The Portrait of a Duchess by Scarlett Peckham

Cornelia Ludgate tore open the wax seal on a letter and scanned the contents just long enough to see the word regrets.

Her stomach did an unwelcome little curtsy. This was not good news.

Another rejection. The third this week, the tenth this month.

“It’s a no,” she announced briskly, allowing the letter to flutter to the floor with all the other missives offering insincere excuses from her supposed allies in the cause for female rights. Her acquaintances should know she preferred to deal in cheerful, brutal frankness. Just the no’swould do.

Her three best friends, scattered in poses around her painting studio in various draped costumes, groaned.

“Another?” Thaïs said with a dramatic sigh. “I’ve never been rejected so much in all my life.”

Thaïs looked in a mirror, fluffing the red curls that fell down to her ample bottom. “At least not by anyone who’s caught a look at me.”

“Surely,” Seraphina said, adjusting her baby daughter’s head from the latch it held on her breast, “it is only a small matter of time until we receive a yes.”

Cornelia did not wish to be the shatterer of hope, but there was no good news to offer—today, or in the future.

She gave her friends a rueful smile, preferring not to wear her devastation on her face. It was never good to betray such emotions, even with one’s dearest friends.

“This is, in fact, the final no,” she said briskly. “It seems we have run out of people to beg.”

“What cowards,” Cornelia’s aunt, Lady Elinor, murmured.

Cowardwas too kind a word—hypocrite was more apt. Cornelia had expected some of their acquaintances to be reluctant to host her latest artistic exhibition. Wealthy liberals had once clamored for her paintings back when her work had been known for nothing more dangerous than light political subversion and a whiff of the erotic. But after this past autumn, when the four of them had torn apart the country’s papers with their calls for rights for women, the name Cornelia Ludgate no longer meant mere scandal.

Now it meant sedition.

It meant danger.

It meant no.

“I suppose it’s a measure of our success that no one will risk association with your work,” Seraphina mused. “We wanted a war of shock and scandal, and we’ve gotten one. Now we have to fight for what we need.”

And fight they had.

The battle they had waged the previous year to raise money for female rights had been an unqualified success. They were all infamous women, notorious for their liberal politics and wayward reputations. They had decided to use the public’s prurient interest in their wild lives to raise money for their cause: founding an institute devoted to women’s equality and education.

So far, using the sale of Seraphina’s explosive memoirs, they had raised enough money to buy a handsome piece of land in northern London, where they planned to build the Institute for the Equality of Women. The trouble was, it had been exactly enough money for that handsome piece of land. To begin construction of the building they imagined—a place that would serve as a female sanctuary and bastion of progressive thought and education—they needed another round of funds.

But they were, once again, broke.

Which meant it was Cornelia’s turn to rattle the liberal coffers of the country for coins. Her plan was to hold an exhibition of her most shocking portraits yet—a series called The Jezebels that depicted whores and fallen women as madonnas.

If the advance rumors already surrounding the exhibition were any indication, the series would raise enough money for them to finance the first phase of construction of the institute.

But one could not sell paintings if one could not display them. Without a space to show her work, there would be no exhibition, and no more money, and no Institute for the Equality of Women, and the cause of female rights would languish for another hundred years, and all their efforts would be wasted—

But that was desperate thinking. And if there was one quality Cornelia Ludgate did not enjoy applying to herself, it was desperation.

“We’ll find a way,” she said, taking care to evince a calmness she didn’t quite possess. “We just have to think.”

“Of course we will,” Elinor said. “Perhaps we could let a venue.”

“We’d need ample coin for that,” said Thaïs. “And we’re overspent.”

Cornelia repressed the urge to slump down on the floor and put her head between her hands. They had fought so hard to get here, risked so much. To be stymied by the nerves of people who purported to agree with them but were not brave enough to help was so dispiriting. People liked the idea of a fight. They liked to write essays in support of fine principles, to discreetly send banknotes. But they were markedly less courageous when it came to putting themselves directly in the line of fire.

A slow knock sounded at the studio door, startling all of them.

“What’s that?” Thaïs hissed.

“Company,” Seraphina drawled. “Just what we don’t need in our hour of despair.”

“Cornelia?” a man’s voice called tentatively through the closed door.

Cornelia jolted up so sharply her neck cracked.

“It’s Rafe Goodwood,” he added, as though she would not know his voice deep down in her bones.

