Read Chapter 9: The Dowager's Snuffbox

The carriage lamps of the Marsden townhouse had barely faded from view when Helena found herself once again in silk and gloves, this time for Lady Fanshawe’s musicale. The dowager countess was a relic of the old order, a woman who had outlived three husbands and every scandal attached to them, and whose drawing room was the true gatekeeper of the season. If Lady Aldersgate was the magistrate, Lady Fanshawe was the crown.

Helena had been told the countess adored snuff. That was all. A single, strange passion for a woman of her years, but one that had apparently survived every fashion and every war. People courted her with rare blends, engraved boxes, even the occasional pinch of something smuggled from the East. It was a ludicrous currency, but currency nonetheless.

And Helena had nothing.

She stood at the edge of the crowd, pretending to listen to a soprano with a tremulous vibrato, when she felt him before she saw him. That particular brand of smugness preceded like a weather front.

“Lady Helena,” Julian said, appearing at her elbow with a glass of ratafia he had not been asked to fetch. “You look like a mare being led to the knacker’s yard.”

“And you look like the knacker,” she said, taking the glass anyway. “Have you come to gloat, or is there some other business that requires you to haunt my every engagement?”

“I was invited.” He raised his brows. “Some of us have genuine standing in this city.”

“Standing acquired by lending at exorbitant rates, no doubt.”

Julian’s smile did not waver, but something flickered in his eyes. “Careful, Lady Helena. You might cut yourself on your own wit.”

She turned away, scanning the room for Lady Fanshawe. The dowager was holding court near the fireplace, a tiny wren of a woman in lavender silk, her sharp eyes missing nothing. A footman stood beside her with a silver tray, upon which rested an array of tiny boxes. Helena watched as a nervous young lord approached, bowed, and presented something that glittered. Lady Fanshawe took it, turned it over once, and set it down without comment. The lord retreated, deflated.

“She rejected a diamond-inlaid box,” Helena murmured. “What on earth does she want?”

“Diamond-inlaid is common,” Julian said, too close now. “The countess prefers provenance. A story. Something that has lived.”

Helena shot him a glare. “I did not ask for your commentary.”

“You did not have to. It is freely given.”

The soprano hit a particularly agonizing note, and Helena winced. Julian did not seem affected. He was watching Lady Fanshawe with an intensity that made Helena uneasy, like a man reading a ledger of her habits.

“You are trying to win her favor,” he said. “I can see it in the way you are gripping that glass.”

“I am doing no such thing.”

“You are. And you are failing, because you came empty-handed and she will not remember you by tomorrow.” He paused. “Unless you had something to give.”

Helena said nothing. The silence stretched.

Julian reached into his waistcoat pocket and withdrew a small object, no larger than a matchbox, wrapped in worn leather. He held it out to her.

“What is this?” she asked.

“Open it.”

She did. Inside was a snuffbox of dark tortoiseshell, inlaid with a delicate gold filigree that caught the candlelight. The hinge was worn smooth from decades of use. It was not ostentarian, not showy. It was old. It had lived.

Helena looked up at him. “Whose is this?”

“My mother’s,” Julian said. His voice was even, but there was something careful in it now, a door held slightly ajar. “She carried it for years. She used to say that a snuffbox was the only honest accessory a woman owned, because it held something that would burn.”

Helena turned it over in her palm. The gold was warm. She could imagine a woman’s fingers tracing that filigree, waiting through a season of her own.

“Why would you give this to me?” she asked.

“I am not giving it,” Julian said. “I am lending it. You will present it to Lady Fanshawe as a token from the Ashworth collection, which is not entirely untrue, because my mother purchased it from a silversmith who once worked for your grandfather.”

Helena’s throat tightened. “You had that researched.”

“I had many things researched.”

She should have refused. She should have handed it back and walked away, because this was exactly the kind of obligation she had sworn to avoid. Every favor from Julian Marsden came with a second ledger entry, invisible until presented.

But the countess had just rejected a fourth suitor, and the evening was wearing thin.

