Page 71 of Duke of Destruction
“But my point,” Ariadne said sternly, as though Catherine had been distracting her, “is that you were always there. Always. And I appreciate that, I do. I know Jason does, too. But Kitty, didn’t that mean you never had any time for yourself?”
Catherine’s first impulse was to deny it. But Ariadne had been frank and mature with Catherine; didn’t Catherine owe her sister the same treatment in return?
“I have never regretted it,” she told her sister. That much was not up for debate and never had been.
Ariadne softened again. “I know,” she said. “But we are grown now. Jason ismarried.”
She said it in the same, absently shocked tone that Catherine often experienced when thinking about their little brother’s marriage to Helen’s younger sister.
“So perhaps,” Ariadne continued, returning to the matter at hand, “it’s time for you to take some time for yourself.”
Catherine felt so full of love that she could hardly stand it.
“That’s sweet of you, dearest,” she said. “But I’m a spinster, so I don’t know?—”
She broke off as she was whacked in the face with a pillow.
“Ow,” she said pointedly.
Ari looked unrepentant. “Don’t say stupid things and I shan’t smack you with cushions,” she said sweetly. “You are six andtwenty, Kitty. You’re hardly halfway to the grave. Don’t be absurd.”
It was more or less the same thing that Percy had been saying to her. But Catherine hadn’t quite believed it then, and she wasn’t quite sure that she believed it now.
“Most gentlemen are looking for younger wives,” she tried again. “I’m not ancient, but with so many other options to choose from—damn it all, Ari, stop throwing things!”
She dodged another pillow.
“You swore,” Ariadne said gleefully, no longer looking at all like the mature young woman she was. That was a child’s glee at making an elder lose their temper.
“Throw another one and I’m going to throw it back,” Catherine threatened, apparently not feeling terribly mature herself.
“I already told you that I won’t throw them if you use good sense,” Ari returned. “Because I’m not telling you to go out and secure yourself some titled husband just so that you can say that you did. You’re Catherine Lightholder! You’re incredible! You are beautiful and smart and funny, and perhaps it’s a bit mercenary to say that you’re rich and connected, but you’re those things, too. So, if you’re telling me that men cannot look past something as trivial as your age—and you arenot old,Catherine—then I shall give up on the whole of them as a species.”
This was highly touching, and Catherine didn’t trust herself to comment on most of it without getting a bit misty-eyed, so she merely said, “I’m not certain that men are their own species.”
Ariadne cast her a highly skeptical look, which made Catherine chuckle.
“Very well. I will admit that they are rather confounding.”
Ariadne merely arched an eyebrow. Catherine sighed. It wassounfair to have someone turn your own strategies against you. It was even more unfair to find that itworked.
“Very well,” she said again. “I shall promise to…leave myself open to possibility. Does that suffice?”
“For now.”
Goodness, when had Ariadne become such a shrewd negotiator?
She learned it from you, you utter termagant.She could hear Percy’s retort so easily, the gentle laugh that would lessen the blow of the teasing insult. She shouldn’t be hearing his voice in her head. She certainly shouldn’t be hearing his voice in her head speak to her in such a tender, affectionate way.
Although shehadjust promised Ariadne that she would be open to the possibility. And what was her agreement with Percy if not possibility?
Catherine chatted idly with her sister for a few more minutes before heading out, leaving Ariadne to resume whatever private thoughts had consumed her before Catherine had interrupted. Catherine, in turn, found herself wrapped back up in her own all-encompassing thoughts.
She should call off her plans with Percy. She knew she should.
But she also knew she wasn’t going to.
Maybe her sister was right, and maybe she wasn’t. But Catherine wasn’t ready to risk what was possibly her very last chance at—well, not romance, but the next best thing, she supposed—on the off chance that she might, one day, find someone willing to overlook her age and marry her. Someone whom Catherine would trade her freedom to marry.
