Chapter 9
If James had announced his intention to run naked through Hyde Park, the reaction could scarcely have been more dramatic. Gasps rang out, fans snapped open, and whispers surged through the crowd with the thrill of scandalous delight.
Catherine stood frozen, her mind scrambling to catch up. Court her? He intended to court her? Since when? Why now? And why, in heaven’s name, had he not thought to mention this intention to her before declaring it before half of London?
“Court her?” Miss Worthing’s voice had risen to a pitch that might have broken glass. “But you barely know her!”
“Don’t I?” James asked mildly, his tone silken and dangerous. “And how, precisely, would you know what I know or do not know, Miss Worthing? Are you privy to my thoughts? To my feelings? To my intentions?”
“But she’s… she’s already being courted by Lord Pemberton!”
Every head turned as one toward Pemberton, who still lingered at Catherine’s side. His face was blotched with heat, and in his white-knuckled hand he clutched the small ring box like a weapon he dared not use.
“Is she?” James’s gaze cut to him, sharp and unrelenting. “Has an understanding been reached? Have the banns been read? Forgive me, I must have missed the announcement.”
“No… no understanding has yet been reached,” Pemberton admitted, his voice carrying despite its curiously reedy quality.
His jaw worked furiously, his eyes darting between Catherine and James as though hoping to find an ally in either.
“But I daresay Lady Catherine knows her own mind. She is free to choose.”
He turned then, fixing Catherine with an expression meant to be wounded but steeped instead in reproach. “Aren’t you, Lady Catherine?”
It was less a question than an accusation, and Catherine felt her stomach turn. Any sympathy she might have once felt for him withered beneath the heat of so many stares.
The entire garden seemed to lean in, waiting. Catherine felt like an actress thrust onto a stage with no lines, no script, and an audience ravenous for her performance.
“I…” The word faltered on her lips, empty and unfinished.
“Perhaps,” Lady Sefton interjected at last, attempting to summon her authority as hostess, “we should all return to our refreshments and allow the young people to sort themselves out.”
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 with unnerving 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."
“Then what would you have me do?” His voice was rough now, ragged with frustration, his hands clenched at his sides as though the only thing keeping him from seizing her was sheer will. “Stand by and watch Pemberton court you? Watch him marry you? Watch him take what is mine?”
“I am not yours,” Catherine said. She meant it to sound firm, but the words emerged weak, trembling, unconvincing even to her own ears.
“Aren’t you?” His restraint snapped in that instant.
He reached out, the barest touch; just a finger beneath her chin, tipping her face up until her eyes locked with his.
His voice dropped to a husky challenge. “Tell me you haven’t thought about it.
Tell me you don’t remember. Tell me you don’t want me as fiercely, as desperately, as I want you. ”
Catherine’s breath hitched. Around them, laughter and music still floated from the lantern-lit garden, but the world had narrowed to the heat of his nearness, the dangerous intimacy of his gaze, the tingling awareness of his touch. They might as well have been alone.
“What I want,” she whispered carefully, fighting for control, “has never been the issue.”
“Hasn’t it? Then what is?” His thumb brushed along the soft curve of her jaw, a subtle caress that sent shivers racing down her spine.
“You know what.” Her voice was taut, her pulse betraying her. “You said it yourself that morning. We are from different worlds. You are a duke. I am the daughter of a dead earl, with no fortune, no connections beyond my aunt’s good graces.”
“I do not care about any of that.”
“You should.” She pulled back, though her body screamed in protest. “Your mother cares. Society cares.”
“Curse society.” His words were fierce, reckless, his mouth a breath away from hers.
“Can I?” she demanded, her voice shaking. “Is that why you spent three months ignoring me? Wouldn’t look at me, wouldn’t speak to me?”
For a heartbeat he said nothing. Then, when he spoke, his voice was raw, stripped bare. “I ignored you because seeing you was agony. Because every time you crossed my path, all I could think of was that night. The taste of your skin. The way you sounded when you...”
“Stop.” Catherine cut him off sharply, her eyes darting around in panic, making sure no one was close enough to overhear. Her cheeks burned scarlet, her body betraying her outrage with desire.
“Why?” he murmured, his lips almost brushing hers. “It is the truth. You want to know why I stayed away? Because if I let myself near you, I knew I would do something unforgivable. Something reckless. Something like tonight—staking a public claim I had no right to stake.”
“Then why did you?” she asked, her voice breaking under the weight of her own need.
“Because the thought of you ruined by gossip was unbearable.” His eyes burned into hers, fierce with hunger and torment. “But the thought of you in Pemberton’s arms? As his wife?” He gave a bitter, humorless laugh. “That would destroy me. That would kill me.”
Catherine stared at him, her heart pounding wildly. Here he stood...the man who had stolen her innocence in one night of reckless passion and who had held her heart captive ever since, breaking it slowly, relentlessly, with every cruel silence and every unbearable look.
"I can't do this," she said finally. "Not here, not now, not with everyone watching and waiting for me to fall."
"Then when? Where?"
"I don't know. I need to think."
"Catherine..."