SHE PRETENDED TO BE A “BOY” FOR 7 MONTHS TO AVOID AN ARRANGED MARRIAGE—UNTIL THE DUKE FOUND OUT…

Chapter 22

Evangeline Cross came back in August, because of course she did.

She arrived at Foster Hall this time, not Hawthorne — which told Josephine everything she needed to know about how far the story had traveled and how carefully Evangeline had been keeping track of it. A carriage in the lane on a hot afternoon, dust on the horses, a driver told to wait.

Josephine was on the south wall with her sleeves rolled, tying up a new shoot off her mother’s rose. She straightened and wiped her hands on her skirt and watched the carriage door open.

Evangeline stepped down in dove-grey muslin and a hat that cost more than the roof. She looked at the half-repaired wall, and the ladders, and the woman standing in the dirt.

“Well,” she said. “You have been busy.”

“Lady Evangeline.”

“Miss Foster.” She said it carefully, testing it, and her mouth curved. “How strange to say it out loud. How respectable it sounds. One would almost forget where the girl came from.”

“What do you want?”

“To talk.” Evangeline walked along the wall, trailing her glove over the new stone. “I have been in the country since June. My father was most insistent — something about needing distance from certain misunderstandings in town. I have had a great deal of time to think about you.” She stopped. “And about that letter.”

Josephine’s hands, dirty as they were, stayed steady at her sides.

“The letter your father told you to burn.”

“He did suggest it.” Evangeline’s smile did not move. “I did not.”

“Then he was not clear with you.”

“He was furious.” Evangeline’s voice sharpened for the first time. “You have no idea what you cost me. My father did not simply tell me to burn a letter — he told me I was lucky he did not send me to my aunt’s in Scotland for the winter. He blamed me for the whole affair. He blamed me for you.” She drew a breath and recovered her composure. “Which is why I have decided that I need not burn anything at all.”

“You cannot use it. Your father has forbidden it, and the Duke has written to the magistrate, and—”

“I cannot use it publicly.” Evangeline turned to face her. “But there is a difference between public and personal, Miss Foster. I still hold a document in your handwriting. I still know your name, and your uncle’s name, and every detail of the four months you spent sleeping in a stable and building fires in a man’s private chamber while he had no idea what you were. And I can still choose, at any moment, to send that document to a person I have selected with great care.”

“Who?”

Evangeline smiled. “A woman in London who writes for a particular publication. She pays for stories of this kind. She pays well.”

Josephine looked at her. And in that moment — standing in the lane of her own house, with the sun on the half-finished wall and her mother’s rose alive behind her — she found that she was not afraid.

“How much does she pay?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“How much does she pay, Lady Evangeline?” Josephine folded her dirty hands in front of her. “I would like you to tell me the number. Because I have spent some time with the estate accounts now, and I have learned that everything has a price, and I would like to know what mine is.”

Evangeline’s eyes narrowed. “You are very cool.”

“I am very tired.” Josephine said it plainly. “I have been afraid of that letter for six months. In March I would have done anything to make it go away. I have thought about it every single day since. And somewhere in the middle of that I rebuilt a roof, and dug out a garden, and learned the names of forty tenants, and stood in front of a magistrate and given evidence about a contract I never signed.” She looked at Evangeline without anger, which was somehow worse. “I have stopped being the woman who can be frightened by one sheet of paper.”

“Everyone can be frightened,” said Evangeline. “It is only a question of the right threat.”

“Then you should have found one.” Josephine picked up her trowel. “Give the letter to whoever you like. Publish it. Send it to my uncle. Tell London. If it is the truth, then I will stand in it — I have had four months of practice in standing in it already. And if it is a scandal, then it will be a scandal about a woman who was sold by her uncle and chose to live in a stable rather than be a horse at auction.” She turned back to the wall. “There is not a thing in that letter I am ashamed of. And I have spent a long time learning that there is not a thing in it I need to hide.”

The lane was very quiet.

Then, from behind her, Evangeline Cross laughed — a real laugh this time, surprised and unwilling.

“You are wasted as a lady,” she said. “You would have made an excellent adversary.”

“I would have made an excellent anything,” said Josephine, tying off the shoot. “That was always the trouble.”

Evangeline stood in the lane for a while longer. Neither woman said much.

Then Evangeline walked back to her carriage, and put her hand on the door.

“For what it is worth,” she said, without turning, “she would not have paid much. Perhaps thirty pounds. My father’s name buys more than my story does, and my father is angry with me.” She got into the carriage. “It is a poor weapon after all.”

“Then burn it,” said Josephine.

Evangeline looked at her through the carriage window.

“I have not decided,” she said. “But I will tell you something, since you have been honest with me. When I came here in February, I wanted the Duke because he was cold, and I thought a cold man would be easy to manage.” The carriage shifted as the driver climbed up. “I was wrong. He is not cold. He is careful. There is a very great difference, and it took a stable boy to show me which.”

She signaled the driver, and the carriage turned in the lane, and was gone.

Josephine stood by the south wall with her trowel in her hand and watched the dust settle, and then she bent down and went back to work on her mother’s rose.