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An hour after the formal banquet concluded, the guests dispersed through the mansion — drifting into smaller clusters in the sitting rooms and hallways, finding their preferred company and settling in for the kind of conversation that only becomes possible once the official programme is out of the way.
The topic, regardless of which group you found yourself in, was the same.
"The two of them seem even more besotted than when they were newlyweds."
At the large table in the center of the third-floor lobby, a cluster of women leaned toward one another with the conspiratorial energy of people sharing something precious.
"His Highness the Grand Duke always seemed so distant before. But tonight? They've completely reversed — *she's* the composed one and *he* can't take his eyes off her."
"That's exactly what I thought! My own Viscount hasn't looked at me that meaningfully in years. I'm desperate to know their secret."
Laughter rippled around the table.
---
Down the hall, in one of the guest rooms near the far end, a considerably less cheerful conversation was taking place.
Camilla had been lying in Henry's arms. Now she sat upright and snapped at the ceiling.
"What an absolute disaster. I'm furious, Henry."
Henry sat up after her, pushing his hair back with the unhurried ease of a man entirely accustomed to her moods. He didn't look alarmed. He never did. He simply drew her in from behind and pressed his lips to her cheek.
"Don't work yourself up, Camilla. I'm here."
She exhaled — a long, jagged breath — and the worst of the tension left her shoulders.
"The problem," she said, "is that you are far too unconcerned about all of this."
"Am I?" He sounded faintly amused. "I wonder what Lobelia would say if she knew about us."
Camilla pulled away slightly and looked at him.
"Why are you bringing up Lobelia?"
Henry's tone remained easy, almost absent.
"She's changed recently. I've noticed it. She isn't as attentive as she used to be — to my family, to me. There's something cooler about her lately. I'm not sure what to make of it."
"Henry."
"Just an observation, Camilla—"
"*Henry.*"
He finally glanced at her. She was staring at him with eyes that had gone very flat.
Camilla had carried a feeling for Henry since they were young — since long before he became this polished, ambitious version of himself. She had loved him as a girl, in the helpless, uncomplicated way of someone who doesn't yet know better. And then her father's declining fortunes had made a match impossible, and she had watched Lobelia — her friend, the daughter of the wealthy Count Bart — step in and take him instead.
That wound had never fully closed.
She had made something of herself in the intervening years: married well enough, become a figure of consequence in Northern society, secured a coveted position at the Grand Duchess's side. And then, from that height, she had finally turned her attention back to Henry — and found, to no great surprise, that the fire between them had not gone out.
Henry was a man who knew which way the wind was blowing. When Lobelia's parents died and she was left with nothing but a title and her own naivety, he had not been difficult to persuade. Their arrangement had formed naturally, almost inevitably. A shared fortune, assembled through the futures market. Parallel divorces. A proper, open life together within three years.
It had been a beautiful plan.
And then Rebecca had ruined it — and now Camilla could no longer supply the intelligence that made Henry's investments so reliable. She could feel the shift in him. The way his attention moved. The way Lobelia's name appeared in his sentences more often than it used to.
"I don't want to hear about her," Camilla said. Her voice had gone quiet in the particular way that meant she was close to the edge. "Not from you. Not here."
"But it's not as though we haven't always talked about—"
"We talked about her when we were *mocking* her!" The quiet snapped. "This is different and you know it!"
Henry exhaled through his nose and turned away.
That was worse, somehow, than an argument would have been.
Camilla looked at his averted profile — the fine, boyish lines of it, the studied attractiveness she had spent years wanting — and felt something cold move through her chest.
"I'll go," she said.
She didn't mean it as an invitation for him to stop her.
He didn't stop her.
She slipped out of the room and pulled the door shut behind her, and then stood in the corridor with her back against the wood and let herself breathe.
"Bastard," she muttered.
She was still standing there — fuming silently, cataloguing her grievances against Henry and Rebecca and the universe in general — when a shadow crossed the floor near her feet.
She looked down. A pair of shoes. Light blue silk.
Her spine went cold.
"...Who's there?"
Slowly, with the feeling of someone approaching the edge of something, she lifted her head.
"Did you enjoy yourself, Camilla?"
The voice was unhurried. Almost pleasant.
"Your... Highness?"
Rebecca was leaning against the opposite wall with her arms folded, watching her with the expression of a naturalist observing an interesting specimen.
*How long has she been standing there? How much did she hear?*
Camilla's mind raced through the possibilities and found none of them comfortable. She forced a smile — or the closest approximation she could manage with her jaw threatening to tremble.
