Chapter 32 #2
She wants to ask about it—and she will—but later. For now, she needs a moment alone to think and to dress herself. After her time aboard The Elphame, the idea of having someone to do it for her feels ridiculous in a way she’s never realized before.
“I really can manage,” Catherine says to Claire, but the young woman doesn’t leave her.
“Mrs. Masters says I’m to give you anything you might need, Miss.”
What I need is a moment to myself, she thinks.
But what she says is, “How kind of Mrs. Masters. And where is the lady now?”
“She’s waiting on you for tea.” Claire pauses, and a knowing smile creeps over her face. “She is eager to hear your story, I think.”
Of course she is. What use is the latest on-dit without all the juicy details? None, that’s what.
Catherine stifles a roll of her eyes.
Graciousness, she reminds herself.
If Mrs. Masters needs to hear that story to accept her into this household, she’ll give it to her. Because Rogers has been clear that this is the best way to find Andrew, and she will do what it takes, for as long as it takes, to get him back.
“Then I suppose I must hurry,” Catherine says. “We wouldn’t want to keep her waiting.”
And so she’s bathed and dressed as she has been every day of her life since birth. Every day, that is, except those she spent aboard The Elphame.
She pushes those thoughts from her mind and lets her body go through the motions. It knows them as well as it knows how to breathe: when to step into her underskirts, when to hold her arms out, when to breathe in for the corset to be drawn.
She’s irritated and dismayed by how quickly she falls back into the routine. Perhaps, she thinks, her time on The Elphame has not changed her as much as she imagined.
But no.
She shakes her head slightly. She is different; she knows she is. Because of herself and because of him.
Because he loves her.
He’s never said it, but she thinks she knows.
She knows for certain she loves him. There is no mistaking the ache in her heart at his absence or the worry about his well-being that keeps her up all night.
The way her mind turns back to him over and over, as if there is little else in this world that matters.
I’ll find you, Andrew, she thinks once more, letting the words soothe her as she makes her way down the stairs in a borrowed dress for tea.
Catherine primly takes her seat on the ornate, serpentine-style sofa (the same as is popular back in London) as Mrs. Masters gestures to the well-appointed room behind her.
“Of course we’ll have all this re-done,” she says. “Uncle has only recently been appointed the governorship, after he was knighted, so it’s a bit out of date. It’s just murder to find a decent fabric here. You really wouldn’t believe it.”
“It must be hard,” Catherine agrees.
“But Uncle deserves the best. He was knighted, after all.”
“So you mentioned.” Catherine endeavors to look suitably impressed. “And how kind of you to be of service to your family,” she adds, remembering she means to be inculcating a relationship here. “Sir Cleveland is lucky to have you.”
“One must do their part,” Mrs. Masters says. “What with my aunt ill in bed and my uncle busy with his affairs, someone has to see to the residence. He was so successful in Guyana, you know, that the queen personally asked for him to take over Jamaica.”
“For queen and country,” Catherine murmurs, and her thoughts turn to Claire and the question of slavery. She tries to imagine how to broach the subject with Mrs. Masters.
She might ask Claire too, but then she thinks of Andrew’s words to her: I don’t have the time nor inclination to explain myself to you, and she wonders if that’s why he has those books on Jamaica and the West Indies. So he can find out for himself without having to ask.
She wishes she’d read them, but she hadn’t. She will though, just as soon as she can. She can educate herself, too.
And Mrs. Masters is sipping at her tea and already moving the conversation back to Catherine’s shipwreck story. “It must be quite a shock for you to set out for Boston and end up in Jamaica instead.”
“Indeed it is.”
Truly. You have no idea how much.
“Do tell me the details, my dear. Uncle will want to know everything when he returns. Oh, and you must stay through Yule. We are hosting a Christmas Ball next week! It will be the event of the year here in Spanish Town, and you’ll have an opportunity to meet all of the prominent families.
Perhaps one will hire you on and you will stay here with us in Jamaica! ”
“A Christmas Ball!” Catherine says, trying to imbue her voice with as much enthusiasm as she can manage.
“Indeed. It’s a tradition. And I heard a rumor that the Duke of Barclay may be returning for it. Won’t that be something? The man hasn’t been back to the island in an age. And to think, he’ll return now just for our little party. What a coup that will be.”
The Duke of Barclay. Andrew’s brother. Andrew’s secret brother.
She leans forward, senses alert. Could it be only a coincidence that Barclay has returned here, now, to the island where McGann has been taken as a captive? That hardly seems possible.
“Tell me more about him,” she says, “the duke.”
Mrs. Masters flashes her a patronizing smile. “Now, don’t get your hopes up, dear. He is a duke, after all.”
Far out of bounds for a common governess is what she means. And at this moment, Catherine thinks, that’s truer than it’s ever been before in her life. A duke wouldn’t come within a nautical mile of the reputation that Lady Catherine West has left in her wake.
“And,” Mrs. Masters continues, “you were going to tell me all about your sea voyage.”
Catherine smiles. The less she speaks about the fictitious sea voyage, the better for everyone.
“Oh,” she says, shifting the conversation back to Barclay, “I’ve no hopes at all for the duke. Not romantically, of course. It is only my curiosity that made me ask. I’ve never met a duke before.”
“Well,” Mrs. Masters says, seeming either not to notice or not to mind that Catherine didn’t answer her question.
“I’ve never met the man myself, either. I’ve only just arrived here.
