Chapter 4
The carriage ride to Haventon from Caerleon seemed to take forever and yet was not long enough.
Catherine endured it in silence, staring out of the dark window at the night-shrouded countryside.
The odor of the night-soil men’s handiwork reached in through the open window until Aaron leaned over her to slam the window shut, irritably.
“I cannot abide that stink,” he groused.
“You used to call it the smell of the country, a sign of healthy land and growing crops,” she whispered, nostalgic for a time when they had laughed together at the outrageously offensive odour after muck had been spread by their tiny boots.
He grunted, lapsing back into silence. She peeked at him. The boy she remembered had possessed the same mane of dark hair, the same strong jaw and aquiline nose. But in those days, Aaron had been lithe and lean. It was as though the acquisition of a bull’s body had given him a bull’s temperament.
She looked away as he glanced in her direction, not wanting him to catch her staring. Though she wasn't sure why it mattered—he clearly thought so little of her that staring would hardly register as an offense.
Still. The boy she'd known would have filled this silence with stories, terrible jokes, observations about the constellations. This man seemed content to let the quiet stretch like a blade between them.
The boy I knew, the sweet boy, has matured into a hard man. Like a sapling becoming an oak with a skin like iron. Impervious.
Yet for all his distance, he had saved her. When despair had overcome her, he had put his body between her and harm’s way. That had to count for something.
“Understand this,” he said into the silence, “I do not do this out of lack of sympathy. I am not a monster. But my life is saturated, and I have no room for complications. It would only put my goals at risk.”
“You do not have to justify yourself to me, Your Grace,” Catherine whispered, disguising the pain his words caused her.
“Honor demands that I do.”
“Honor?” She felt a stab of annoyance, which she tried to contain as she had been trained to over the last few years at Haventon.
Defiance brings punishment. Disobedience brings punishment. Only meek compliance is permitted.
“Yes?” he pressed as though daring her to gainsay him.
“I understand, of course,” she replied meekly.
He growled in his throat and looked away, only to look back a few seconds later.
“If you wish to berate me for my choices, then do so. If you wish to strike me for being a beast, then do so.”
Catherine gaped at him. “I can no more do that than you can fly, Your Grace.”
“Aaron! My name is Aaron. According to yourself, it is the name you used when we were children, though the memories are closer to you than I.”
“Why does that make you angry?” she asked, genuinely confused.
“Because…” he floundered, raking a hand through his hair, exasperated, “because nothing. It does not matter. Merely this bump on the head addling my thoughts. Ignore me.”
She wished she could, wished it were that simple. His presence so close beside her was as impossible to ignore as a wolf would have been. Each bump and sway of the carriage upon its leather straps pressed her shoulder to his or his thigh against hers.
The grazes set her blood afire, and she felt her cheeks heating. She glanced away, reaching for the window to cool herself.
“Leave it for devil’s sake!” he barked.
“I am hot!” she snapped back before she could catch herself.
For a moment, she gaped at him in horror as reason restored itself.
“I… I am sorry… I should not have…” she stammered.
He grinned. She had never seen that smile on his face before. It was the kind of grin that must have been worn on the faces of Vikings looking from the dark waves of the sea towards the wealth of England. Savage.
“So you do have some backbone then,” he muttered.
Catherine let her hand fall, face scarlet as she felt a thrill at the praise. Aaron leaned across her again and raised the window, latching it in place.
“There,” he said at last, “we shall endure the stink for the sake of cooler air.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, appalled at her own daring.
She could not get the image of the Viking from her mind. The notion of being an object of attention for such a savage. She pressed her thighs together to make herself smaller. It sent a pleasant, warm feeling through her, which only amplified as she squeezed harder. It had her breathless.
I am attracted to gentlemen. Gentle-men. Kind, warm-hearted. Soft.
Aaron was none of those things any longer. He was hard. Unrelenting. Selfish. Strong. She closed her eyes, pretending she was sleeping, wanting to forget his presence and the feelings it stirred.
She must have fallen asleep because there seemed to be no time at all before the carriage was coming to a halt.
She opened her eyes to see the grandiose entrance to Haventon, rebuilt after her mother and father had passed away, in imitation of the Parthenon.
