Page 59 of Duke of Destruction
Helen gasped, then glanced down in horror as the gesture threatened to jostle Cordy. When the baby slept on, she pinned Catherine with a glare. “You wouldn’t.”
Catherine Lightholder might have been the ideal Society daughter. She might spend her days ensuring that her family’s path among thetonwas as smooth as possible. She might carefully control her behavior, to that end.
But she wasn’tperfect.
And thus it was with great satisfaction that she stuck out her tongue at her sister and then flounced away, laughing as Helen’s whispered invectives followed her out the door.
CHAPTER 15
“Goodness,” Catherine huffed. “Is there some sort of glove-eating monster in this home? Why can I never find a matching pair of gloves?”
She’dhadgloves earlier in the day, she knew. Her maid had laid them out for her, though it had taken even the highly organized servant a moment to put her hands on a matching set. And, yes, Catherine had destroyed a pair when she’d tumbled into the lake, and the gloves she’d been wearing during the scavenger hunt had never fully recovered…
Well. She supposed she would have to go purchase some gloves. What atrial.
Truly. The sacrifices she made. They were immeasurable.
Even when remaining at the height of fashion felt like a chore, Catherine rather liked thinking about and arranging her manner of dress. Dressing properly felt like armor; it always had, at leastfor as long as she could remember. Putting it all together so that she presented to the world thepreciseimage that she wanted them to see...
It wasintenselysatisfying.
So, no, she didn’t mind shopping for gloves. Though she would, on the whole, have preferred that the gloves that she did own remain where they belonged. Ariadne’s entrée into Society had hastened the departure of Catherine’s gloves, she’d learned, along with her hair pins, reticules, and ear bobs.
“Ari!” Catherine called, moving through the house in search of her sister. She found Ariadne tucked up in the library, a novel in hand. “I’m going out shopping,” she told her younger sister. “For gloves, since mine have gone a-wandering.”
Ariadne hid her hands behind her back.
“How strange,” she said.
“Would you like to accompany me, since you’ll be the one wearing them?” Catherine asked with a little laugh.
Ari scrunched her nose. “Will you think me terrible if I say no?”
Since Catherine did not—she didn’t even want to know a person who had never been overcome by the allure of a good novel—she left Ariadne to her tale of gothic heroines and mysterious houses and headed out, her maid in tow.
At six and twenty, Catherine always hesitated over taking a servant along on her excursions as a sort of chaperone. If she’d gone with Ariadne, after all, Catherine herself would be the chaperone. So, didn’t it stand to reason that she didn’t need one herself?
But she preferred a bit of company, she reasoned. And she knew her maid had been eyeing a new hair ribbon on recent excursions. Perhaps the ribbon would mysteriously find its way into Catherine’s purchases as a small thank you for the accompaniment.
On Bond Street, Catherine stopped in at the glove maker’s shop and bought a few pairs for herself, plus a few more for Ariadne that Catherine would pretend were for herself, since it brought her little sister comfort to think she was pilfering from her fashionable elder sister.
She popped in at the notions shop and bought some new lace trim for one of her bonnets, plus the ribbon for her maid. On a whim, she also stopped by the apothecary and purchased several bars of the hard, fragrant soap sold there. She liked to use it herself and had found that it made for a marvelous gift, especially for the staff, who otherwise had to make do with soft soap. And Michaelmas was coming soon enough.
As she left the apothecary, she was feeling, on the whole, highly satisfied with her errand.
And then she bumped bodily into someone.
She startled, then instinctively calmed, as though her body recognized him before her mind did.
“Percy,” she said. And then, recalling herself, she hastily amended, “That is, I beg your pardon, Your Grace.”
Her first instinct was happiness, nearly overwhelming happiness at seeing him. Then, she reminded herself sternly that this was a mere reaction to their past physical intimacies, and that she was meant to be forgetting all that.
“Oh, erm, Lady Catherine,” Percy replied.
And then he bowed to her.
Catherine had to stop herself from staring.
