Page 89 of Duke of Destruction
“Catherine, please,” he said, sounding nearly as wretched as she felt.
“No,” she repeated. She half turned toward him, just enough that she could shake her arm until he got the message and released her. “Percy,please. I cannot—I can’t?—”
She didn’t even know what it was that she needed to say, didn’t know what the correct words would be in order to let him know that she couldn’t hear him let her down, couldn’t hear whatever he had to say about her near confession. She was fairly certain that he wouldn’t be cruel—showing up here to apologize, with not one single excuse given for his behavior, was a good indicator that he regretted his past actions—but the kindness might even be worse. Whatever gentle reason he had…
No. She worried it would break her.
She cleared her throat forcefully just to get the words out.
“Please go,” she said. “Don’t come back here. Don’t seek me out again. And if—if we see one another around town, please.Just pretend you didn’t see me, all right? Just pretend there has never been anything of note between us.”
Again, she didn’t wait for his answer. She turned back again and headed into the garden, this time walking even more quickly.
His footsteps crunched in the gravel after her, so sheran—unladylike perhaps, but it had really been a day for it—hoping to lose him amidst the foliage as she went under a tree limb and around a corner, and?—
“What the hell are you doing?”
--and drew up short at the sight of a man who was definitely not either one of her brothers trying to break into the house.
At her impolite shout—today was really,reallynot a day for ladylike behavior—the man turned.
It was the Earl of Crompton.
And he was very, very angry.
And very, very,verydrunk.
Catherine could only assume that it was this third realization that accounted for the earl’s behavior upon being caught trying to break into a duke’s residence. Instead of running away, tryingto salvage…well,anythingabout the situation, he turned to her and grinned.
He was looking properly disheveled, and though it was well into the afternoon, it seemed that he was still wearing evening clothes from the night before. His hair was lank and greasy, hanging to the side of his face like he’d shoved it carelessly away instead of combing it back properly. He reeked of stale liquor and rage.
“Good,” he said—or, rather, slurred—as he walked forward on upsettingly steady legs. “You’ll help me get in.”
“I will not,” she said hotly. She stepped back, but not fast or far enough to avoid the earl’s swipe out to grab her arm.
This was nothing like the way Percy had grasped her moments before. It wasn’t even like the way the earl had held her at the ball, that night at the Duke of Wilds’ estate, when Percy had stepped in and they’d danced.
No, thishurt.
It hurt in a way that said she would have bruises in the morning, a way that said he didn’t care that there would be evidence of what he had done, because he was beyond thinking rationally, was no longer concerned with anything as basic as getting caught. He knew he would be discovered in what he was doing, and he just did not care.
Catherine was almost startled to realize that she was frightened.
“Listen here, bitch,” he snarled, and even with everything else happening, Catherine sucked in a gasp at the insult. “I know you were the one who turned Ariadne against me. I’ll have to teach her to keep her mouth shut again once we’re married, and that’s your fault. But she ismine, and I won’t be leaving here without her, even if I have to ravish her to make that bastard brother of yours agree. I willnotleave here without what is mine, and I don’t care what I have to do to get it. And I certainly am not going to get a little whore like you get in my way.”
The words were so horrible, so violent, that Catherine was shaken from her stupor. She began tugging against his hold, using her free arm to shove at him, but he merely dug his fingers in tighter, then yanked her in closer to him.
The mask was entirely off, now. The earl practically vibrated with malice—and pleasure at frightening her. That much was clear as day.
But he thought she was a woman alone, someone he could bully and hurt and abuse without consequence.
But she wasn’t alone. It wasn’t even just that she was a Lightholder, though there was that, too. It was that she wasn’t alone in this garden. She was with someone who, despite everything, she knew would come when she called.
She sucked in a breath.
“Percy!” she screamed.
The earl had only the barest second to look baffled before Percy came careening around the corner. She wouldn’t have been able to escape him for long in the garden if she’d been trying to do so; once she gave him her location, it was the work of moments to bring them together again.
