Chapter 8
“Your Grace, Lady Isabella Merrick of Blackmere is here to see you,” Mr. McKay announced.
Catherine was having breakfast alone. As she had the day before and every other day that she had resided at Caerleon thus far. The only meal she and Aaron had shared was their wedding breakfast. She frowned, peering up from the book she had been reading.
“Then please show her in, Mr. McKay.”
The butler jerked his head forward smartly and then paused.
“Your Grace, may I remind you that the correct term is simply McKay. Only my staff use the honorific. It is not required by members of His Grace’s family.”
She was about to apologize and correct herself, but intercepted her automatic deference just in time.
“Nevertheless, it is not respectful to call anyone simply by their surname. I shall call you Mr.,” she chided gently.
I will address servants as I see fit. In a way I deem to be respectful. And Mr. McKay and Aaron can go hang if they do not like it.
She flushed at her own boldness as the butler turned smartly on his heel and strode away. Moments later, a young woman with bouncing dark curls and a vivid emerald gown billowed into the room. Catherine thought she recognized her from the wedding breakfast.
“Your Grace! Do forgive the intrusion,” the girl declared, her voice lilting with irrepressible cheer, “but now that we are neighbors, I simply had to call.”
Puzzled, Catherine set aside her book and gestured for Lady Isabella to sit.
She felt that she should have stood when Lady Isabella entered the room, but then reminded herself that she was, for all intents and purposes, a Duchess now.
It was a foreign mantle, but one she would have to learn to wear.
“Will you take tea, my lady?” she asked, picking up the teapot. A dull ache pressed at her temples, likely the result of too much reading, but she quashed it for her first true guest.
A maid immediately squeaked in the corner and scurried forward like a startled mouse. Catherine jolted, only then realizing she had neglected the proper etiquette.
“You are not yet acquainted with the rank of Duchess,” Isabella observed with an amiable smile.
“I am… not,” she grimaced, putting a hand to her stomach.
There had been a twinge of pain there. One that was familiar… Aaron could not have been right. Surely he was mistaken. Nobody could be as cruel and depraved as to—
“Are you quite well, Your Grace. I must say, you look awfully pale,” Isabella chirped suddenly.
“It is very stuffy in here. Shall we take the air and walk in the garden?” Catherine said hurriedly.
“Of course, whatever you desire, Your Grace,” Isabella replied with a courtly nod.
“No—” Catherine snapped before modifying her tone, “I do not care for that title. It feels like a weight upon me. Would you mind calling me Catherine? And I call you Isabella?”
The answering grin needed no words of reply.
“Please, call me Bella then. That is the name my friends use. And I hope we will become friends.”
Catherine’s smile was genuine, though the pain in her head had aggravated.
She welcomed the openness of her new friend, the simple acceptance. She had not been allowed to mingle with society while living at Haventon and thus had no opportunity to make acquaintanceships—or dare she say, friends.
They broke from the stuffiness of the breakfast room and tried to find their way out to the gardens.
Navigating Caerleon proved more difficult than Catherine had expected, and by the time they reached the correct door and stepped out onto a veranda overlooking the lawn, both girls were giggling at the absurdity of the circumstance.
“However will you manage, Catherine? It is such a labyrinth!”
“That is what I said upon first returning here,” she snorted. “Apparently, there is now even a map!”
They walked arm in arm down mossy stone steps to the expanse of lawn, which was being scythed by three groundskeepers.
“Returned?” Bella picked up breezily. “Now, I don’t mean to pry, but am I to take it you were acquainted with the Duke long before your marriage?”
She nodded in answer. “When we were both young. I was allowed to visit with him and he with me before my parents… passed.”
“Oh dear, I am so sorry to hear that,” Bella thinned her lips. “I, too, lost Mama when I was young. My father’s current wife is my stepmother, and quite frankly,” her new friend leaned in conspiratorially, “she is a witch. But I hope to marry soon, and then I can be away from her.”
Catherine forced a smile, wishing her own life at Haventon had been so easy to escape. She doubted that Bella’s wicked stepmother had treated her as abominably as the Tresswells had treated Catherine.
“Do not be glum. We can talk together of happier times we shared with our mothers,” Bella said, “and your father. Assuming those memories are happy?”
“Oh, yes! I was a very happy child. It is only in later years…” she began, but trailed off.
I should not reveal too much of myself. Should not share so much. I have only just met this woman—for all that she seems trustworthy.
Bella was looking at her expectantly, and Catherine fished for something to end her sentence with, when a figure materialized from around a corner of the house.
He strode towards them with purpose, raising a hand in greeting.
He was tall with a profusion of fair hair and a ruddy complexion.
Catherine thought she also recognised him—he, too, had been invited to the wedding breakfast.
“Lord Everdon, good morning!” Bella said brightly, waving back.
