Page 58 of A Game with the Rakish Duke
Beatrice sagged, letting herself be led away like a lamb to the slaughter. She looked back at Catherine imploringly. Catherine tried to give her a reassuring smile.
“We should get some refreshments, Edith,” Patrick said in a clipped tone. “Come along.”
His wife looked resigned, taking his proffered arm and inclining her head towards Catherine as they sailed away through the crowd.
Catherine watched them intently. Patrick was whispering in his wife’s ear quite frantically, his face a dull red. Edith was stony-faced, looking straight ahead and not reacting at all to whatever he was saying to her. It was as if she wasn’t hearing it at all.
Catherine frowned, feeling a sense of disquiet. She wasn’t sure why, exactly, only that she didn’t like the way Patrick was treating his wife. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but there wassomething just not quite right about it. It was an utter mystery. She had always thought that the woman who married her friend would be a lucky lady, indeed, and that Patrick would treat his wife like gold.
Catherine sighed heavily, taking a long sip of her champagne. She had tried and failed miserably to become better acquainted with Edith. It was patently obvious the lady had no interest in getting to know her better or becoming friends with her. She would not try again.
She spotted Beatrice and her mother with a white-haired gentleman near the refreshments table. He looked like he was nearing sixty and was eying Bea as if she were a new filly he was thinking about purchasing. Beatrice looked utterly miserable. Her mother had moved away to another group, clearly wanting to leave her daughter and the gentleman alone.
Catherine drained her glass before passing it to a footman, and then she marched over to her friend. The white-haired gentleman looked startled.
“There you are,” she cried, taking Beatrice’s arm firmly. “You simplymusthelp me. It is an emergency!”
Beatrice looked appalled. “What is it?”
“Oh, I cannot say in front of a gentleman,” Catherine insisted, her eyes darting towards the gentleman, trying to look embarrassed. “It would not be proper at all.” She turned to him. “Would you excuse us, My Lord?”
“Of course,” the gentleman replied, looking mystified.
Catherine smiled prettily before dragging Beatrice away, deep into the crowd, as far away from her mother and the gentleman as possible. She giggled.
Beatrice looked at her sideways before she started giggling. “There is no emergency, is there?” she whispered between giggles.
“No,” Catherine confessed, shaking with hilarity. “I just could not bear to see you with him. It was dreadful. Whatisyour mother thinking, trying to set you up with an old man?”
Beatrice sighed. “Mama does not care,” she said in a flat voice. “As long as the gentleman is eligible, she does not care about my feelings on the matter at all.”
Catherine squeezed her friend’s arm. “Well, she will not succeed this evening. The audacity!”
“She will not like that you have done this,” Beatrice mumbled, looking concerned. “There will be hell to pay tonight when we get home.”
“You must stand up for yourself, Bea,” Catherine insisted in a gentle voice. “Do not let her push you around so much. You must try to forge your own path and stick to it.”
Beatrice sighed. “It is easier said than done, Cathy. You do not understand how relentless she is.” She hesitated. “Sometimes I just feel like giving in to her pestering, once and for all. It is only marriage, after all. What does it matter who I marry?”
“Oh, Bea,” Catherine murmured sadly. “Itdoesmatter. It matters to you. And you must hold on to your convictions. For what else do we have in this life?”
Bea sighed again, not replying.
Catherine felt her heart flip in her chest. That was what she was doing with her husband—holding on to her convictions. She was resisting him because she knew it was the best thing to do.
But she couldn’t help feeling a sense of hollowness and a strange yearning which had intensified as they had danced together tonight. She was so tired of fighting it—of fightinghimand the deep attraction she felt towards him which she simply could not seem to shake no matter how hard she tried.
Were her convictions enough? Or was something momentous happening between them that would make her throw them aside, once and for all?
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“You were right,” Kenneth said in a dejected voice. “The sisters were not interested in doing anything other than mild flirtation with me.”
Thomas let out a bark of laughter. “Ah, well, at least you tried, my friend,” he consoled, clapping him on the back. “Which one did you prefer? Georgiana or Eliza?”
Kenneth blinked. “Ah… I was not sure which was which,” he admitted, looking sheepish. “They did say, of course, but they look so alike that I kept getting their names mixed up in my head…”
Thomas burst out laughing. “You really are a card, Dunford! Were you just hoping one of them would show a preference for you and take it from there?”