“Fine,” Helena said, closing her fist around the box. “But this does not make us even.”

“No,” Julian agreed. “It makes you owe me.”

“I already owed you.”

“Now you owe me more.”

Helena turned to cross the room. The crowd parted as she approached, a tide of silks and whispered names. Lady Fanshawe’s eyes swiveled to her, and Helena felt the weight of that ancient, mercantile gaze.

“Lady Fanshawe,” Helena said, curtsying. “I hope I am not intruding.”

“You are, but I forgive it,” the countess said. Her voice was dry as kindling. “You are Ashworth’s girl, are you not? The one who talks to horses.”

“I prefer to say they talk to me.”

The countess did not smile, but something moved in her eyes. Approval, perhaps. Or curiosity.

“I understand you have a fondness for snuff,” Helena said, and she extended the box, open in her palm. “I came across this piece and thought of you.”

Lady Fanshawe reached for it. Her fingers were thin, knobbed with age, but her grip was steady as she lifted the box and turned it to the light. The gold filigree caught a beam and scattered it across her face.

“This is a lovely piece,” she said. “Old. Where did you get it?”

“It belonged to a woman who believed that a snuffbox was an honest accessory,” Helena said. “Because it held something that would burn.”

The countess’s gaze sharpened. She looked at Helena for a long moment, then down at the box, then back.

“You have more sense than your father,” she said. “That is a compliment.”

Helena almost smiled. Then her glove caught on the clasp of her reticule—she did not know how, but she felt the fabric snag and pull, and her arm jerked, and the snuffbox slipped from her fingers.

It hit the marble floor with a crack that silenced the soprano for a single, terrible moment.

Helena scrambled to retrieve it, hands moving too fast. The box had opened in the fall, spilling a cloud of dark snuff across the white stone. She gathered the box, the filigree unharmed, but the lid hung crooked on its hinge, and the snuff—the snuff was gone, scattered into the cracks.

The drawing room held its breath.

Lady Fanshawe looked down at the rue on the floor, then up at Helena, and her expression was unreadable. Helena’s face burned. She had ruined it. She had ruined the only good thing she had, and now—

A hand closed over hers. Julian had crossed the room without her noticing, and he was crouched beside her, his fingers pressing hers around the broken box.

“Careful,” he murmured, so low only she could hear. “You are making a spectacle.”

“Let go of me,” she hissed.

“Not yet.” He was still holding her hand, and his eyes were dark, and his mouth was very near her ear. “I know you lied about Eastman. I have known since the moment you told Lady Aldersgate. And if you want me to keep that secret, you will smile at the countess, apologize for the mess, and follow my lead until the night is over.”

Helena’s blood turned to ice. “You already said you would support the fiction.”

“Support is not silence,” Julian said. “I offered to help you keep the lie alive. I did not promise to never use it.”

The countess cleared her throat. “Well. That was a clumsy bit of business.”

Julian rose smoothly, drawing Helena up with him, and when he spoke, his voice was warm, polished, every inch the charming guest. “Forgive us, my lady. Lady Helena was admiring your collection and lost her footing. I fear I startled her.”

Lady Fanshawe looked at him. Then at Helena. Then back at the box in Helena’s trembling hand.

“That box is broken,” she said.

“I will have it repaired,” Helena said, and her voice came out steady, which she did not feel. “I will have it repaired and returned to you.”

“No,” the countess said. She reached out and took the box from Helena’s hand, turning it over once more. The hinge dangled lazily. “I will have it repaired myself. I like broken things. They have more character.”

She tucked the box into her sleeve and looked at Helena with something that was almost, almost, warmth.

“You may call on me tomorrow,” the countess said. “We will discuss your father’s stables. I have opinions on horseflesh that will bore you to tears.”

Helena curtseyed. Her mind was spinning. She had lost the box, but she had gained the invitation. She had gained the countess.

And she had gained a new understanding of Julian Marsden, which was that he was not merely playing a game.

He was writing the rules.