She had always thought it looked ridiculous, tacked onto an English country house of Georgian style.
Now, it filled her with dread.
Aaron escorted her inside and through the grand hall, all marble and glittering chandeliers.
Finally, they came to the drawing room where Aunt Nora and Uncle Benjamin were sitting.
They rose as the Duke of Winchester was announced, but their greetings were followed by venomous darts at Catherine.
She hung back by the door, ducking her head and wishing for the punishment to begin, so that it might be over sooner.
“Thank you for bringing our niece back to us, Your Grace,” Uncle Benjamin scathed, puffing out his chest, though it still did not match the circumference of his considerable stomach. “I sincerely apologize for the trouble she has caused you.”
“She will be disciplined, we can assure you,” Aunt Nora snapped.
She was as thin as a rake and taller than her rotund husband. While his hair was red and fiery, hers was graying and tied severely back so that it seemed her face was pulled tight as well.
“I thought it best to return her to you as a nod to our former acquaintanceship,” Aaron approached.
Aunt Nora and Uncle Benjamin glanced at each other.
“Is she… known to you?” Uncle Benjamin asked, glancing at Catherine.
“We had no idea. My sister’s family were little more than squires. Bumpkins, in fact,” Aunt Nora said, looking down at Catherine as she might look at dirty footprints tracked across her marble floor.
“Yes, a long time ago,” Aaron replied, “though I scarcely remember it.”
That cut Catherine deeply. She fought back tears of heartbreak at her former playmate’s indifference towards her and fear at her own predicament. Tears would only inflame Aunt Nora, who could not abide weakness.
Would it be the cellar this time? Locked away with no daylight and only bread and water.
Or perhaps the belt? A thrashing to beat me into submission. Or both?
A wave of sickness ran through her, and she suddenly felt dizzy. She staggered and put a hand to the back of a chair to steady herself. Aaron noticed first and moved to her side, taking her elbow and guiding her into the cushioned seat.
“You ought to take better care of your ward,” he said, his voice already beginning to muffle in Catherine’s ears as he fixed Uncle Benjamin with an accusatory stare.
“The girl is plainly ill. She never should have traveled to London unattended—walked here, if I’m not mistaken.
The roads are a damned sight more dangerous, even in broad daylight. ”
The room was spinning around Catherine now, and she was terrified she might purge the contents of her stomach. That would earn additional punishment as the furniture in the drawing room had recently been replaced in the French style.
What is wrong with me? I ache all over. I am shivering and yet there is sweat on my brow! Oh Lord, if this is what took my parents, then let it take me quickly and end all of this.
“Oh, never concern yourself, Your Grace,” Aunt Nora chirped politely. “We have a supply of medicine that will cure these symptoms. The same ailment that took the lives of her parents, I fear.”
Catherine looked up, frowning. It had not been said to her before, not in those terms at least. Aaron was staring at her, but he looked away when she glanced at him. Had there been pity in those eyes? That would be something. An emotion. Anything would be better than his glacial coldness.
“Indeed. I fancied I knew what her ailment was, but… if it is something hereditary, then I suppose that explains her condition,” he murmured.
Uncle Benjamin heaved forward, smiling. “Do not trouble yourself, Your Grace. Come, will you join me for a brandy and cigar in the billiard room?”
Aunt Nora had whisked over to Catherine’s side and taken her arm. It was a pincer grip with bony fingers that dug into her flesh without giving any outward sign of doing so.
“No, I do not wish to make an evening of this. I have much to do back at Caerleon. I will leave her with you, Haventon, and bid you both a good afternoon.”
He did not wait to be shown out of the house but strode away. Catherine heard his footsteps across the marble floor of the foyer, followed by the front door being opened. There was a pause, a silence. Then it slammed closed.
Her heart sank.
Fear made her close her eyes until iron fingers gripped her chin, wrenching her head upwards.
“Open your eyes, you wretched hussy!”
Catherine’s eyelids dragged open at her aunt’s hiss. The room tilted, then steadied. Aunt Nora loomed over her, lips drawn back in a snarl. Behind her, Uncle Benjamin’s face had gone purple, his breath expelling in sharp bursts.
