Chapter 11
“Stop squinting at the ledgers, Cathy,” Madeline admonished. “If you keep this up, you will require spectacles—huge ones—later on. You will have permanent lines on your forehead before you turn thirty.”
Cathy did not look up from the ink she was inspecting. Her quill had found a graceful rhythm, finding solace in the scratching sound.
“I must finish this, Maddy,” she replied. “My forehead is fine, for now, and I have no care for what people say about my appearance. It will always be my height that will have everyone in a flutter. But this? This ledger shows a miscalculation on the wheat.”
“Can’t His Grace’s men handle a few tithes? You are on your honeymoon, and you are worrying about us?”
“Maddy, you know me. I did not marry the Duke for the fun of it,” Cathy said quietly, as she set the quill down only to rub the ink stain from her fingers.
“The scandal would have ruined us, and after Papa left us, we would have been destitute. But yesterday, I made it clear to the Duke that this is nothing more than an arrangement.”
Her voice was calm, and she took care to look more cheerful. However, she could still remember the loss, the physical pain she felt when she told Tristan that she did not feel a thing during their kiss.
A lie.
She lied to him. While she had no experience kissing other men, she knew that part of the attraction of the kiss was him. He offered a dangerous pull that she had to avoid as early as possible.
“He is a duke,” Portia said, “not a gaoler. However, sometimes, it feels that he is, given the way you flee Baxter Hall every morning. You appear to be escaping something akin to the Tower of London!”
“I am not fleeing,” Cathy said. The lie tasted exactly as bitter as it had the last three times she had said it. “I am here because someone must manage the effects of Papa’s debts. The Duke’s name is an effective shield, but it cannot balance an account on its own.”
“Is that truly all it is?” Portia asked, without looking up from her book. For someone who rarely participated in conversations, she had an irritating habit of saying the most piercing things when she did. “Because from where I am sitting, it looks considerably more like running away.”
“Portia,” Cathy warned.
“I am merely observing,” her sister replied serenely, turning a page.
Madeline leaned forward, her elbows on the table, her eyes searching Cathy’s face with that particular brand of sunny persistence that was impossible to deflect. “Is it the kiss?”
Cathy’s quill stopped moving.
“What kiss?” she said, after a beat that was precisely one beat too long.
“You have been like this since the morning after the wedding breakfast,” Madeline said gently. “I know you, Cathy. I have known you my entire life. You are not merely worried about wheat tithes. I can tell that something happened between you.”
Cathy set her quill down. She pressed her ink-stained fingers flat against the table and looked at her sister for a long moment. Madeline’s face was open and warm and utterly without judgment, which was somehow the most difficult thing to face.
“I told him I felt nothing,” she said at last.
Madeline blinked. “Was that true?”
“It was practical,” Cathy said.
“That is not what I asked.”
Cathy stood, her height filling the small room.
She began organizing her papers. “It does not matter what I felt. What matters is what I know. And what I know is this: men like Tristan are only satisfied with the thrill of the chase. The moment the pursuit ends, so does the interest. I have watched Papa chase the bottom of a bottle his entire life. I have watched him pursue one bad decision after another with great enthusiasm and no follow-through whatsoever. I will not be another thing a man picks up and puts down when it no longer amuses him.”
“The Duke is not Papa,” Madeline said quietly.
“No,” Cathy agreed, stacking the last of her ledgers. “He is more charming, which makes him considerably more—”
The door swung open. Lady Marlow swept in, her cane striking the floor in its familiar rhythm. Lord Marlow shuffled in behind her, Napoleon draped across his arms, his ear trumpet dangling from his coat pocket.
“I could hear that name from the hallway,” Lady Marlow announced, settling herself into the nearest chair as if she had always intended to be there.
“I will not have it in my drawing room. I have had quite enough of Harleigh Quinten to last several lifetimes, and I intend to spend whatever years remain to me in blissful ignorance of his whereabouts and activities.”
“We were not speaking of Papa, Grandmama,” Madeline offered carefully.
Lady Marlow’s eyes swept the room and landed on Cathy’s ink-stained fingers, the untouched tea, and the too-composed expression on her face.
“Who are we speaking of, then?” Lord Marlow asked pleasantly, settling into the armchair by the window. Napoleon immediately made himself comfortable and began to purr with great self-importance. “Did someone say something about cake? I would not say no to a slice.”
“Nobody said cake, Norman,” Lady Marlow said into his trumpet.
“Lake?” He brightened considerably. “Splendid idea. A bit cold for it, but I have bathed in worse conditions. There was a river in Portugal in December of ought-two that would have—”
“Grandpapa,” Cathy interrupted gently. “We were speaking of the Duke.”
“The cook?” Lord Marlow looked delighted. “Excellent fellow. Does something remarkable with a pheasant. You are a lucky girl, Cathy.”
“The Duke,” Lady Marlow repeated loudly into the trumpet. “Her husband. The Duke of Baxter.”
“Ah.” Lord Marlow nodded sagely. “Is he giving you grief, my dear?”
“No, Grandpapa,” Cathy said. “Everything is perfectly fine.”
“Napoleon also says everything is perfectly fine when he has done something terrible,” he observed mildly. “Usually just before we discover what it was.”
Lady Marlow made a sound that might, in a less composed woman, have been a snort.
