A Matter Of Delicacy

The Heartbreak

     The door to Sarah's room was ajar, and I slipped through without making a sound.
     She stood by the window, peering out intently, looking for something I couldn't see.
     My heart was so loud in my chest it was a wonder she didn't hear it.
     I edged closer to her desk, strewn with letters and calling cards. Each one was marked with her elegant cursive and florid signature. There was one, addressed to the steward of the Devonshire estate, that sat on the silver tray, waiting to be posted.
     Sarah was still hidden behind the bunched curtains, and the rugs on the floor were so thick I could slip over to the desk without making a sound. Thank God for Caroline and her opulent taste in interior furnishings.
     The letter was thick, and sealed with a coin of pale pink wax, the Devonshire Seal pressed in.
Please no, I begged. Please be mistaken. Please have just misread the signs, please make me blind, or stupid, or paranoid. Please make this another example, in a long line of examples, of me being wrong.
But I wasn't blind. And I wasn't stupid, or paranoid. And I knew, even before I compared the Seal on the letter with that on the contract still clutched in my hand, that I wasn't wrong.
     The markings on either side of the coat of arms. Those deliberate scratches on the seal trailed around the edge with delicate detail and feminine lines.
     They were roses.
     "My personal emblem," she'd told me once.
     And they matched perfectly.
     It had never been the Duke of Devonshire.
     It had been the Duchess.
     My heart broke.
     'Kate?' I startled. Sarah had moved away from the window and spotted me. She looked relieved. Dammit, she looked happy to see me. 'Are you alright? You're soaked, what's happened? Where's the Princess?'
     I couldn't form a single word. I could just stare at her, at my friend.
     So I was silent.
     Sarah frowned and stepped forward, her hand stretched out to me. I stepped back, and her eyes dropped to the contract in my hand.
     She stared for a moment, lips slightly parted. Then she looked up, her eyes met mine – and I knew everything.
     She ran, picking up her skirts and hurling herself towards the door.
     But I was faster than she was, vaulting over a small sofa and slamming the door closed before she could get to it. I placed myself firmly between it and her.
     My breath was hitched, 'tell me the truth, Sarah.'
     She leapt back, pressing herself against the back of the sofa, and casting around wildly for another way out.
     'You hired Beresford and Paulette didn't you?' I brandished the contract in her face. 'You hired them to kill Caroline. You did.'
     She grimaced, her teeth bared and eyes fearful.
     'And that's how they knew I wasn't dead, wasn't it? Paulette told me my "little friend" wasn't so friendly. I thought it was someone else at first, but you were there when I got back that night. You knew they'd failed and told them as much.'
     'Please Kate, I don't know what you're talking about,' she whimpered. 'We should call for a doctor, I think you might have concussion, or been taken ill with a fever.'
     So she was trying that line, was she? It was weak at best, insulting at worst. I stalked over, hot, hurt, fury building in the pit of my stomach. 'And that's how they knew where we were when they attacked us. At Rothwell House. You told them where we were going, and that they should target my knee.' I let out an angry sob and held her gaze, 'you set us up to be killed.'
     'It was Lynton,' her eyes darted around. 'He organised the whole thing and made me keep his secret. I was so scared of him, Kate. I was so worried he'd hurt me if I –'
     'No!' I slammed the contract down on the table and she flinched. 'You were the one who didn't want me to follow Beresford outside at Buckingham House. And afterwards, you were so panicked, so desperate to know what I'd seen. I though you were just worried for your husband, but it was self-preservation, wasn't it? You were just trying to work out if I knew it was you.'
     She was silent, her eyes wide and flitting, every body part poised to run.
     I breathed deep, running a shaking hand over my face. This couldn't be happened. How had she snuck under my nose all this time? But now I knew – so many things were slotting into place.
     'My god,' I stared, not quite recognising her. 'That's why they went to Carlton House after Vauxhall. You said you'd been there with Lynton. They weren't reporting to the Prince – they were reporting to you.'
     It was beautifully elegant in a way – and God did it smash me to pieces.