“I cannot believe what you’ve done—to bring a Duke to our door, to-to impose yourself upon him! How dare you!”
Catherine’s hands fisted in her skirts. Her throat burned. “I had no choice but to dare!”
The words ripped out of her before she could stop them. What did it matter now? They’d punish her regardless—silence bought nothing.
“I had to escape you somehow. I’m withering away in this house! If God is merciful, he’ll take me before you can shackle me to that beast!”
Her aunt’s laughter came sharp and bright as breaking glass. She reached down, patting Catherine’s wrist with feather-light taps that made her skin crawl. “Your medicine will set you to rights soon enough, my girl.”
“And it is not your place to question our judgment or malign the character of a gentleman who represents an exceptional match,” Uncle Benjamin stepped forward, jabbing a finger toward her face.
“This is rank ingratitude, nothing more. I shan’t tolerate it!
This is what comes of permissive, weak-willed parents who spoiled you rotten. ”
He leaned in, close enough that she could smell the rum on his breath. “Frankly, we’d have been spared considerable trouble if you’d died alongside them.”
The words hit like a slap. Catherine surged to her feet, fury at the insult to her parents temporarily burning through the fog in her mind—but she was too dizzy, her legs too weak. Immediately, she stumbled, her hand catching the table’s edge and sending a vase toppling.
Porcelain shattered across the floor.
Aunt Nora gasped. Uncle Benjamin advanced, his face contorted with rage. “You ungrateful wretch!” He raised a large, meaty hand, teeth bared and spittle flying from his mouth.
“Strike her, and you’ll answer for it tenfold.”
The command rang out like a gunshot.
There—in the doorway—stood Aaron.
But not the polished duke who had left an hour ago. Gone was the charm and simple etiquette. This man looked ready to commit violence, his tall frame rigid, hands flexing at his sides, eyes burning with barely restrained fury.
Was that… was that truly Aaron?
Uncle Benjamin froze mid-strike, his jaw falling slack. Aunt Nora let out a strangled cry. Catherine looked at the tall, powerful figure that seemed to fill the doorway. He was glaring at Uncle Benjamin with eyes that seemed wild.
“Your… Your Grace… I thought… we thought you had left,” Aunt Nora stammered with a faltering smile.
Sharp eyes flicked to the scrawny lady. “I thought better of it. I will be leaving in just a moment, and your niece will be leaving with me. She is evidently not welcome here.”
He crossed the room in three purposeful strides and gathered Catherine against his chest. Her body went limp in his arms—she had nothing left to fight with.
“Pardon? You cannot abduct my charge, Winchester!” Benjamin’s face purpled deeper. “I will have the Runners onto you within the hour!”
“Attempt to do so, and I will see you at a place of your choosing. At dawn.”
The color drained from the rotund man’s face.
“We will—we will ruin you!” Nora shrilled, lurching forward in his stead. “The scandal will destroy you! They’ll call you the Kidnapper Duke from here to Scotland!”
“Now, now, dear…” Benjamin ushered over to his wife, his earlier bluster evaporating, “No need to be so rash. Surely we can discuss this like reasonable people. Let me settle Catherine in her room, and we’ll resolve everything over a civilized glass of wine—”
Aaron was already heading for the door. Uncle Benjamin had to shout after him.
“I fail to see the problem. I’m removing an unwanted burden from your household,” the duke said flatly.
Aunt Nora flew across the room, planting herself between them and the door, arms spread wide.
“The scandal!” Benjamin’s voice climbed an octave. “You’ll ruin us all!”
“Then I’ll marry her.” Aaron adjusted Catherine’s weight in his arms, his grip tightening protectively. “No scandal. No gossip. No runners. Now move, madam, lest you wish to be the second in your husband’s duel!”
The steel in his voice sent Aunt Nora skittering sideways like a startled shellfish.
Aaron carried Catherine through the doorway and into the cool afternoon air.
She tried to lift her head, but it weighed like lead.
Her arms looped shiveringly around his neck, her cheek pressed to the solid warmth of his chest. Through fluttering eyelids, she watched Haventon Manor grow smaller behind them.
Then consciousness fled.