Page 5 of What's a Duke Got to Do With It
“How do you know that?” she demanded, her voice muffled by the dog’s smooth fur. “What if Mr. Henrickson blames Mouse for Lord Landon’s fall? What if they try him for murder? What if they sentence him todeath?”
Which, even as she babbled question after question, she knew was ridiculous in the extreme. Yet Katrina could not stop the panic from rising in her. Mouse was all she had left, the one thing her brother had gifted her, proof that he loved her. She could not lose the dog, this one last connection to him, too.
Anyone else might have laughed at her for her idiocy. Not Adelaide, however.
“I have every faith that Mouse shall not be tried for murder,” she soothed. Disentangling Katrina’s arms from about the dog, she assisted her to standing. “Now,” she said with a bracing smile, “why don’t we get you back to bed? You must be exhausted after such a troubling night.”
“Oh, yes,” Honoria chimed in, rushing over to them. “That’s a capital idea, my dear. Katrina, once you’ve gotten some rest you will be able to view the whole ordeal in a more positive light. Rather,” she amended sheepishly as Adelaide shot her a disbelieving look, “not exactly positive, as a man has died—”
“What Honoria is trying so valiantly to say,” Seraphina interrupted in her brisk, no-nonsense way as she approached, “is that things will not look quite so dire once you have rested. Exhaustion has a horrible effect on a person’s mental capabilities. Don’t you agree, Bronwyn?”
“Absolutely,” the woman in question answered, joining the group that surrounded Katrina. “You are not thinking clearly, and rightly so. Rest will provide you with a clear head.”
As one the four friends began to herd Katrina toward the sitting room door. She should be glad for their concern, she told herself. Yet the panic swelled up, choking her, filling her with so much tension she thought she would burst.
And finally she did, breaking away from arms that should have given comfort but instead felt suffocating. It was only as she stood apart from her dear friends, the self-styled misfits called the Oddments, that she realized why she was about to jump out of her skin.
“It does not matter how much sleep I get,” she managed, hugging herself about the middle. “The fact of the matter is, this is a huge scandal, one I won’t be able to escape from.”
At once her friends exploded in protest. Mouse, still in the middle of them all, looked at each one in turn, huge tongue lolling from his mouth, utterly clueless as to the chaos his exuberance had caused.
Katrina, however, could not keep her gaze from Lady Tesh. Her employer had remained off to the side, silently observing, her small white dog, Freya, equally watchful on her lap. It was a disturbing break from the woman’s normal brash forcefulness. Katrina knew that if anyone was going to tell her the truth of the matter, it would be her employer.
Lady Tesh did not disappoint.
“Katrina is right, of course,” she said, silencing the Oddments with one stern look. “This will no doubt cause a huge scandal. If it was just some random man, we might have been able to quiet the rumors. But Lord Landon was a peer of the realm. He perished attempting to climb into Katrina’s bedroom window in the dead of night. Not only that, but this was not the first time he had done so. We will not be able to sweep this under the rug.”
“There, you see?” Katrina said, though she did not feel one ounce of triumph from having Lady Tesh agree with her. No, the only thing she felt just then was the overwhelming desire to curl up in a ball and cry.
“There is only one thing to be done now,” she continued with much more bravado than she felt. Taking hold of Mouse’s collar, she dragged him out of the group of women and, straightening her shoulders, turned to face her employer. “I’m certain my brother will welcome me back,” she said bracingly—much more bravely than she felt. Francis had practically disowned her after Lord Landon’s first attempt at climbing into her room, laying the fault for the whole debacle, including the duel and the loss of his arm, on her shoulders. And she could not blame him one bit for it, though she still didn’t have a clue how she had encouraged the baron. But she must have done something to make the man think she would be at all receptive to such a thing.
That, however, was the past. And Francis’s recent letters, after so long ignoring her attempts to contact him, had given her hope that he would accept her back. She swallowed hard. After this horrible turn of events, she feared that she may have lost whatever ground she had gained with her estranged sibling. Even so, it was painfully obvious she could not stay. “I’ll pack up my things and be out of here as soon as I can manage. Will tomorrow morning suffice?”
The Oddments gasped, cries of dismay and outrage filling the room. Katrina, however, had eyes only for Lady Tesh. The woman was her employer, after all, and the entire reason she was on the Isle of Synne. The dowager had taken her in and offered her a position when Katrina had been quite without hope.
Her time on the Isle and in Lady Tesh’s employ had not been without its difficulties, of course. The woman was not the easiest person to work for. She was demanding and blunt and difficult on her best days.
But she had given Katrina a home, had introduced her to the women who would become her dearest friends. And in the process had saved Katrina when she had believed everything must surely be lost.
She fully expected the woman to nod in agreement. She should have guessed, however, that Lady Tesh must have her say.
“No,” the dowager viscountess murmured, “I don’t think that will suffice, not at all.”
Katrina’s stomach dropped. “You wish me to leave earlier than that? Very well, I’m certain I can manage to depart by this afternoon.” She turned to go, dragging Mouse along with her. Lady Tesh’s voice, however, stopped her in her tracks.
“No, you misunderstand me. Though,” the woman muttered, “that is no surprise. Everyone seems to willfully misunderstand me.” She speared Katrina with a stern glare. “You above all. Why you cannot follow simple instructions is beyond me.”
Katrina, as lost as ever where the woman was concerned, could only stare open-mouthed at her. Seraphina, blessedly, was not so reticent when it came to speaking up.
“What are you saying, Lady Tesh? Surely you cannot mean to let Katrina go.”
“Of course I shall not let her go,” Lady Tesh snapped. “Do you think me a monster? Just because some idiot man decided it would be wise to climb up the side of a building and invite himself inside a woman’s room without her consent, only to conveniently fall and break his damned neck? No, I shall not punish Katrina for that.”
There was a collective sigh of relief from the inhabitants of the room. None more so than from Katrina, who was so overwhelmed she became light-headed. It was only because her hand was on Mouse’s collar that she was able to keep her feet under her at all. As it was, she had to stumble to the nearest seat, dropping down into it with an inelegant grunt.
Despite her relief, though, common sense would insist on shining through.
“But, Lady Tesh,” she said, her head continuing to fight against her best interest, “you cannot want a companion with such a stain on her name.”
