Page 77 of Duke of Destruction
“Everything is fine,” he said, and it wasn’t that his voice was cold—he’d spoken to her coldly many times. She knew that his argumentativeness and ill temper was just part of what made him Percy.
But this voice was different. It was just…empty. It wasn’t as though he was speaking to an enemy; it was as though he was speaking to astranger,one he planned to never encounter again.
She felt suddenly very cold. She held the sheet more tightly around her.
“Are you—” She cleared her throat,hatingthat she let out this sign of weakness. Although—when had she started seeing this as a battle again? “Are you certain?”
He turned to look at her then, though she got the sense that this was less because he wanted to than because he felt he could no longer get away with it.
“Of course,” he said stiffly. He wasn’t quite lookingather. More likethroughher. “This should resolve matters between us. We have been bothered by this inconvenient attraction, but now that we have given in to the pull, we can be done with one another.”
She felt her eyes go wide, then turned her head before he could see that his words had cut her like a knife.
She had heard whispers of men who pursued women only until they were intimate. Not just rakes, those men, but cads, villains, the kind of man who treated lovemaking the same way he might view hunting, with an aim to fell as many unfortunate creatures as possible.
Catherine hadn’t thought Percy was like that. Deep down, she still didn’t. But she couldn’t figure out any reason why he might be acting like this. Not unless she had just been totally and completely wrong about him.
Well. She would bedamnedif she gave him the satisfaction of seeing how he had hurt her.
“I see,” she said, forcing her voice to be crisp.
She would not waver. She would not break down. And she would not regret what they had done, blast it all! She had come here of her own free will, and she had taken as much pleasure as she had given. She hadgotten what she wanted.If Percy now wanted to act as though she did not matter, well then, he would not matter to her, either. She would forever hold this as the night where she learned about the physical delights that her body could afford herandabout the perfidy of men.
She would remain a spinster. That was fine; she had planned on doing as much anyway. She could probably convince Xander to just give the money earmarked for her dowry to her eventually. She would set up her own modest household and perhaps even take a lover now and again. And, when she bedded someone else, she would never, ever think of the Duke of Seaton.
“I shall be going, then,” she went on. Politeness had never let her down before; it would carry her through this moment, too. “I thank you for your time. It was a very diverting evening.”
He winced slightly at that, and Catherine felt a savage surge of satisfaction. Good. He could do as he pleased—he could be distant and uncaring if he wanted to be—but she wouldn’t let him get away with not recognizing how downrightunpleasantthat was.
“Catherine, don’t—” he began, then cut himself off.
She tugged her shift, rescued from the floor, down over her head, then pulled her gown up over her hips, chest, and arms. Good God, it felt good not to be naked anymore. She hoped that Percy felt every inch of his nakedness.
She gave him a terse smile as she did up her laces.
“Don’t worry,” she told him tightly. “I shall be on my way posthaste.”
She didn’t look to see if he winced again, but decided, for the sake of her own pride, to believe that he did.
Her dress wasbarelyon, but she threw her cloak on over it. It would stay on her body long enough to get back to a hack, and that was really all that mattered. She could fix everything else later.
Shewouldfix everything else later.
There was an excruciating pause as she fumbled to get back into her half-boots. Why had nobody ever mentioned how darnedawkwardthis could be? Everyone warned young ladies about how consorting with gentlemen would ruin their reputations, send their lives into disarray, bring shame on their families—all that noise. But nobody had ever said, “And if you give in to your desires, the aftermath shall be so uncomfortable that you shall wish to scrub all the skin off your bones.”
Maybe that was why you were meant to be married before making love. There wasn’t any escape, so you just had to make do.
She finally got her foot into her stupid, stubborn boot. She held her cloak around her with one hand and crossed to the door.
“Goodbye,” she said. It was final, absolute. Perhaps she ought to be grateful to him for finally letting her close this door between them, but she wasn’t. Maybe she would be eventually, but not now.
She did, however, cast him one last glance over her shoulder as she went. She regretted it immediately. He looked miserable, yes, as well he should. But the part that she hated was the momentary impulse to turn around, to go comfort him, to demand that he talk to her.
Not that he deserved any of that.
She made herself close the bedchamber door with a decisiveclick.
She couldn’t tell if this ending between them was fitting or horribly, agonizingly anticlimactic, but she made herself focus on deciding as she moved back through the corridor to the front steps. They had started as enemies, she mused. Why shouldn’t they end things in a similar fashion?
