Page 69 of Duke of Destruction
They should be fleeing from one another. It would be disastrous, to say the least, if they were caught out here in a dark garden together. Percy would have no choice but to marry her, and while that thought didn’t rankle nearly as much as it ought to have done, it wouldn’t solve any of the other problems between them, like the longstanding enmity he held against her family.
You have to go, Catherine.Why wasn’t he saying the words out loud?You first, and then I’ll follow, but you shan’t see me again.
“I really must go,” Catherine said, and the words pricked at him, no matter that they were eminently sensible. “But?—”
His heart leapt.
“I want us to meet again,” she went on, and even in the dim light, he could tell she was blushing. “When we have more time. When we won’t be disturbed. That is, if you also want?—”
“Yes,” he said, his mouth working again so suddenly that he interrupted her. “I would like that.”
Her smile lit him up. It was almost enough to banish the horror at what he’d just agreed to—what they’d both just decided to do.
Another laugh, this one closer. This time, Catherine did react as sharply as she ought.
“I must go,” she said. “But I will—I’ll see you again.”
She turned and disappeared into the night, quick and stealthy as a wraith, leaving Percy half wondering if he had imagined the whole thing.
The tightness in the front of his trousers and the way he could still smell his perfume against his collar said otherwise, however.
He took in slow, deep breaths until he felt steady again—or as steady as he’d managed at all during these past few mad weeks. He forced himself to lope steadily back toward the house, made himself act unbothered and like he was up to nothing untoward when he encountered the pair that had been the source of the laughter—a couple that he vaguely recalled had been married during the previous Season, still fresh enough in their union to cherish the stolen moments.
He refused to let himself imagine doing the same with Catherine, of being with her in a way that foreswore secrecy, that would let her, upon being found in his company, merely duck her head in faux embarrassment and continue on her way. He simply could not afford to think about what it might feel like to be something more than a scandal in the waiting with her.
After all, he had already made his mistakes tonight.
And he was due to make quite a few more, it seemed.
Better to pace himself as he made the steady, willing march toward his own doom.
P, I ought not have said what I did. We shouldn’t?—
Catherine crumpled up the scrap of foolscap and tossed it into the fire. She didn’t know why she’d thought this attempt—her seventeenth—would be one that she actually ended up sending. She’d stopped even using proper stationery, after all. The only thing she was doing now was torturing herself.
She couldn’t seem to stop, though.
The problem, as she kept returning to it, was this: Catherine Lightholder wasnota stupid woman, and this was, without question, a very,verystupid thing she was doing.
A sensible person, Catherine kept reckoning, would recognize the stupidity of her forthcoming action and then simply not follow that path. All she had to do was send Percy a note that said,Sorry, it was a bad idea, I was taken in by the moonlight and your kisses–or something less damning, should it fall into other hands—and have done with the whole affair.
She kept getting as far as starting to even write the note—seventeen separate times!
And then, inevitably, she would find herself throwing it in the fire.
“Maybe tomorrow,” she told herself, not feeling at all confident.
A distraction. She needed a distraction.
Where were her siblings? They’d provided more distraction than she could handle for the past dozen or so years. Couldn’t they rustle up a bit more in her time of need?
With this in mind, Catherine set out to look for one of the other inhabitants of Oldhill House. She found Ariadne, who was sitting in the back parlor, staring out at the garden contemplatively. No, not just contemplatively… Sad. Ari looked sad.
Catherine’s sisterly instincts immediately went on high alert. She ought to be more careful about what she wished for, as this wasn’t mere distraction, it was worry.
“Ariadne?” Catherine asked lightly. It was always best to let a younger sibling come to you; she’d learned that from long years of experience. “Is everything all right?”
Ari startled at the sound of her sister’s voice, as though she had been deep in thought. When she looked at Catherine, it was with a smile that was less than convincing.
