Page 61 of Duke of Destruction
Percy came to this conclusion some four or five hours after he’d run into Catherine on the street while trying to get the winder on his pocket watch re-tightened. He could have sent a footman to accomplish the task, but Percy had needed a distraction.
He’d needed a distraction fromthinking about Catherine.
And then, there she was.
The utterly ridiculous exchange they’d muddled their way through should have banished her from his mind forever. She was just a woman; he should have realized. She wasn’t any better than any of the other women he’d ever known.
But hours later, he still had that clenching feeling in his stomach that, to his horror, he thought might be a mingling of nerves and desire.
It was hard to say which of these was worse.
This was, he told himself, clearly an aftereffect of physical intimacy. He’d just been sobusythis past year. He’d gotten several bills past Parliament and had arranged for variousimprovements at his country estate, not to mention his regular business with investments and solicitors and the like.
A man had physical needs, he reasoned. And when one didn’t tend to them, confusion arose. Confusion that could convincingly mimic emotion.
He could not afford that. The clear answer was to seek more physical release.
“Your Grace!” cried Matilda St. Clair—née Mary Jones, and called such until she needed a grander name for traipsing the boards. “Why, I haven’t seen you in an age! Come in, come in.”
Matilda had been the star of the London theater scene some seven or eight years ago now, an ingenue who had charmed the city with a flash of her bright smile and deep dimples. Now, at the wizened age of eight and twenty—her words, not Percy’s—her star had waned somewhat.
She was a clever woman, however, was Matilda—it was one of the things Percy liked best about her—and she’d been smart with her money and her youth. She’d taken her time as a star and leveraged it, as so many women of her profession did, into a lucrative stint as a mistress to a desperately rich, older lord whom she refused to name.
Percy liked that, too. Discretion was invaluable to a woman like Matilda, and to a man like Percy.
She didn’t have a formal arrangement now, he knew; she’d saved enough to buy herself a little flat near the theaters of the West End. She took the occasional role onstage, when it suited her, and took lovers according to the same principles.
Percy had been one of them, for a time. Tonight, he hoped to be again. Surely, some time with Matilda would clear his mind of all the things he oughtn’t be thinking.
“Good evening, Matilda,” he said, presenting her with a box of the expensive chocolates he knew she preferred. “I do hope I’m not interrupting you this evening.”
“Oh, not at all,” she said, accepting the box happily. “And when you bring my favorites, you’re welcome to interrupt all you wish. But no, I am at my leisure. You know more; more leisure than not, these days.”
From someone else, the words might have sounded bitter, like a lament about her diminished fame. But Mary Jones, Percy knew from past conversations, had been born to a family near Dockside, where the best she could hope for was a life spent working for pennies—or, if she was very lucky, marriage to man who made enough that she could tend to their brood of children alone, without trying to bring in extra income on the side. For Matilda, then, leisure was akin to heaven itself.
“I’m delighted to hear it,” he said, meaning it. “Will my presence disturb that leisure?”
“Yours?” she asked, giving him a coy smile. “Never.”
She was so sweet, was Matilda. Sweeter than she ought to have been, given her hardscrabble upbringing. But either she was an even better actress than even the reviewers had given her credit for, or she was genuine in her kindness; Percy had never seen her pleasant exterior crack. She was like the chocolates she liked—lovely on the outside, soft and even lovelier inside.
He had always liked her—as a person, not just as a lover. Matilda reminded him of himself, albeit on a lower social scale. But they had both ended up in places that nobody could have expected, given their parentage.
“Come, sit,” she said, ushering him into her sitting room. The door to her bedchamber was ajar, a tantalizing promise of where the night would lead. “Tell me, how have you been in the time since I’ve seen you last?”
As Matilda made a cup of tea, he spoke absently of some of his political work, of some of the business he had happening on his estate. She offered murmurs of encouragement throughout, then presented a perfect brew before sitting on the other end of the settee, leaning up on her elbow and looking at him kindly.
“You do realize you are the most terrible do gooder,” she teased when he told her about some of the tenants’ rights initiatives he’d implemented. “The other dukes shall come for your head, afraid that you’re going to give their tenants ideas.”
“If they come for my head,” he told her, “it will be because, to them, I’m the son of a commoner.”
She laughed brightly. “Imagine being the kind of person where thinking that being born the actual son of an actual duke made youcommonjust because your father wasn’t born into his title. They are ridiculous, sir, and you oughtn’t pay them any mind.”
They’d had this discussion before. In the past, Percy had found her airy dismissal of other nobles comforting. They were absurd, the lot of them, she’d told him, far too caught up in their own worlds to see his goodness. Who could think such a thing, she’d asked, since though he had always been thinking of Cornelius Lightholder, he’d never mentioned the man by name.
Now, however, he found that the blanket encouragement grated against his nerves. She didn’t understand the world of Society; she was too much on its fringes. Because, yes, Percy disagreed with the snobs who thought the blueness of one’s blood was the entire measure of his character, but that didn’t mean he could justignore them.
Catherine would understand, an annoying voice reminded him.Catherine would even know how to navigate it.
