Chapter Seven
Katie had hoped that by eating breakfast in her room she could avoid the unpleasant conversation awaiting her.
She should have known better.
She had just finished her pot of hot chocolate and was pondering the wisdom of having a second when Becky entered her chamber, a grim frown on her normally cheerful face. “Her Grace wishes to see you.”
“I was just about to ring for more chocolate.”
Becky rested her fists on her hips.
Katie groaned. “Please don’t look at me like that.” The other woman had been behaving sourly ever since Katie had confessed after her visit to Andrew what had transpired at the ball.
“I cannot believe you did such a thing, my lady,” she said for the fifth or sixth time.
Katie smiled at her friend. “You can’t scold me and call me my lady, Becks.”
“Her Grace wants to see you. Right now,” Becky retorted, unmoved by Katie’s wheedling.
Katie sighed, swung her legs over the side of the bed, and shoved her feet into her slippers. “Bring me a dressing gown and I will go right now.”
“You should wash and dress and—”
“You said now, so I am going now. My dressing gown, please.”
Becky’s expression was worth a thousand words. She would probably use all those and more later on, when she learned that Katie would be rejecting Dulverton’s offer.
“At least put this on,” Becky begged, following Katie to the door with a white lace cap.
Katie grabbed it and yanked it down over her head without bothering to look in the mirror.
“Where is she?” she demanded, swatting Becky’s hands away when she attempted to straighten the lace.
“In the library.”
Katie strode from the room without another word, stomping past a startled housemaid and footman who were moving plinths so the maid could clean behind them.
She felt a stab of envy so strong it made her steps stutter.
She knew their lives were not as simple as they seemed to her at that moment, but she would have traded places with them in an instant.
Katie and her sisters had scrubbed, dusted, and washed laundry just like domestics when her family had lived at Queen’s Bower.
Back then, when she’d worn a plain mobcap rather than one with pretty lace, she had fantasized about a day when she wouldn’t have to do maid’s work.
A day when she could wear beautiful gowns and flirt with handsome men at ton balls.
Right now those long-ago days living in a cramped house with her sisters and brother seemed like the fantasy.
It was indeed a case of be careful what you wish for.
Katie paused at the library door, took several deep breaths, and then opened it and peered inside, hovering on the threshold when she saw it wasn’t the duke and duchess gauntlet she had feared, but only her sister.
Hy was sitting at the desk the duke usually occupied.
The massive glossy wood surface was completely bare, so she was staring at nothing.
She glanced up at the sound of the door and for a few seconds she looked a thousand miles away.
Of all her sisters Katie knew Hy the least, even though she had lived with her these past five years.
Hy was considerate and generous but remained an aloof enigma to Katie.
Chatham Park was the size of a small village and Hy and the duke occupied their own wing of the house, which meant that days passed when she only saw her sister at meals.
And even then Hy did not speak much. Katie suspected the only person who knew Hy well was her husband.
Hy’s vague gaze slowly sharpened. “Thank you for coming, Katie. Have a seat,” she said in her strangely inflectionless voice.
Katie threw herself into one of the chairs facing the desk. “If you are going to try and talk me into marrying Dulverton, you might as well save your breath.”
Hy stared, her angular face expressionless and her aqua-green eyes—her only claim to beauty—as hard and cold as gemstones.
Katie’s courage wavered in the face of her sister’s formidable regard, and she lowered her eyes to her fingers, which were fidgeting with the gold braiding on her dressing gown. She stilled her hands and clasped them loosely.
“I saw your list, Katie.”
Katie looked up, determined not to shy away this time. But the longer she looked into Hy’s eyes, the hotter her face became.
“You think it is amusing to make a game of kissing married men?”
She opened her mouth but then shut it. She had no defense because there was none.
“I’d hoped the stunt you pulled at Christmas five years ago was enough to cure you of your irresponsible behavior.”
Katie bristled. “I know locking Andrew and Stacia up in the priest hole for a few days at Wych House was reckless, but you have to admit their happy marriage is worth it.”
“The fortunate outcome does not justify you playing with people’s lives, Katie. The fact is that you took away their choices.”
Katie gritted her teeth. How could a person argue with that logic?
