Chapter 16 #2
“Can you not?” Miss Worthing’s smile widened. She reached delicately into her reticule and withdrew a folded sheet of paper. “Then perhaps this will refresh your memory. The inn’s register, from a particularly stormy night three months past.”
Catherine stared at it as though it were a loaded pistol. The register. Of course there had been one. How could she and James have been so reckless? For one mad night they had forgotten the world—and the world, it seemed, had not forgotten them.
Her mouth was dry. “That proves nothing,” she said, though her voice came out too low, too strained.
“Doesn’t it?” Miss Worthing’s tone dripped false innocence. “It lists a Mr. Wrentham and a Miss Mayfer, sharing the corner chambers. How very cosy. Oh, and I do happen to have a witness who saw considerably more than that.”
“You’re lying.”
“Am I?” Miss Worthing’s lashes swept up. “My witness claims they saw you leaving Mr. Wrentham’s chamber the next morning. Not your own. His. Wearing nothing but your nightgown.”
Catherine’s composure wavered for the briefest instant.
Her breath caught; her vision dimmed around the edges.
Because it was true. All of it. She had left James’s room in the dawn light, her gown rumpled, her hair undone, her heart still racing from the night before.
But nobody could have seen that as their rooms were in the same chambers.
She never left the chambers, she did not have to.
Miss Worthing leaned in slightly, her voice silk-soft but sharpened to a blade. “Shall we test it? Shall I share this little document with our esteemed company? Let London’s finest judge whether their perfect duchess-to-be is quite as pure as she pretends?”
Catherine’s hand tightened around her fan until it cracked.
Around them, she could feel the shift, the curious glances, the subtle hush of a crowd that sensed blood in the water.
Her heart hammered painfully against her ribs.
Every instinct screamed to run, to deny, to fight but her voice seemed trapped in her throat.
In three days she was meant to be a duchess. In three minutes, she could be ruined.
Catherine felt the world tilt. Everything she'd built with James over these weeks, their careful courtship, society's acceptance, it would all crumble. She'd be ruined. James would be forced to either abandon her or marry her under a cloud of scandal that would follow them forever.
"What do you want?" she asked quietly.
"Want? Oh, I don't want anything. I simply thought the ton should know the truth about their darling couple. That you're not the innocent you pretend to be. That you trapped the Duke into marriage by seducing him at an inn."
"That's not..."
"Isn't it? A convenient storm, a shortage of rooms, a young lady who just happens to end up in a duke's bed? It's the oldest trick in the book."
"You vindictive little..."
"Miss Worthing." James's voice cut through her response like a blade through silk. "How unexpected to see you here."
He stood beside Catherine, close enough that she could feel the anger radiating from him. He'd heard. Somehow, he'd heard everything.
"Your Grace," Miss Worthing simpered, though her triumph dimmed slightly at his expression. "I was just congratulating Lady Catherine on your upcoming nuptials."
"Were you? How kind. And what's that you're holding?"
"Oh, this? Just some interesting documentation I acquired."
James’s expression did not change, but Catherine saw the flicker of something dark in his eyes; anger so contained it was more terrifying than any outburst. He turned the paper over once, twice, as if idly examining the texture, though his jaw had gone rigid enough to crack marble.
Around them, the ballroom was frozen. Music had ceased; fans hung motionless in the air. London’s finest were gathered like vultures, the perfume of gossip sweet as blood. Catherine could hear her own heartbeat pounding in her ears, could feel every breath scraping through her chest.
“Fascinating,” James said at last, his voice quiet and even, the calm before the storm. “This is indeed from the Black Swan’s register.”
Miss Worthing’s smile brightened, triumphant. “Yes! From the night of the great storm. When Lady Catherine was supposedly traveling alone to London.”
“I see.” James’s gaze moved down the page, his tone almost conversational. “Mr. Wrentham and Miss Mayfer. The corner chambers.” He lifted his head, meeting Miss Worthing’s eyes with unnerving stillness. “Tell me, how did you acquire this?”
“That is hardly relevant.”
“Oh, but it is,” he interrupted softly, the edge in his voice silken and lethal. “Did you steal it, Miss Worthing? Or bribe someone to hand it over? Or perhaps you sent some unfortunate soul to lurk in hallways and peer through keyholes? Do enlighten us as to your methods.”
“I have a witness.”