But I hear he’s quite ducal, if you know what I mean.
A gentleman who knows what he’s about. We all hope he’ll return to live here one day, as his father did.
Before—well—that’s old gossip. You wouldn’t want to hear it. ”
Catherine demurely takes a sip of her tea.
“Oh, but I would,” she says, wondering how thickly she should lay it on.
A little more thickly, perhaps, if this woman is anything like the doyennes of the ton, for whom a dose of flattery is always the correct medicine.
“Old gossip is quite the best kind, is it not? And I’m certain you tell a marvelous story. Do go on. Please.”
“Well,” Mrs. Masters says, “the former duke, may he rest in peace, came to Jamaica because he hoped the air would be helpful to his first wife. She was ill at the time, and the duke brought her here all the way from Scotland. With their young daughter, no less.”
Catherine nods her head as Mrs. Masters speaks. The young daughter, she knows, is Esmee, McGann’s half-sister. And her flattery seems to be working on Mrs. Masters quite well. The lessons learned on the marriage mart really are more applicable than she’s ever imagined.
“And then what happened?” she asks, making sure her eyes are as round and wide as she can make them.
“The rumor is,” and here the woman leans forward and lowers her voice, a look of obvious delight in her eyes, “that he took up with his wife’s nurse. Before the duchess was even properly laid in the ground.”
“You don’t say.” Catherine puts her hand to her chest in fake indignation. “With that poor daughter motherless?”
“Indeed. And then nature took its course, as it will. Apparently, the duke was quite virile, if you know what I mean, and soon enough, the nurse was increasing too.”
“My stars!” Catherine gasps, even though she doesn’t want to hear any more because she knows they’re leading up to Andrew and something like nausea has begun to work its way through her body.
She doesn’t want to gossip about him. She doesn’t like the light that’s glowing in Mrs. Masters’s eyes at the telling of this story, even though she knows full well she’s been the one to urge the woman on.
“Oh, dear.” Mrs. Masters’s pupils have grown wide. “That’s not even the worst of it. The worst of it is that the nurse was a Negro. And the duke took the child as his own and departed back for Scotland with him and the little girl both.”
“He acknowledged the boy?” she asks, while her mind is processing the thrill it seems to give her hostess to tell Andrew’s story.
The ton, she knows from her own experience, would be a hundred times more vicious in their telling.
No wonder he keeps his relation to Barclay a secret.
Otherwise, he’d be at the arse-end of these kinds of stories his entire life.
He’d never be able to walk into a room without sidelong glances and sneers and too-loud whispers about him.
She closes her eyes and breathes in deeply. She wants to cast up her accounts and palm-strike the woman in the face at the same time, but she does neither. Of course she does neither.
“I don’t know what happened when Barclay returned to England,” Mrs. Masters goes on. “Most here were shocked he even took the child with him at all. The next duchess surely had words with him. And given that she produced the heir, well—” She shrugs, as if that says it all.
Everything for the heir, Catherine thinks. All for a title. Your father, your brother. My father, too. And neither of our mothers able to stop them.
She shakes her head at the absurdity of it all. And it seems all the more absurd, all the more vulgar, that her countrymen not only let that system rule their lives but that they’ve gone so far as to reproduce it here. An entire ocean away!
“And the current duke is here now,” she asks. “In Jamaica?”
“So it seems. Word is the lights on the estate have been turned on and the furniture is being aired out. I do hope he arrives in time for the Yule Ball. Promise me you’ll stay for it.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of leaving before,” Catherine says.
Not before she finds Andrew. His brother’s presence is all the confirmation she needs that he is here, in Jamaica. And not before she understands how the key—removed from her trouser pocket hours ago and discreetly nestled into her corset now—can ensure his safety.
“Wonderful,” Mrs. Masters says, and then moves the conversation on to the weather and Jamaica’s most prominent families. Catherine lets the words wash over her like a stream of noise.
She nods in all the right places, but she is only partly paying attention to the idle talk. She needs to find Rogers and tell him about Barclay. She needs to know if he’s had any luck in tracking down Andrew today at all.
“Don’t you think so, Miss Hope?” Mrs. Masters says, and Catherine quickly agrees, although she has no idea what it is she’s agreeing to.
She really must pay better attention. This woman has put her up, after all.
Has given her clothes and food and a roof over her head.
She shouldn’t be unkind. She just feels so wholly out of sorts with an afternoon spent trading gossip.
She imagines that would be true whether or not the gossip revolved around Andrew, but the fact it was about him made it all the more galling.
It’s as if she’s slipped back on a favorite gown only to find it now too small for her, binding and pinching in places it shouldn’t. She squirms a little in her seat.
Lady Catherine West could handle this tea—and the dinner that is surely to follow—with aplomb. She would laugh charmingly and tell appropriate anecdotes and generally be gracious and lively.
But that version of Catherine is gone, left back in that country church in Surrey. She’s brought with her what she needs and left the rest behind: reputations and wedding dresses, jilted fiancés and the ton’s expectations. All fodder for a life that is not hers now and never will be again.
To hell with it all, she thinks. Fathers and brothers and their precious titles and a world created solely to further them.
She doesn’t want anything to do with that world. She is different now. Exhausted and lonely certainly, but also a woman of her own making. One who wants to be back aboard The Elphame with Andrew McGann as soon as possible.
I will find you, she promises him again. I will.