Chapter 42
Chapter
Catherine goes through the motions of her toilette as if she’s sleepwalking.
She feels empty and as heavy as the air outside.
Claire fits her into the ballgown Elizabeth has chosen for her—one of her aunt’s, quickly re-fitted for Catherine’s slim, strong figure.
She threads pearls through her hair and clasps Catherine’s earrings onto her ears.
Catherine sits and rises and inhales on command. She knows the choreography of this dance and executes each step until she is coiffed and pressed to perfection.
And then, it’s time.
She makes her way down the stairs to meet Elizabeth and Sir Cleveland and to partake in the small family-and-friends dinner that precedes the Ball.
She greets the guests, curtsies, smiles.
She sits for dinner and lets the conversation flow around her while she nods—graciously, she hopes—in all the right places.
But her insides feel like a sinkstone, dragging her down while the evening moves past her on a current of its own. She tries not to be taken under by it.
And then the orchestra sets up, and the majordomo begins announcing guests for the Yule Ball, and she’s standing in the corner, drinking her champagne.
It doesn’t make her feel warm or bubbly inside.
It doesn’t make her feel anything except for a slight headache. And maybe a queasiness in her stomach.
She assumes Andrew will come eventually. She knows the invitation was sent this morning and accepted. But he isn’t here yet.
She dances with Sir Cleveland and a few other gentlemen of prominent families, doing her best not to look for Andrew. The whole evening becomes a blur, until she finds herself back in her corner again, drinking another glass of champagne.
She tries to remember not to get drunk.
McGann looks at himself in the mirror. “I look like an eejit,” he says crossly to his gran.
The two of them are ensconced at the manor house. He’d accepted the invitation to the Yule Ball tonight because he knew Catherine would be there. He has to speak with her—and if it means going to a bloody ball to do it, he’ll go to a bloody ball.
But he certainly hadn’t packed evening wear aboard The Elphame. So, here he is, against his better judgment, trying on his brother’s suit.
“You look handsome, child. Stop whining,” his gran says. “It’s just a dance.”
“Then why won’t you attend?” he asks, turning his face toward her from the mirror. “You’re the duke’s grandmother, after all.”
“Because I don’t want to, that’s why.”
“And I do?”
Although, he knows he does. He has to put to rest the fear that’s been invading his heart since Catherine left his room this morning—that even after all this, he doesn’t get to keep her.
“Of course you do, Andrew. Or you wouldn’t be standing here in your suit.”
“It’s my brother’s suit,” he mutters. “And I feel like an eejit in it.”
“It’s your suit, child. It’s all yours.” She walks over to him and lays a hand on his arm.
“I know you don’t want this,” she says. “Because you think it’s your father’s.
But it’s not only that. It’s your mother’s gift to you too.
Ama’s marriage gave it to you, just as much as your father did.
And by right of your birth, it’s yours. Same as the shape of your face and the curl in your hair and the color of your skin. ”
He sits heavily in the chair beside the mirror.
His gran is right. His mother had given him all of this by marrying his father.
And he ought to accept it as that—as his birthright—and not as a way to secure Catherine or even to make a difference in the world.
He doesn’t need a dukedom for that, though it’ll certainly make it easier.
His grandmother moves to the wardrobe and begins rummaging around before she pulls out a walking stick with a flourish.
“Here!” she says, holding it out. It isn’t just any walking stick, either—it’s made of ebony, the wood sleek and dark, tipped with a gold handle embossed with a regal, looping B.
“There now,” she says. “That will do it.”
“Aye.” He rises from the chair, taking the cane. It’s probably more expensive than anything else he’s ever owned.
And now he has a manor full of such items. He hardly knows what to think of it, except that he’s glad for the cane, even an overwrought one like this. His damn leg still aches.
“Stay off that leg as much as you can tonight,” his grandmother says. “You’re still healing.”
“Aye.”
“And hold your head high, Andrew. You’re the duke now.”