She gestured at her friends to cover up, smoothed her painting smock, which was sludged with oil from her palette, and rubbed the paint off her hands as best she could.

She felt her friends’ eyes on her as she walked to the door, inhaled deeply, and opened it.

Rafe Goodwood stood in the doorframe, smiling at her.

She inhaled so sharply it hurt her throat.

He was more handsome than he’d been twenty years ago, when she’d last set eyes on him. Back when he’d been the most beautiful person she’d ever seen.

You hadn’t seen many people yet, Cornelia.

“I’m sorry. I’ve surprised you,” he murmured.

His voice was still the sound of oak, an appealing well-worn timbre with a warmth that hit her like a dram of whiskey.

“I didn’t think you were capable of being surprised,” he added.

She rarely was. But to see him, now, standing a foot away from her—

She tried to find the words to greet him, but did not have a single one at her disposal.

Luckily, her aunt stepped forward. “Mr. Goodwood,” she said, smiling. “Or, I should say, Your Grace. Please, come in.”

He walked inside, his shoulder brushing Cornelia’s as he passed. His touch made her shiver. She stepped away as subtly as she could, moving across the room to the windows as Rafe bowed to the ladies in the room.

“Please, call me Rafe,” he said. “Every time I hear ‘Your Grace’ I think of funerals.”

Elinor grimaced, shaking her head. “Ghastly. Seven, I think?”

Rafe clicked his tongue. “I hope I’m not the eighth.”

Rafe had not been heir to the Rosemere dukedom when Cornelia had known him. That had been her cousin Ludo, until Ludo was killed on the way to visit a plantation in Barbados (repellent fellow, Ludo). He’d been succeeded as heir apparent by her third cousin, Peregrine, who promptly died of syphilis. (A pity; she’d liked Peregrine.) Then there’d been a curate from somewhere in Devon, who’d had a heart attack while being visited by God at a revival.

After that, she’d lost track of the parade of doomed heirs. It was too depressing.

She and Rafe would have laughed until they lost air to think that he would inherit the title back when they’d been, so briefly, confidantes. And now here he was.

A bloody duke.

She turned to face him, her composure restored by the irony of his title. “Congratulations on reaching the top of the succession,” she said, for she needed to say something to acknowledge his presence in the room. “And be careful.”

He flashed her a wry grin. “Thank you. I assure you I shall try.”

She bit her lip to avoid returning his smile. It had been ages since they’d last shared a joke. And he’d changed into the kind of person she did not find amusing.

She did not consort with Tories.

A pity he’d become one. She used to like him.

Thaïs stepped forward, allowing the sheet draped over her shoulders to fall down a bit, exposing more than a hint of shapely, creamy, freckled arm.

“Who are you?” she asked Rafe, in a voice that implied whoever he was, she liked the looks of him.

Oh. Cornelia hadn’t introduced him. How ridiculous that she was too busy trying not to stare to perform the basic courtesies she’d been trained in since her birth. She needed to collect herself.

She was a woman of poise and social graces—not a girl who froze in shock at the sight of an old acquaintance and cowered, paint-bespeckled, in the corner of the room.

She snapped up and affected the gracious smile she’d learned in aristocratic drawing rooms as a child—the one that, thankfully, was so ingrained in her manners that she could apply it even now, when she’d rather shrink from Rafe than introduce him.

“Ladies, my apologies, I’m being rude,” she said in her loftiest tone. “Seraphina Arden, Thaïs Magdalene, allow me to present the Duke of Rosemere. My late uncle’s heir.”

Thaïs instantly fell into a low curtsy borne, Cornelia suspected, more of a desire to show off her legendary cleavage than as a gesture of respect.

Sera, who did not believe in curtsying, merely offered the same polite nod she might have afforded a beggar on the street and continued nursing her child.

“A pleasure, ladies,” Rafe said. “I believe I recognize you from Cornelia’s drawings.”

He knew her work? That she was not expecting.

“Oh, have you seen them decried in the Tory papers?” she asked breezily. Her sketches were often reproduced in print as a symbol of dissipation threatening the stability of the country.

“I’ve read all about them,” he said, his tone light. “I’m not a philistine, you know.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you are,” she said.

She stared him down, watching him chew over the meaning of her words. She took care to hold herself erect, to be serene, but it was difficult as her famed composure apparently could not withstand the effect Rafe had on her. She felt as though her bones had turned to tallow, making her wobbly.

