Page 4 of Duke of Destruction
The first thing that had gone well, she noted with satisfaction, was their timing. The front drive was already littered with guests and carriages still in the process of being unpacked—but nottoomany of them. A perfect arrival was right in the middle. Too early, and one risked the awkward social moment of trying to converse one-on-one with someone you’d only planned to meet with in a group. Too late, and you were, well, the latecomer. Neither position was enviable.
As it was, however, the carriage pulled to a stop among a small crowd of interested (albeit a bit tired-looking) members of theton. Several pairs of eyes flashed appreciatively at the Lightholder crest emblazoned on the side of their conveyance.
Catherine checked the tie of her bonnet while Ariadne took a deep, steadying breath.
“Good afternoon, Lady Catherine, Lady Ariadne!”
The Duke of Wilds appeared at their door in a flash, every inch the consummate host. Catherine ensured thatshewas the one to take his proffered hand down, leaving Ariadne to be aided by a waiting footman. Keeping their flirtatious host away from her nineteen-year-old sister wasn’t just a task for Ariadne to mind; Catherine, too, played a role.
“Your Grace,” Catherine said politely. “Good afternoon to you, too. And might I say—your estate is even lovelier than I’d heard it was.”
There. A quick daub of flattery would do in a moment like this.
Indeed, David Nightingale, the Duke of Wilds, smiled broadly—though there was a flash in his gaze that suggested that he might know what Catherine was up to. She didn’t much care. He was too handsome by half, this wild and charming duke. Worse, he knew it. She could see it in the way he let his hair growslightlytoo long to be fashionable, in the way that he quirked those full lips into a smile.
It would take more than a pretty face to turn Catherine’s head, however—or, more to the point, to distract her from her task safeguarding Ariadne.
“Thank you, my lady,” he said, offering his arm. “Shall I introduce you to our fellow revelers? The staff shall attend your and your sister’s luggage.”
“Splendid,” Catherine agreed, more than half her attention on her sister behind her.
Introductionwas something of a heavy-handed word for what occurred next. Catherine knew nearly all the people present already, after all. Some of them she’d known since she was a slip of a girl. One of the older chaperones, Lady Mary Margaret Catherton, she recalled as being present at her grandfather Cornelius’ funeral—one of the few memories she had of the event, given how young she’d been at the time.
Even so, she went through the motions.
“And this here is the Earl of Crompton,” the Duke of Wilds said, turning them toward a stern-faced man who was one of the few whom Catherine didn’t know by appearance.
Come to think of it, she knew little of Crompton by reputation, either—a rarity in theton, which thrived on gossip. If she thought back, she vaguely thought he’d taken his seat recently, though it had been an unremarkable ascension to the title. Sometimes one’s father lived long, after all. Catherine herself hadn’t been so lucky, but that didn’t mean that others weren’t.
Although from first glance, Crompton had the look of a man who wouldn’t consider his father’s longevitylucky. His looks themselves were unremarkable—brown hair that flirted with blond, brown eyes, a roundness to his cheeks that suggested boyhood, though he was clearly well into his thirties—but he had a sharp, hungry sort of expression in his gaze.
Catherine wasn’t impressed.
Still, it never hurt to be polite.
“A pleasure, my lord,” she said, bobbing a curtsey.
Crompton’s eyes barely cut to her before returning to Ariadne. This was something Catherine had expected. Here, she was the chaperone—the old maid. Her sister was the one people would seek to meet.
“The pleasure is all mine, Lady Catherine, Lady Ariadne,” Crompton said. He kept talking, some of the usual nonsense about the dreadful state of the roads, but a strange sense of being watched caught Catherine’s attention, pulling it away from what promised to be a lengthy lament about mud and carriage wheels not being made like they used to be.
She turned in the direction of the prickling sensation to see a man looking at her.
No, not looking. Staring.
No, that wasn’t even right, either.
Glowering. He was glowering at her with a ferocity that almost made her fall back a step.
This would have been remarkable in and of itself—Catherine had spent the better part of the last ten years ensuring that she was the kind of proper social presence that garnered nobody’s hatred, even if she didn’t garner their especial adoration, either—but even more remarkable was that she… couldn’t place him.
It did happen, of course. Look at the Earl of Crompton. Her mental version of Debretts was far from infallible.
But she didn’t think she was complimenting herself to say that it was nevertheless quite good. And two strangers at one house party? That was unusual.
“Ah.” The Duke of Wilds appeared at her elbow. There was something in his smirk that Catherine didn’t trust. “I see you’ve met my friend, Percy Egelton, the Duke of Seaton.”
Ah.Blast.