He turns to look at her. “Are you worried about me?”
“Of course I am,” she says and laughs at him. “It’s my right to be, as your grandmother, and I won’t hear a word about it. Now go have fun, Andrew. Find that pretty girl and dance with her.”
“If she’ll have me,” he mutters, putting on his top hat.
“Have you asked her?”
“Nay. Not as such.”
“Then you ought to.” She takes his elbow, leading him out the door of his own manor house. “Presumptions and assumptions never did anybody a lick of good. Another thing you learn if you get to be my age.”
At the threshold, he leans down to kiss her white shock of hair, then steps outside to the waiting carriage. It’s brand new, emblazoned with a giant B on the side. No wonder the former Barclay needed funds so badly—the man clearly spent every dime he ever had.
McGann can’t even imagine what it costs to procure such a carriage in Jamaica or, bloody hell, to have one shipped over.
No more, he thinks. This duke is putting every penny to better use than this shite.
He climbs into the carriage—slowly, because of his leg—and knocks on the roof.
As the horses cut through the warm night air, he allows himself to appreciate how well-sprung the thing is.
His leg hardly throbs at all, the ride is so smooth.
And then, before he’s ready for it, he’s arrived at the governor general’s mansion and the Yule Ball.
He climbs out of the carriage slowly, more nervous than he expects.
He’s spent his life as a salty sea-tar who hasn’t cared a whit what people thought of him, which was well enough, because no one thought of him all that often.
But he’s a duke now and he has a feeling that’s about to change very suddenly.
Still don’t have to care a whit, he reminds himself and throws back his considerable shoulders. Then he leans his weight on his very expensive cane and makes his way inside.
“The Duke of Barclay,” the majordomo announces, and all heads turn his way. He scans their eager faces, looking only for one.
As soon as he spots her, sitting alone in the corner nursing a glass of champagne, he starts his descent down the stairs and into the fray.
Even with the cane, his limp is pronounced, and he drags his leg behind him slowly.
His pace is made even slower by the crush of attendees who all seem desperate to meet the new duke.
He’d been worried they wouldn’t accept him—that they’d turn their heads, give him the cut direct, or hell, spit in his face. But he’d been wrong to worry because they throng around him.
By Elphame, he thinks, what a title can do.
He understands suddenly what Catherine meant when she said Lady Catherine West was just a title, not who she was. He’s no different a man than he was yesterday, and yesterday he likely wouldn’t even have been invited to this fête, whereas today he’s its star.
All because of the dukedom—and nothing to do with him.
He wants to get to her as quickly as possible. To tell her he understands. But he can’t ignore the outstretched hands. Or the smiles and greetings.
He does his best to make his way through the crowd. She’s seated in the corner, looking so heartbreakingly sad. He knows she sees him. Bloody hell, everyone sees him. He’s taller by half a head than anyone else in the room.
But she doesn’t rise to greet him. Doesn’t make her way toward him. She just sits there, staring into space, while person after person positions themselves between them with a hand to shake and a name to give.
A waltz begins to play, and some eager lad invites her to dance. McGann watches as she accepts, and his fists curl at his sides with the effort of not storming the dance floor after her. He has no right. She can dance with whomever she wants. Whomever asks her. And he hasn’t asked, not yet.
He thinks of last night. How she said, Let us just be Andrew and Catherine… until the rain stops.
And he hadn’t understood what she meant. That when the rain stopped, she’d be gone. He’d made presumptions and assumptions: that once he had her in his arms, he’d get to keep her. That being a bloody duke would let him keep her.
But not even that has worked. In fact, it appears to be the opposite. It’s the dukedom she doesn’t want.
He finally reaches her when the music ends.
“Lady Catherine,” he says, and she turns to him, releasing the arm of the young man she just danced with. He says it so she’ll correct him, but she doesn’t. She just sinks into a curtsy and says, “Your Grace.”
