Page 45 of A Night of Desire with a Duke
It was a pleasant suggestion, but no one so much as shifted an inch. This was better than any play at the theatre. They would not stir until the drama reached its climax.
“Lady Catherine.” James’s voice reached her, and when she blinked he was there before her, having crossed the garden withunnerving speed. His gaze burned into hers. “Might I have a word? Privately?”
“I believe I was already having a private word with Lady Catherine,” Pemberton said stiffly, his grip on the ring box tightening.
“Were you?” James did not so much as glance at him, his entire attention fixed on Catherine. “Forgive me, but I had the distinct impression that half of society was listening.”
“Perhaps because someone saw fit to make a rather vulgar public spectacle,” Pemberton snapped, his tone dripping with bitterness.
“Or perhaps,” James returned coolly, “someone saw fit to do what needed to be done.”
They circled her like dogs fighting over a scrap, neither man deigning to ask her what she wanted, both speaking as though she were an object rather than a woman with a will of her own. Catherine’s temper, frayed beyond bearing, and finally snapped.
“Enough.” Catherine’s voice cut through the garden like a whip. The two men turned to her in genuine surprise, as though the creature they were contesting had suddenly remembered she possessed claws.
“I am not a bone to be fought over by dogs,” she said, her words as sharp as glass. “I am a person—with my own thoughts, my own feelings, and my own agency. And at this moment, what I want is to be left alone.”
A stunned silence followed. Fans paused mid-flutter, the rustle of skirts stilled. Without waiting for a reply, Catherine turned on her heel and walked away, head held high, ignoring the shocked murmurs that rose behind her like a swarm of bees. The lantern light caught on her gown, glimmering like a shield as she cut through the garden.
She had made it perhaps twenty feet when a hand caught her arm.
“Catherine, wait.”
Of course it was James. Who else would dare? He had followed her, leaving behind the assembled crowd and almost certainly cementing every scrap of gossip Miss Worthing had sown.
“Do not touch me,” she hissed, jerking her arm from his grasp.
He released her at once but did not retreat. “We need to talk.”
“Now you want to talk?” Her voice shook, but not from fear. “After three months of silence, now you decide to speak?”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“By publicly declaring your intention to court me without asking whether I wished to be courted?” Her voice rose despite her effort to contain it. “By making me the centerpiece of a scandal I did not create?”
“Would you rather I had let them destroy you?” His own temper flared then, the careful ducal mask slipping to reveal something rawer beneath. “They were poised to crucify you, Catherine. Whispers become shouts. By next week you would have been ruined.”
“So instead you have what? Claimed me? Like some medieval baron laying siege?”
“I have protected you.”
“I did not ask for your protection.”
“No,” he said quietly, “you never ask for anything. Too proud, too stubborn, too determined to prove you need no one.”
“Because I do not.”
“Do you not?” He stepped closer, and she hated how her body betrayed her—how even now, furious and humiliated, some part of her wanted to lean into him. “You do not need anyone? You were not lonely these past months? You have not thought about that night?”
“Stop.”
“You have not lain awake remembering? Have not wondered what might have been if we had met differently? If I had been just James, and you had been just Catherine?”
Her breath caught, the words slicing through every defense she had built. “But you were never just James,” she said, tears burning at the edges of her vision. “You were always the Duke;bound by duty and expectation. And I was fool enough to believe, for one night, that it did not matter.”
"It doesn't matter."
"Of course it matters! Everything matters! You can't just... you can't just announce you're courting me and make everything all right."