     'Don't get all starry-eyed,' her voice was cold and steady, not betraying one inch of the nerves she'd played on. 'Prinny's no saint.'
     'You tried to have her killed, Sarah! Caroline! Your future Queen!'
     'Oh because she's so wonderful!' Her face transformed into a mask of twisted fury. 'Because she's such a beacon of perfection!'
     I was stunned.
     She snapped her mouth shut and breathed deeply, nostrils flaring. 'Do you know how old I was when I married Lynton? Seventeen. I was a child and they packed me off to marry a man four times my age. And you know, I was pleased. I was excited. I prepared myself and researched and learnt everything I could so that I would be the best Duchess of Devonshire I could possibly be. I was going to make my family proud. I was going to do what I was told to do, be who I was supposed to be. For him, for my family. For England.'
     She curled her lip and it was horrible. 'And she has everything. She could be wonderful if she just did what she was supposed to do. And instead, she has to throw it all in our faces, flinging her toys out of the pram and making an embarrassment of all of us! She has us all rotting out here just for her pride!'
     'So leave! Go to Carlton House with Lynton or back to your estate.' I gripped the dagger in my belt, trying to make sense of it all. 'It's treason, Sarah.'
     She snorted and looked away, 'said by someone with no real knowledge of the nobility - we're above such laws.'
     But her hands were shaking, and her jaw was clenching and unclenching, and her lips were pale.
     'So what,' I was lost. 'Was this about revenge? Or power? What were you trying to get from this?'
     There was a snort of disdainful laughter and she refused to meet my eye. She went to the side table, and this time I let her, watching as she poured herself a glass of wine from the decanter and sipped it delicately.
     Something in the air was irrevocably broken.
     'For centuries,' she said, still facing the ornate wallpaper and nursing her glass, 'the Devonshires have been the primary noble house in the country, second only to the royal family. There is history behind my family, and our role in this country. My mother-in-law, the dowager Duchess, was second only to the Queen. For generations the Devonshire women have subverted every stereotype, every derision, every limitation, that has come our way. We have taken this world made by men, and forced it to bend to us.' She shot me a poisonous look. 'You have your knives, Katherine. We only have our station and our wits.'
     'So it was power,' I said. 'You did all of this for power.'
     'People have done worse.'
     'Those people have been stopped.'
    She scoffed and took another sip of her wine, 'you know, for someone so learned in the ways of politics and the military, you're remarkably naive.'
     'Then enlighten me,' I snarled.
     'I have the support of the Prince Regent,' she snapped back, glaring at me. 'You should have heard how pathetically grateful he was when I shared my plan with him, how incessantly thrilled he was that someone finally had the backbone to do something about the national embarrassment that is Caroline of Brunswick. It was like I'd offered to make him a god. And no matter what you think that useless piece of paper will prove, I am the Duchess of Devonshire. I can do whatever I like and the entire country will bend over backwards to ensure that the precious lineage doesn't get sullied.'
     I let out a rush of breath. So this was it. There was no way I could see to get out of this.
     The Sarah I thought I knew was totally gone.
     'You're wrong, Sarah,' I said, my voice as flat and lifeless as I felt. 'We have everything we need. And considering you're relying on the protection of a notoriously selfish prince, a weak-willed noble at risk of destitution, and the silence of a mercenary who is facing the noose, I wouldn't be so confident.'
     Again that laugh. One that was nothing like the warm giggle I'd grown so fond of. This one was hollow and angry and determined.
     'Grenville and his men are on their way,' I said. 'You'll be confined to the Tower most likely, then there'll be a private tribunal to decide what to do. I suspect banishment to somewhere far away – somewhere where people can just forget about you.'
     Her head dropped, and from behind she looked just like any other mournful young woman in need of comfort and pity.
     'I don't think that will be the case,' she said finally. The wine glass came down with a crack against the side table, snapping off the bowl and leaving a jagged shard of glass fisted in her hand. She rounded on me with fury in her eyes and teeth bared. Brandishing her makeshift weapon she brought it down, slashing with intense concentration towards my face.