Suddenly, Catherine remembered the cigar-chomping man who had escorted her to Aaron at the Spencer club. He grinned, smiling as bright as day.
“Lady Isabella. What an unexpected surprise! Well met indeed!”
He swept a courtly bow and bent low over her hand. She blushed.
“Lord Everdon, there is a Duchess before you, and you make all this fuss over a mere Viscount’s daughter.”
“Because the Duchess is already taken,” Jeremy said with a wink before addressing himself to Catherine.
“Your Grace,” he professed politely.
Catherine could not help but smile.
“Bella, this is the man who graciously introduced me to the Duke after all the years we had been apart. He brought us together, so to speak,” Catherine said.
“I did, indeed. And saddled you with the grumpiest man in Christendom. For that sin, I must sincerely apologize,” Jeremy replied, “where is that old crab by the by?”
Catherine shrugged. “I can’t say. I have not seen him this morning.”
“Then I have an idea where he might be found. At his favorite spot in the South Woods.”
He pointed to a cluster of brooding woodland that bordered the lawn to the south. A flicker of memory stirred in her.
“You mean the Wild Woods. That is what we called it when we were children, and I was particularly frightened of the gloomy place. I would not go in without Aaron to hold my hand,” Catherine shuddered at the spine-tingling sight.
“That is simply the sweetest thing I have ever heard!” Bella cooed, and Catherine jolted.
“There is a pool in the middle of the woods where he likes to bathe. Or swim with the three reprobates that he calls friends when all have had too much of the grape,” Jeremy said, lowering his voice with a mischievous glint, “come, I will show you—if we’re lucky, we might even catch him washing.”
Catherine recalled the pool. Recalled summer days beside it, dabbling their feet in the cool water. Aaron had always been deathly afraid of the dark, still surface with its long weeds, grasping up from the bottom.
“He has learned to swim since I knew him,” she said as they walked across the lawn towards the woods.
“Indeed. If he could not before, he certainly can now. I have never been able to beat him across the lake, and I was considered the athlete of the Royal Wessex Rifles,” Jeremy commented.
He had offered his arm to Bella, who accepted it graciously. Catherine walked alongside until they reached a small gate in a fence that separated the gardens from the woods. A later invention.
There, she took the lead, remembering the way. As she strolled, she grew lost in thought and recollection. The woods did not seem as dark as she recalled. Or as close about her. She listened to chirping birdsong and enjoyed the warm sunlight on her face where it reached through the canopy.
The sound of Bella and Jeremy’s conversation receded. Without thought, when a fork in the path was reached, Catherine took it absently. Presently, she found herself walking in silence except for the natural sounds of the woods. She stopped, looking around and feeling a moment of disquiet.
They must have taken the wrong fork! Or I did.
She did not recognize this part of the woods, which increased her anxiety further. The pain in her head returned with a vengeance, and she shivered though the sun was warm upon her, shining through a break in the woods caused by a fallen tree.
Catherine hugged her body, glancing around and feeling a vague sense of threat. The shadows felt as though they hid watching eyes with hostile intent. Panic surged in her, threatening to overwhelm her self-control and send her running back down the path.
Then, a new sound reached her.
It was a splash, as of something large entering water. Then the distinct sound of paddling.
She spun towards the sound and struck out from the path into the bosky undergrowth.
Moments later, she found herself atop a knoll, peering down on a lake.
It glittered with glassy sunlight, and a man was swimming across it.
He arrowed through the water with strong, decisive strokes, his body pale beneath the sheen.
He reached a rock that jutted from the lake’s still heart. Catherine recognized it at once. She gasped as she watched none other than Aaron rise from the water like something born of it, some ancient, dripping sea god called up from the depths.
And he was… naked.
With the ease of a creature made for such things, he climbed the rock, muscles slick and glistening in the light. At its summit, where moss and grass clung to stone, ten feet above the shimmering surface. There, he stretched.
Catherine forgot the pain in her head. Forgot her sudden paranoia and fear.
She could not pull her eyes from the sculpted body before her.
He was Herculean in proportions with pectoral muscles that bulged like polished stone, sharply defined biceps, and a ridged abdomen. From the short distance that separated them, she could see the lines of white that crisscrossed his chest and stomach. Scars, though she could not fathom from where.
What life have you led since my Aunt and Uncle prohibited me from seeing you? A life that has given you that glorious body, but also marred it so. What adventures have you had?
She leaned distractedly against a tree, drinking in the masculine beauty of his figure as he shook water from his long hair. The tree shifted under her weight, its slim bole not able to support her fully.
Catherine cried out as one foot slipped on earth that was suddenly spilling away from her. She tried to hold onto the slender tree bough, but her balance was gone.
The bough broke, and she plunged into the water.