“What your grandfather means,” she said, smoothing her skirts, “is that you may tell us it is fine as many times as you wish. We are old, not foolish. Though I am not sure I can say that for your grandfather.” She met Cathy’s eyes.
“You chose duty over everything else for your entire life. There is no shame in occasionally choosing something else.”
“I am choosing duty now,” Cathy said quietly.
“Yes,” her grandmother agreed. “So I see.”
Silence settled over the room. Even Portia had given up the pretense of reading.
Cathy kissed her grandfather on his weathered cheek, then her grandmother’s, then Madeline’s forehead. She gathered her ledgers, tucked them under her arm, and made for the door.
“The cake was excellent, by the way!” Lord Marlow called after her cheerfully. “Tell the cook I said so.”
“I will, Grandpapa.”
She told herself, on the carriage ride back to Baxter Hall, that she believed every word she had just said. She told herself this with some conviction.
She was becoming quite the accomplished liar.
Cathy knew that while her visits to her sisters gave her reprieve, she had no choice but to always return home.
Her reputation and theirs depended on this slow and agonizing daily retreat.
The carriage ride back to Baxter Hall each evening had become its own particular form of torture.
She would sit with her ledgers in her lap and her eyes fixed on the passing streets, and she would think about him anyway.
The way he had looked down at her. On her lips.
Not many people could look at her from above, but he had the height for it—and the audacity.
She thought about that rather more than she would have liked.
She thought about the lie she had told him even more.
I felt nothing.
She thought that the Duke’s keeping his word and staying away from her would help matters.
She had been wrong about that, too. He had not set foot in her chambers since that night.
He barely spared her a glance during their shared meals.
He was perfectly, impeccably, maddeningly civil, and somehow that was worse than anything else he could have done.
She had braced herself for pursuit. For the rake’s persistence that everyone warned her about.
Instead, she got silence and the occasional politely worded inquiry about the weather.
It was, she decided, absolutely intolerable.
I felt nothing.
She knew the sentence was a lie. However, she had already made the mistakes that led her to where she was. Marrying a rake was the last thing she thought she would ever do.
Each meal shared with her husband was a test in endurance, but dinners were the worst. Both Cathy and Tristan would have to eat multiple courses in the most elaborate setting.
They had to play a role for the staff for longer while enveloped by the scent of roasted meats, buttered asparagus, and fine cheeses.
“Would you care for some claret, Your Grace?” the butler asked, his voice polite and neutral as always.
“No, thank you, Henderson,” Cathy replied, taking a deep breath.
Across from her, her husband sat looking perfectly composed and entirely unreachable.
His cravat was immaculate. His expression gave nothing away.
She was not certain what she expected to find.
Some evidence that the man who had pressed his body to hers and told her he had spent five days acutely aware of every hour she was not in the house was still somewhere beneath that impeccable surface.
There was nothing. Or if there was, he was considerably better at hiding it than she was.
“So,” he began, “are the Marlow accounts finally settled?”
She was startled that he even asked, but she somehow managed to compose herself.
“Almost,” she answered, even though she was not entirely certain.
“You spend so much time there, I am sure they must be in order by now.”
“Apart from the ledgers, I have to check in with my sisters as well, ensure their well-being.”
“You remind me daily of your duty to them,” he said. “Well, I would be loath to keep you from those duties.”
She swallowed a bite of her meat, trying her best not to make a sound. What was that? Was he baiting her?
Dinner continued in silence, one that made her ears ring.
He did not look at her at all, seemingly focused on his task of slicing and eating his food.
Meanwhile, she could not help but glance at his face, and even those hands that had held her so tightly.
Capable hands. She hated that she was so focused on them, and the jolt it gave her stomach, making it flip.
I should do better.
The next day, the sun was as bright as ever. It almost felt like a mockery with its warmth and joy, streaming through Baxter Hall like the opposite of the plague.
Cathy spent most of the morning still on the Marlow accounts, even though she had told her indifferent husband they were almost done. She had so much to think about and to consider.
Portia’s education.
Selina’s dowry.
Given how she handled her last few interactions with the Duke, it was a considerable humiliation to talk to him about these expenses.
“I would like to take my work to the terrace,” she told Lottie, a passing maid. “I need some air.”
“Of course, Your Grace. One must take full advantage of the pleasant weather.”
She gathered her ledgers and found a hidden spot near the east lawn, where the manicured gardens converged with the more rugged servants’ path. There was a stone bench there, and a broad, flat piece of bark that served admirably as a surface for her papers.
“There you go,” she said, feeling pleased with herself.
For a while, the decision seemed like the best one. She found herself immersed in her numbers, happy to see she had made some progress on the problematic sections. The small, clean satisfaction of a number resolving itself into sense was one of life’s more reliable pleasures.
Then, the sound began.
Thwack.
“W-what was that?”
The sound was rhythmic and sharp. As she continued listening, she realized what it was. It was the sound of chopping. Who could be doing that in this part of the garden?
She was no expert, but she thought the sounds were too aggressive for a servant or common laborer. Whoever was doing it was not only chopping wood but was also chopping some dark thoughts away, it seemed.
Her curiosity won out. She stood, smoothed her skirts, and approached the clearing. The sight that welcomed her made her stop in her tracks. It was a good thing she had rested her ledger on the bark, or else it would have slipped from her fingers.
Tristan was there, chopping wood.
He was also doing it half-naked.