Page 85 of Enticing Odds
Sir Colin went forth, chattering happily.
Matthew followed alongside, a calm confidence settling upon him. He’d not a hope left in his heart for himself, but this—this he could do for her. For Cressida.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Cressida poured her brother’stea as aggressively as one could, up to the bounds of propriety.
She’d been fervently throwing herself into all of the mundane preparations required to quit the city. Inspecting the linens with the housekeeper and the larder with cook. Checking off endless lists with Wardle. Clearing out her wardrobe with her lady’s maid, pitching any garment she found displeasing.
Everything was displeasing.
Cressida knew it would be a good long while before anything brought a smile to her face again. And entertaining her ignoble brother, Sir Frederick Catton, would do nothing but increase her foul mood exponentially.
“Will you not return to Norwich?” she said as she shifted the pot to her own cup, which she poured with the care and elegance of a good hostess.
Frederick watched the steaming amber liquid with a blank face, his mind seemingly elsewhere, before returning to the present and taking his cup, which he filled with enough sugar cubes to construct St. Paul’s Cathedral.
“Perhaps,” he said, frowning.
Something was clearly on his mind. There was no love lost between the two of them; rarely did he go out of his way to call upon her unless he’d been explicitly invited, and Cressida sometimes worried that word of her indiscretions might have reached his ears. Just the thought of it brought a chill of dread upon her.
But that was impossible. Cressida would’ve heard of it first.
Frederick took a sip, then set the cup back into its saucer, his wan and weary eyes staring off into the middle distance.
Cressida could bear it no longer.
“Well, come off it, Frederick. Speak plainly,” she said. “Are we to do this till the end of our days?”
“How do you mean?” He met her eyes, brows knit in confusion.
“Sniping at one another, suspicious of one another, always working against each other’s aims,” Cressida said with a sigh, waving her hand about.
“Working against each other’s aims…?”
The look of surprise on Frederick’s face told her she’d perhaps been too honest. Quickly she lifted her tea, affecting a posture of ease and disinterest.
“Well,I’vemoved beyond these past slights, Frederick, and I suggest you do the same.”
He looked down at his hands resting atop his knees, mouth opening and closing several times, as if meaning to speak but losing faith in his words before they could come.
He looked like a fish. A pathetic one, too, like a lamprey, witless and weak-jawed, seeking something larger he could manage to hook his teeth into. Some poor heiress to attach himself to for all eternity, draining her coffers along with her vitality.
And yet…
Cressida thought of the cold look she had received from Arthur at her dinner party. And Matthew—Dr. Collier’s—sad, resigned eyes, accepting her dismissal of him, the punishment she had no choice but to levy. She should have said something different… but Cressida knew she’d made the correct decision, the one that would protect Arthur and Henry. A decision that required strength to make.
But it did not require cruelty.
“Working against each other’s aims, you say?” Frederick repeated, his voice shaking with anger. “Do you mean to say…” He paused and blinked several times before soldiering on. “Do you speak of Mrs. Brenchley?”
Cressida inclined her head, waiting for the fury that would come when he finally worked it out.
“I… I’d meant to offer for her, you know. Years ago, when she was still Miss Doussot…” His eyes glazed over as he reached back into his memory, no doubt to that fateful ball. “We both fancied each other. I know it must have been so; I did not imagine it.”
The ball where she’d first laid eyes on Matthew. So finely built, with those tall, wide shoulders. So handsome with his sandy hair, his sweet, gentle eyes behind his spectacles. Her chest constricted; for a moment her heart seemed to stop beating. How would she carry on?
Cressida squared her shoulders and folded her hands in her lap. Somehow she would.