“Catherine? Look at me, lass,” he whispers once the lad has moved on.
She tilts her head up to him, but her big blue eyes are vacant and sad. And the flimsy, faltering smile she offers makes his stomach drop down to his boots.
“Are you alright?” he asks, but she only nods.
“Menace?” he tries, more softly this time, practically begging, and points up. They’re standing beneath the mistletoe—or what passes for it here, the Spanish moss—but she only blinks listlessly at him and takes a step back.
“McGann!” a hearty voice booms across the room, and he turns to see Rogers waving. When he turns back, she’s gone.
“Excuse me,” he says, intending to go after Catherine, but Rogers is suddenly there, beside him and laying a hand on his arm.
“Don’t make a scene,” Rogers says quietly. “It won’t help.”
McGann has every intention of doing just that.
He’ll burn the damned Yule tree down if he has to, to snap her out of her blue mood and bring her back to his side.
But when Sir Cleveland joins them, he knows he’s trapped.
He can’t be rude to the man who invited him, especially not when he’ll need Cleveland’s help to enact his plan for seaman’s cards.
“Now then,” Cleveland says to Rogers. “Tell us everything, Hawthorne.”
McGann frowns. He doesn’t want to stand here and listen to Rogers, or Hawthorne, or whatever the hell his bloody name is, tell a story. He can see Catherine again, across the ballroom now, whispering to Elizabeth.
“The case is completed?” Cleveland asks. “Barclay is in custody, or Evans, rather.”
He turns to McGann. “Forgive me,” he says. “It’ll take a moment to get the nomenclature correct.”
McGann doesn’t answer. He just grimaces. He hates being called Barclay.
“It is,” Rogers says. “Lord Evans and James are both in custody, and we have James’s full confession.
Apparently, Evans hired him after the East India Company put the pressure on.
They needed all of your evidence, Captain, and to be certain of it this time.
Evans thought he could use that to his advantage.
Find the lockbox himself and then sell its contents to the highest bidder. ”
McGann notices that Rogers calls him Captain, not Barclay or Your Grace. He recognizes it for the kindness it is and thinks, perhaps, his former first mate isn’t such an arsehole after all. Or maybe he knows that being called Barclay makes McGann want to put his fist through someone’s face.
“Seems they suspected all along you’d kept something behind,” Rogers says to McGann, “but it wasn’t worth their while to chase you for it until the move in Parliament to disband the Company came about. And then they leaned on Evans to tie up loose ends.”
“How did they know about the lockbox?” McGann asks, keeping an eye on Catherine. “I never told anyone what was in it.”
“From what I can tell,” Rogers says, “it was the diary that tipped them off. You were always scribbling in it, always had it on you, recording names and dates and such. One of the skeleton crew you hired on the East Indiaman saw you slip it into your pocket the morning of the fire. Once Evans knew that, he sent some men around to your grandmother, assuming if you’d left it anywhere in Jamaica, it was with her. She gave them the box.”
“And The Elphame?” he asks. “She’s done for, then?”
The last he’d seen of his ship, she had been wrecked.
“Not as such, no,” Rogers says. “We fixed her up in Bermuda fairly well. She’ll sail again.”
“Did you now? I wouldn’t have reckoned the Crown to be so generous. Shipwrights don’t come cheap.”
McGann notices Rogers’s glance around the room. “It wasn’t the Crown,” he says. “But that’s a conversation you best have with Lady Catherine. Wherever she’s gotten off to.”
McGann looks too, his heart sinking straight back into his gut. She’s disappeared again. Damn it.
“And with that,” Rogers says, “I’ll take my leave. There’s much to do before we sail tomorrow. If you’ve anything left to say to your brother, Captain, we’ll be in port until dawn.”
“Nay,” McGann says, eyes still desperately searching the ballroom for the woman who is not there. “There’s no more that needs saying.”
He never needs to speak to his arsehole of a brother again.