“I wondered if we could have a word in private,” Rafe said, smiling at Cornelia as though there was no reason she’d say no.

As though he had not betrayed what had once been their shared beliefs.

As though he had not worked for her uncle and his foul Tory compatriots, breeding their horses, for years.

She knew by way of her wealthier friends that he’d risen to be a figure of some stature in aristocratic circles—a man sought after for his touch with magnificent steeds. The Rafe she’d known before all that—the humble horse trainer who’d lived in a cottage on her uncle’s estate and been a member of the Equalist Society, espousing all sorts of liberal views—had disappeared. No one had heard from him in at least a decade.

The loss of him—the Rafe she’d thought she’d known—had always shaken her. Which was why she’d made a point not to think of him, and did not wish to see him in the tranquil sanctuary of her painting studio.

“His lordship can have more than a word from Cornelia, by the looks of him,” Thaïs whispered to Sera in a much louder voice than was even remotely discreet.

Cornelia straightened, whirled around. “Ladies,” she said, “why don’t you go upstairs to my apartment and have some tea. Rafe and I are overdue for a conversation.”

“Twenty years overdue, in fact,” Rafe murmured, his eyes locked on hers.

When he stared at her like that, she couldn’t move.

“Of course,” Elinor said immediately. “Excuse us.” She gestured for Seraphina and Thaïs to follow her. They pried their eyes away with obvious reluctance and made off toward the door.

Cornelia shut it tightly behind them, trapping herself with Rafe. The room felt clouded over despite the bright light streaming through the windows. The ghost of their relationship shrouded her like a cloak.

“It’s good to see you, Cornelia,” Rafe said.

It was also good to see him—in a purely visual sense. He was a sight that begged for painting. His dark hair was shot through with silver now, which brought out his blue eyes, and his face had more distinction—the sharp jaw and cheekbones of a man at the peak of his maturity. His white skin was tanned to honey gold, as it always had been from his life of riding horses. With his brawny build and thick thighs set off by fitted buckskins, he looked like some sort of equine god.

On any other man, she’d enjoy such a sight.

On Rafe, she could not afford to.

She knew where that path led.

“I can’t say I expected to see you again,” she said.

If he noticed the coldness in her tone, he didn’t acknowledge it. Instead, he grinned, and produced a sheaf of papers from a leather case.

“I come bearing what I think might be welcome news,” he said, smiling in a way that made his eyes a pool of light.

He handed the document to her. “Page thirty-nine.”

She took care not to touch him as she took the pages from his hand.

The document was marked “The Last Will and Testament of Charles Ludgate, Duke of Rosemere”—her uncle. And on page thirty-nine her name was written out in bold.

15.9.2. To my niece, Cornelia Ludgate, I bequeath:

1. The sum of five thousand pounds, contingent upon her being wed and situated in a domestic residence in a state of holy matrimony, verified to the satisfaction of my executor by the time of the settlement of my estate.

She put her hand on the windowsill to avoid falling to her death from shock.

She had not spoken to her uncle in twenty years, when she’d fled his home at the threat of coerced marriage, abandoning her dowry, her worldly possessions, and her good name.

Then, he’d wanted to control her. Now he was still at it, from beneath six feet of dirt.

Good to see you remain a bully, Uncle. Enjoy the fiery gates.

She shook her head at Rafe. “It’s my punishment for defying him, to dangle a carrot that may as well be a stick. He must have known I needed money and could not resist his final chance to torment me.”

Rafe smiled at her. “A pity for him you’re already married.”

Already married.

There it was. The secret that had echoed back and forth between them since he’d walked into the room.

She unfurled her clenched fingers, forcing herself to maintain an unaffected air. “A pity for me that neither myself nor the man I’m married to would admit it in a thousand years.”

He looked directly into her eyes. “Would they not?”

Why was he looking at her like that? So soft and kind.

“You think I’d be so hard-hearted as to deprive you of your inheritance?” he asked quietly.

A pause—a very long pause—fell between them as his meaning hit her like a sack of flour to the chest.

“What are you suggesting?” she asked, her voice rising higher than she liked.

He gave her that easy smile, as though this conversation was not at all odd.

“That we publicly announce you are my duchess.”

Duchess.His duchess.

She dug her thumbnail into her index finger, trying to prod herself into a cool response.

He didn’t wait for her to answer him.

He took her hand in his and gave her that old, seductive, sidelong grin.

“One last marriage of convenience, darling? For old times’ sake?”