“Ah, yes,” James murmured, stepping a fraction closer. “Your witness. Someone who, if I understand correctly, spent a stormy night skulking about an inn, spying on its guests. Charming.”
A ripple went through the crowd—gasps, murmurs, the faint crackle of suppressed laughter. The angle of the scandal had shifted; Miss Worthing was no longer the righteous accuser but the prying busybody.
Her cheeks flushed. “They saw Lady Catherine leaving your room!” she cried, voice rising to the brittle pitch of desperation. “In her nightclothes!”
Catherine’s breath caught. The words hung in the air like a cannon shot. She could feel the stares, the collective inhale of a hundred spectators waiting for the Duke’s fury or his shame.
James did not so much as blink. “Did they?” he asked, his tone soft enough to make the hairs rise on the back of Catherine’s neck. “Your witness saw Lady Catherine, specifically Lady Catherine, leaving a room at an inn during a storm?”
“Yes,” Miss Worthing said quickly, sensing victory. “They’re quite certain.”
“They’re certain?” James repeated, taking another slow step forward. “So certain they would swear it publicly? Before witnesses? Before the law?”
Miss Worthing hesitated. “I...well...yes, of course.”
“Because what you’re describing,” James said, still perfectly calm, “is slander. Criminal slander, in fact, since it involves a peer’s daughter three days before her wedding.”
A rustle of shock rippled through the crowd. Even the most hardened gossip looked uneasy.
Miss Worthing’s eyes flashed. “It is not slander if it’s true!”
That was her mistake.
James’s smile was slight and merciless. “Then by all means, let us test it,” he said, his voice dropping low, dangerous.
“Produce your witness. Let them stand before this company and swear they saw Lady Catherine, my betrothed, at such an hour, in such a state. Let them admit they were prowling about an inn, peeping into rooms during a storm, committing acts so far beneath the standards of decency that even the servants would blush. Shall we?”
The silence that followed was absolute. Catherine could see Miss Worthing’s confidence faltering, her hand tightening on her fan, her color fading as she realized the trap closing around her.
James took another step, folding the register page neatly in half.
“No? James’s voice rose, crisp and controlled, every syllable cast so that it reached the farthest corners of the ballroom.
The effect was devastating: where once there had been a whirl of speculation and excitement, there was now a hush like the moment before a thunderclap.
“Furthermore,” he continued, “you have possessed this so-called evidence for weeks, perhaps months, and you elected to disclose it three days before a wedding. That does not bespeak concern for propriety, Miss Worthing. It bespeaks blackmail.”
A ripple of astonishment moved through the assembly.
The word “blackmail,” plain and legal, fell like ice.
Faces exchanged quick, sharp glances; the merriment dissolved into a very particular, very English alarm.
Catherine felt her pulse in her throat and was dimly aware of her own breathing as if it belonged to someone standing beside her.
“I am endeavouring to protect society from scandal,” Miss Worthing protested, her voice thin with the failing of her plan. She raised the register as though it were a talisman; its paper looked suddenly ridiculous in her fingers.
“You are endeavouring to ruin an innocent woman from motives of wounded vanity,” James replied, each phrase measured as if delivered from the end of a tribunal.
“And by means that, if properly examined, are criminal.” He paused, and in that pause the name of offence.
..“theft, bribery, conspiracy to slander”, murmured about the room like a disquieting chorus.
Catherine’s thoughts were a ricochet of terror and gratitude.
Someone had seen them at the inn and the memory of that dawn returned to her with brutal clarity.
She saw again the low light, heard again the murmur of James’s voice in the dark; shame and a fierce, fierce gladness warred within her.
Yet James stood between her and ruin like a wall of cold iron, and the steadiness of his manner steadied her with it.
Miss Worthing, for a moment, tried to recover. “But she was there,” she insisted. “With you , in the same chambers.”
“Yes,” James admitted simply, and the admission itself took the air from the room.
“We were both at the Black Swan that night. I was travelling to a dying father; Miss Mayfer was fleeing an unwanted betrothal. We were given separate accommodation in a house crowded with strangers. We met in the public rooms. Nothing indecent occurred.”
The subtlety of his defence was genius: he conceded enough to make her boast seem mean and petty and then explained the ordinary facts in such a manner that the insinuation crumbled.
He spoke of servants, of the corner chambers’ two bedrooms, of the presence of a maid; little details that sounded dull but which, in context, were incontrovertible.