“You’ve had five Seasons and every year you have become less content and more unpleasant to be around.”
Katie gasped and then her lungs seemed to freeze. Hy thought she was unpleasant?
Don’t you think you are unpleasant?
Mortification rolled over her, as heavy and crushing as the wheel of a mailcoach. “If—if you think I am so unpleasant than why did you not send me away?” Katie immediately wished she could rescind the angry retort.
“Send you where? You think I am the only one who thinks you have become unmanageable? The others do not want to take you.”
Pain and shock robbed Katie of speech.
“You have become the sort of petulant, self-indulgent person you would have ridiculed and avoided when we lived at Queen’s Bower.
You do not need to work and pinch pennies.
You do not need to worry about losing the roof over your head.
And you do not need to marry a wealthy stranger to save your family.
You are breathtakingly beautiful, generously dowered, and have the world at your feet and yet you choose to fritter away your time by engaging in cruel, reckless pranks. ”
Katie could hear her own breathing—more like wheezing—as a tear slid down her cheek. She dashed it away with the back of her hand, but more followed, until her face was streaked with them.
Hy leaned across the desk, a folded white square of linen resting on her palm, the corner embroidered with Hy’s initials woven into a duchess’s coronet. The handkerchiefs had been gifts from Katie the first year her sister was married.
Back before you were too bitter and miserable to pick up a needle.
Katie took the handkerchief with shaking fingers and dried her cheeks, unable to contrive a response to Hy’s damning indictment because what could she say?
But her sister was not finished.
“The Duke of Dulverton has been humiliated and shamed for no reason other than your selfish whim. He has shied away from society for decades, and now—the first time he’s made an appearance at a ton event in years—you have made him a figure of ridicule and an object for scandalmongers.
You have robbed him of his dignity and privacy. And you have taken away his choices.”
Katie’s tears fell faster, and it was all she could do not to run from the room to escape her sister’s quiet words, which fell like the lash of a whip. “Everyone at that ball—everyone in London—knows he was merely a victim. Dulverton does not need to offer for me.”
“You know that is not true. The game might have been your idea, but he will be equally—if not more—to blame.”
Katie wanted to argue, but she knew that was the truth.
“You are my sister and I love you, Katie. But I do not respect you and that pains me. There is still time to correct your self-destructive course, but whether you do so is entirely up to you.”
“You are talking about me marrying Dulverton,” she said dully.
“Neither Chatham nor I will force you to accept Dulverton’s offer.”
“But that is what you think I should do, isn’t it?” Katie insisted, the blasted tears still falling. “You think I should pay penance for my—admittedly—cruel action for the rest of my life by marrying the man. And what about him, Hy? Should he be forced to suffer by marrying me?”
“I will not tell you what to do or say; you must find that answer within yourself. But I will say that it is time you thought not just about what you want, but what those around you deserve.” And then her quiet sister—who’d spoken more in the last ten minutes than the prior ten years—rose from her chair and strode from library, looking every inch the duchess she was, regardless of her plain morning gown.
Katie stared unseeingly at the elegant room around her, the chilling heaviness in her chest spreading until she was suffused with bleakness.
Everything Hy said was true; Katie was unpleasant.
She did not even like herself; why had she been so shocked to discover that her family no longer wanted to be around her?
But that didn’t make the knowledge any less painful. She felt as if her sister had driven a knife into her chest, but the gaping wound poured anguish rather than blood.
Katie had wanted to give Hy an answer—something that might explain why she had been so rootless, miserable, and detached for so long—but the thought of where that conversation would lead was even more painful than her sister’s condemnation.
Besides, it didn’t matter why she’d thought up that stupid game. It only mattered that she had acted on her impulse and—yes—had taken the choices from three other people. Angus and Letty would have to marry if either of them wanted to show their face again.
And so would Dulverton.
And so would Katie, because she had taken away her own choices, too.
When Dulverton asked her, she would have to say yes. She owed him that much, at least.
But first you must tell him the truth.
Katie squeezed her eyes shut. Oh, God. She could justify not confessing her festering shame to her sister but she would have to tell Dulverton. She owed him that much before he yoked himself to her for the rest of their lives.