Page 8 of Duke of Destruction
“Not particularly, no,” he said, a beat too late to be polite. As if she hadn’t gotten the message that he wanted to be rude.
Truly, she wasn’t anidiot. He didn’t need to be so heavy-handed about it. Just because she thought he was being insufferable about his delivery didn’t mean she didn’t understand what he meant.
He despised her for some reason that was, frankly, not all that interesting to her. It had to be some political spat with her brother. And, frankly, Catherine thought Xander’s political stances were solid. If this other duke had a problem with them, well.Shedidn’t have a seat in Parliament. Best to take those complaints elsewhere.
So she just gave him a commiserating (and slightly pitying) look.
“As I said before, these parties can be overwhelming, particularly if you do not circulate much in Society. You’ll have to forgive me for my ignorance—do you spend much time in London?”
Somehow, this comment caused the duke to lookeven moreirate. A naturalist really ought to do a study on him, Catherine thought. He was possibly surpassing what was previously considered the maximum human limit for ire.
“No, I cannot say that I do,” he said icily. “I find that…London Society is, on the whole, made up of shallow creatures who look at the wrong things when seeking to account a person’s worth. I cannot imagine why I would wish to spend more time with such a crowd than necessary.”
She arched an eyebrow. She was determined not to lose her temper, and, indeed, she’d faced a thousand veiled insults from the various and sundry members of theton, too many of whom felt that the best way to build their own reputations was to tear down someone else’s.
It was a mistake every time. Not necessarily just because she was Catherine Lightholder, although that, too, but because it was a play that was destined to fail. It was a desperate ploy of a neophyte, not the skilled maneuvering of someone who knew how to avoid each and every one of Society’s manifold teeth.
Besides, it was obvious that the duke wanted her to lose her temper. And she might be the prim and proper Lightholder, but she was still a Lightholder.
Stubbornness ran in her veins.
“Well. Perhaps you will meet people more to your liking at this party.” She gave him the same look that she gave her cousin Hugh’s triplet nieces when they knew they were misbehaving, she knew that they were misbehaving, and she wanted them to know that she knew they were misbehaving but that she was—the picture of benevolence—giving them a chance to make it right.
“I doubt it,” the duke bit out.
She shouldn’t bait him, she really shouldn’t. But it was so hard to resist temptation when faced with a man this self-important and buttoned-up. She could only assume that he hadn’t been dragged to this party at rifle point. He had only himself to blame for being here. It was unconscionable for him to not take responsibility and at least try to behave the way decent folk ought.
“At least you have the right attitude about it,” she said, simperingly sweet. “I have always found that putting on a good face helps things immeasurably.”
A muscle in his face twitched as she let out the retort, as mild as it had been.
“You would think that,” he returned. “As I understand it, you Lightholders always have put appearances above all.”
Her muscles tightened with the effort it took not to react to his blatant insult.
Catherine followed the rules of Society to the letter, but she would not necessarily consider herself an ardent supporter of those rules. Many of them, in truth, she found irksome, bordering on ridiculous. Ariadne’s complaint that women got no real chance to know the men they planned to wed—and then no real recourse if the men turned out to be other than they’d presented themselves after the vows were spoken? That was an objection that Catherine found measured and reasonable. A better world, she thought, would be one where men were expected to behave properly in private conversation with a lady so that such a conversation did not ruin the woman’s reputation.
But they didn’t live in that better world. And forsaking the rules entirely just meant that everyone was stumbling around blindly in the dark, bumping into one another as they tried to find their way, and generally causing more harm than good.
So, yes. She’d met self-important, puffed-up, snide gentlemen who disparaged women as a whole or her in particular, for some reason or other. She’d borne insults, had remained silent through sniffed observations that it wassucha pity when a woman let herself be relegated to the shelf, had held her counsel when sidelong glances were cast her way. That was just Society. It meant very little, not compared to the things she truly valued, like her family.
But this man, this rude, obvious man who didn’t follow any of the rules, hadn’t just insulted Catherine.
He’d insulted her family.
You Lightholders.
And yes, she ought to ignore that, too. Theirs was an ancient, powerful, wealthy family. People often cozied up to them, seeking favor, or spat their disdain when that favor was not granted.
But for some reason, this time, it got under her skin.
“I understand,” she said tightly, “that perhaps you have butted heads with my brother in the past. But surely you can see that that has nothing to do with me or my sister.”
Perhaps the man was a strict conservative who thought that any reform bills, like the ones that Xander had been increasingly backing after his wife had made the struggles of Northernlaborers more personal to him, were an affront against the aristocracy. Catherine didn’t much care. She only needed to know a man’s political affiliations if she intended to match him with her sister.
And she wouldnotbe seeking to match the Duke of Seaton with her dear little sister. Not if he were the very last man on earth.
“And I would hope,” she went on, “that we can put that animosity aside for the sake of this party. We are, for better or for worse, all here together for the next several days. It will be far more pleasant if we can all find a way to coexist, don’t you think?”