"This wing of the house doesn't see many guests. Are you looking for something? Perhaps you've taken a wrong turn?"
Rebecca's mouth curved.
"No. I've been following you since you slipped away from the banquet hall, actually. I had something I wanted to discuss with you."
"Then you couldn't have—"
"Seen you go into that room with Count Henry Bart?" Rebecca's voice remained conversational. "I did, yes. Everything."
Camilla blinked. Her heart had taken up residence somewhere in her throat.
*Stay calm. Remove the hour hand. You've handled worse than this.*
"Your Highness, I think there may be a misunderstanding." She kept her voice measured and gentle. "Count Bart and I have known each other since childhood — we're simply old friends. Whatever it may have looked like—"
A short, dismissive sound passed Rebecca's lips.
"Camilla. Why do we have to keep doing this?"
"...I beg your pardon?"
"Do you genuinely believe I've been unaware of your relationship with Lord Henry until tonight?"
The warmth in Rebecca's voice did nothing to soften the words. Camilla felt as though the floor had shifted slightly beneath her feet.
"I've known about the two of you for quite some time," Rebecca continued. "Including the fact that you spent this most recent holiday with him — what was it, a tour of the provincial futures exchanges? A honeymoon of sorts."
"That's—"
"And I've been wondering, lately, what your husband would make of all this."
The blood left Camilla's face so quickly she actually felt it go.
"My husband would never take your word for it without evidence," she said, and was embarrassed by how thin her voice sounded.
"Evidence." Rebecca seemed to taste the word. "You think I'd go to your husband without evidence?"
"Well—"
"Camilla. I had someone watching you from the day your letter arrived from Loveyshire."
"Your Highness—" Camilla's composure fractured. "*How could you—*"
Rebecca's pleasant expression vanished.
Her hand shot out and seized Camilla's collar, pulling her close. Camilla's eyes went wide. The distance between their faces was suddenly very small.
"Then why," Rebecca said, her voice very quiet, "did our Countess go to such lengths to humiliate me tonight?"
"That — it was a slip, I swear it, I didn't intend—"
"I'm not interested in what you intended."
Rebecca released her collar — not gently.
"What matters to me is that what you did tonight was *unkind.* And it hurt."
The simple directness of it was more unsettling than any amount of fury would have been. Camilla stood very still.
"I collected that evidence intending to use it as grounds to formally dismiss you," Rebecca said. "I never expected to need it for something like this." She paused. "But now I have options. Whether I use it is entirely up to you."
"...What do you want from me?"
"To begin with? Don't ever come at me the way you did tonight."
Rebecca's gaze was steady and cold.
"Unless you are prepared to lose everything — your marriage, your position, Lord Henry, all of it. Because if you force my hand, I will take every last piece of it from you, and I will do it without losing a moment's sleep."
Camilla could not speak. Her lower jaw had begun to shake.
Rebecca studied her for a moment, and then something that might have been pity — or might have simply been disdain — crossed her face. She reached out and patted Camilla's shoulder, once, in the manner of someone concluding a meeting.
"So. It would be best for everyone if you stopped drawing my attention."
She left without another word. No farewell, no parting glance — simply the sound of her footsteps receding down the corridor, and then silence.
Camilla stood alone in the hallway.
*How did it come to this?* The question moved through her head like a siren. *How did I end up here?*
She turned slowly and looked at the closed door behind her.
Henry had heard the whole thing — the raised voices, certainly — and had not come out. Not once. Not even to check.
She already knew what that meant.
Henry was a man who had whispered eternal devotion to her one night and proposed to Lobelia the very next morning, the moment the Count Bart fortune looked more attractive than her own prospects. She had known that about him from the beginning. She had loved him anyway.
Now, it seemed, she was becoming less useful. And Henry had always known, precisely and instinctively, when to step back from a diminishing investment.
The rage that moved through Camilla then was enormous — directionless at first, casting around for something to fix itself to — and then it found its target with the clarity of a compass needle.
Lobelia.
*That naive, innocent, infuriating face.*
Camilla's fists clenched at her sides.
And Rebecca.
Rebecca, who had taken everything Camilla had carefully built — her influence, her leverage, her plans — and dismantled it with the calm efficiency of someone who had been waiting for precisely the right moment.
Camilla's jaw tightened until it ached.
She had never, in her life, wanted to destroy someone as badly as she wanted to destroy Grand Duchess Rebecca Twins.
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