     But I'd had enough of people coming at me with weapons. And I had lost any semblance of sympathy for her.
     Just as the shard of glass was inches from my face I stepped to one side, watching as she stumbled into the spot I'd vacated, off balance and startled. I grabbed her wrist and brought it down hard against my knee, sending the glass flying across the room until it impaled in the thick carpet. Yanking her arm back around her I twisted it until it was up by her shoulder blades and she cried out in pain, crippled over and grimacing.
     'You could have had everything you wanted,' I said to her, my voice low and mournful. 'You had all that power, breeding, intelligence and dedication. It was all in the palm of your hands. It was you who put that at risk, Sarah, not Caroline.'
     She snarled, wrenching this way and that until I held her arm tighter and she whimpered under the strain of her shoulder. The sound broke my heart.
     The door in front of us crashed open and Willoughby almost fell into the room, with Grenville, Caroline and two guards hard on his heels. They stopped dead and stared at us, me sodden and heartbroken and Sarah, twisted and furious in my grasp.
     Caroline gasped, eyes flicking between us, desperate for me to – to what? Reassure her?
     Willoughby's eyes met mine, and I nodded minutely.
     'Take her in,' his voice was low and commanding and the guards jumped to it, seizing Sarah and dragging her from the room. Her shrieks of rage echoed down the corridor and bore into my skull.
     I retrieved her glass dagger from the carpet and placed it gently on the table, next to the contract that had plagued us for days.
     'Surely not,' Caroline's voice was soft and betrayed. She looked between me and Willoughby and Grenville and back to me, begging for someone to tell her it was all wrong. 'Surely not Sarah.'
     Willoughby went to the desk and picked up the letter I had compared the contract to. Wordlessly, he handed it to Grenville, and nodded.
     'I believe that may be the case, Your Highness,' Grenville said gently, laying the letter next to the detritus of the day. A letter to a steward, a broken glass, and a contract of assassination, all so incongruous against the pale pinks of the room and the trailing, innocent, roses on the wall.
     'James,' he said. 'Would you make sure the Duchess is taken care of please?'
     Willoughby nodded, glancing back at where I stood, blank-faced and useless, and left, motioning for the guards to follow.
     I sagged against the back of the sofa, every last drop of energy draining away. We were all silent, all stunned, all hurting.
     Just as Grenville excused himself to deal with the aftermath of the day, there was a commotion from down the corridor. Footsteps strode towards us, voices snapping over each other indistinctly, and footmen yelling from outside.
     Caroline and I watched, dumbstruck, as the noise got closer and closer, until it rounded the corner and came to stand in the doorway in front of us.
     'What,' Lady Bruce said, sopping wet and incandescent with rage, 'the hell is going on?'
     It was too much.
     I felt it coming, a huge wave of sparkling, intense pressure building in my chest, but when the tears started falling it took me by surprise all the same. With Sarah being dragged away in chains, Caroline alive and Lady Bruce home safe after sacrificing herself so valiantly, it all overwhelmed me at once. Sliding down on to the plush carpet of Sarah's room, my pistol falling from my fingers, I put my head in my hands and wept.
     Caroline was there in an instant, arms wrapping around me and pulling my head until it rested in the warm crook of her neck – just like I remembered my mother doing. Stroking my damp, blood-stained hair, she shushed my tears and murmured that everything would be alright.
Lady Bruce was there a moment later, kneeling besides me and taking my hand in hers, brushing her thumb over my fingers and supporting us even in her silence.
     We'd been through hell and back today, us three. The Princess, the aristocrat, and the bodyguard, who now sat together soaking wet, bloodied, and broken. We'd made it, and it had all fallen apart in the process. We could only sit there in our ruined clothes, and hold all our fractured parts together.
     I felt everything, and nothing all at once.
     'What's going to happen now?' I whispered, my breath hitched.
     Lady Bruce squeezed my hand reassuringly, and Caroline pressed her face to my hair, the warmth easing away my hurt.
     'Don't worry about that now,' she murmured. 'We'll work it all out tomorrow.'