Free A Duchess to Remember by Christina Brooke

afternoon. I was sorry not to receive you.”
    “Oh, that’s quite all right,” said Cecily. “I hobnobbed with the servants instead. I hope you don’t mind, but it’s an age since I heard all the gossip.”
    She’d meant the comment innocently but the freezing of Lavinia’s features showed she had secrets she didn’t wish her staff to pass on. Lord, did she think Cecily wanted to hear the sordid details of Lavinia’s private life? Or that the servants would sully her ears with them even if she did?
    “How kind,” murmured Lavinia.
    Cecily lowered her voice. “My purpose in calling was to ask for my pearls back, Lavinia.” That had been the excuse she’d decided upon, should Lavinia chance to be at home. Her real object had been to prepare for tonight’s escape.
    Lavinia scratched at the back of her hand and bit her lip, sending another glance skittering around the room. “I don’t have them.”
    Lavinia’s tone was so low that Cecily wondered if she’d heard correctly. “I beg your pardon?”
    “I don’t have them, I tell you!” Lavinia clamped a hand around Cecily’s wrist and dragged her to a deserted anteroom. “I lost your confounded pearls!”
    “ Lost them?” Horrified, bewildered, Cecily stared at her cousin’s wife. “But … was the catch loose? Saunders checks it every time I—”
    “Don’t be obtuse!” hissed Lavinia. “I didn’t lose the necklace. I mean, I know where it is. I lost it in play, Cecily! To Lord Percy.”
    Cecily’s stomach clenched. Self-recrimination washed over her in a hot tide. Lavinia was right. She was obtuse. Thickheaded and stupid to have let those pearls out of her sight. Thunderously idiotic to have lent them to Lavinia.
    She bent her formidable glare on her cousin’s wife. “The necklace wasn’t yours to stake. You must get it back.”
    Lavinia’s blue eyes drowned in tears. “I can’t, Cecily! I don’t have any money to repay the debt! Bertram keeps me in penury, I swear it. And if he finds out about this, he will kill me!”
    That might have been a little melodramatic. However, Cecily knew Bertram from old and she was aware of both his fanatical penny-pinching and the thin streak of cruelty that ran through his character. She didn’t waste her breath arguing.
    “What was the sum you lost?” Perhaps Cecily might redeem the debt herself and no one need be the wiser.
    “Th-three thousand pounds.” The words came out on a sob.
    The air expelled from Cecily’s lungs in a whoosh. “Three thousand?” That was too vast a sum for Cecily’s savings to cover.
    “I never thought he’d make me pay him in m-money!” wailed Lavinia.
    “You stupid girl, how else would he want you to pay—? Oh .”
    Cecily flushed at her own gaucherie. No matter how she pretended to be thoroughly sophisticated, she had little experience of real decadence. She could scarcely conceive of using her body to pay a debt. Yet, in Lavinia’s circle of acquaintances, it probably happened all the time. The notion made her queasy.
    She thought furiously but she could come up with no better solution than to ask for help. “Lay it all before Montford. He will aid you. Even Lord Percy wouldn’t stand a chance against him.”
    Lavinia’s eyes grew large. “Oh, but how could I? He will guess that Percy … that I…”
    “Knowing Montford, he is already well aware of that,” said Cecily. “You will have to swallow your pride, Lavinia.”
    “But he would command Davenport to keep a tighter rein on me, and that would be worse than anything .”
    The fear in Lavinia’s blue eyes was not feigned. A shocking notion now occurred to Cecily. She knew of Bertram’s vicious side, but she’d always thought of Bertram and Lavinia as a common enemy and therefore that they acted in concert. She’d never considered that Bertram might mistreat his wife. The intimate, horrible ways a husband might do so flashed before Cecily’s mind.
    She shuddered. She disliked Lavinia. At this