’t offer any to Kate.
“Get up,” she said, her back turned.
Kate stood, her legs trembling. She felt hollowed out, used.
Daphne turned, leaning against the desk, the very picture of a lady taking a moment’s rest in her husband’s study. “He won’t save you, you know,” she said conversationally. “Anthony. If he knew about this, he’d be furious, of course. At me, for a while. But then he’d be disgusted. With you. With himself. He’d close himself off, shut you out, and bury himself in the one thing he knows: his duty to his family. You’d become a regrettable secret. A stain.”
Kate knew it was the truth. It was the truest thing she’d heard since she entered this room.
“So,” Daphne continued, setting the glass down. “We understand each other. This remains ours. A private arrangement.” She picked up a folded piece of paper from the desk and held it out. “Next week. My box at the opera. A quarter hour before the final act. The corridor outside is very… discreet.”
Kate stared at the paper, a clean, white square in Daphne’s gloved hand. Another appointment. Another transaction.
She took it. The paper felt heavy as stone.
“You may go,” Daphne said, turning to look out the window at the pristine garden. “See yourself out.”
Kate walked from the room, the note clutched in her damp hand. The hallway seemed longer, darker. As she passed a gilded mirror, she caught a glimpse of herself—hair slightly disheveled, eyes wide and haunted, a smudge of something at the corner of her mouth. She wiped it away viciously.
Outside, the sunlight was a physical shock. She stood on the steps of Hastings House, the world carrying on around her—a carriage clattering past, a maid laughing in a nearby square. She unfolded the note. It contained no words, just a time and a date.
She had bought another week of her sister’s dream. Another week of Anthony’s oblivious honor. The cost was tucked in her palm, a silent, ticking bomb. And as she walked away, the ghost of Daphne’s touch still on her skin, a horrible, undeniable thought whispered from the depths of her shame: What happens when the week is up? And worse: a part of her, small and terrifying, was already waiting to find out.