Page 41 of Duke of Destruction
She had learned much about the things her body could do during those stolen moments on the verandah. She might be a maiden still, and likely would remain so, given her dwindling marital prospects. She was not well-versed in matters between men and women and their bodies, but she knew enough to say that what they had done had not been lovemaking.
No, it had just been pressure and friction. She could make that happen, couldn’t she?
She let her hands trail lower, teasing the place between her legs, brushing against the small patch of hair there. She knew she shouldn’t, but she couldn’t help but wonder what Percy would think if he saw her like this, wet and naked and needy in her bath.
She was a spinster, after all, not acorpse.
She gasped as her fingers grazed that spot, the one she hadn’t known about until recently. Yes, she could work with this, she thought, as she imagined Percy standing before her, guiding her,goadingher?—
“Catherine, are you in there!”
Ariadne’s voice had Catherine snatching her hand away in terror, then slapping the water in frustration.
Was nothing sacred? Could she not even take abathwithout people interrupting her?
“Yes, Ari, but I’mbathing,” she said, exasperation clear in her tone.
“Well, I didn’t come in,” Ari said sulkily on the other side of the door. This was admittedly true, not that it made Catherine feel that much better. “I’ve just been looking for you everywhere.”
And just like that, Catherine’s irritation vanished, replaced by stabbing guilt.
She was supposed to be here for Ariadne, not for her own stupid, selfish wants. Maybe these incessant interruptions were the universe trying to remind her of her responsibilities, the ones that Percy seemed to so easily drive from her mind.
“Of course, dearest,” she called back when she could trust her voice to be steady. “I’ll be right out.”
She didn’t allow herself to linger for even a moment. She stood, grabbing the towel that the maid had left in easy reach before Catherine had dismissed her. She kept her motions brusque as she dried herself.
Physical pleasure clearly brought about madness. Very well, then. She would just avoid it entirely.
She would avoid Percy entirely. There were only a few days left in the party, after all. How hard could it be?
Duty, she reminded herself. She had a duty.
And she would have plenty of time—endless, boundless swaths of it—once Ariadne was settled and happy in her new home. Catherine could figure out what to do with herself then, could figure out a way not to make herself a burden on her family.
A spinster aunt could always help care for children, right? Yes, that would be helpful.
She told herself this even as the idea of serving as a lifelong chaperone, guiding the children and then seeing them, too, settled into their new lives as everything remained fixed for her, left her static and declining as she aged?—
Even if that idea made her feel sick with dread, she could do it.
She just had to start by staying away from Percy Egelton.
By the time she made it out into her bedchamber proper, she had her proper Lady Catherine Lightholder mask back in place.
“There you are, sweet,” she greeted Ariadne, who was sitting at Catherine’s dressing table, idly fiddling with a hairpin as she waited. “What did you need from me?”
The next day, Percy went on a hunt.
He hated hunts, but it was only the men who were taking to the woods to pointlessly aim their guns at birds they didn’t need to eat, so he went.
He had a miserable time.
The day after that, he retreated to one of the more remote, airless studies in the manor, the one that nobody ever used, vaguely citing “correspondence” that he had to attend to. This one pricked his pride, because what kind of idiot didn’t get his affairs in order before he went to a house party? Percy was gone for less than a fortnight; if he couldn’t leave his house for that long without it falling about his ears, then he deserved to lose it.
But nobody bothered him in the study, so he hid out there all day.
He had, again, a miserable time.
