Chapter 19
Morning light fell across the breakfast table, soft and pale. An excellent breakfast filled the spread, but Catherine’s stomach turned at the sight of food. She forced herself to sit upright and appear composed. Yet, her hands trembled weakly as she reached for the cup of tea before her.
I must control this. If it is an illness, then I will not allow it to taint my last weeks or months. If it is not… it will not defeat me, whatever is the cause.
Aaron sat opposite. He looked composed as ever, his dark eyes lowered to a letter he had been reading when she entered. His brow was drawn tight. He folded the page swiftly when he saw her, tucking it into a pocket as though it were nothing.
I fell asleep with him in my arms and woke up alone. Will he acknowledge what passed between us? Who did I hold in my arms? I am not sure it was Aaron.
“You do not eat,” he observed. His voice was cool, though it held a note of concern.
“I… cannot,” she admitted with a flustered sigh. “I feel unwell again.”
“You will grow stronger.”
“Not while this illness clings to me.” She set down her cup with care. “Aaron, I must speak plainly.”
His eyes lifted at that, sharp and searching. Catherine quailed before that gaze. She swallowed and wished her head would not start spinning without warning.
“The poppy juice,” she said in a rush. “I must know the truth. Whether my aunt and uncle have been feeding it to me for years, convincing me I was going to die like my mother and father. Without it, I grow sick. I thought it was the illness that killed my parents. But perhaps it is only the want of that poison.”
He said nothing, but she saw his jaw harden.
“I have seen many men and women addicted to it. It can kill in its use, or it can kill through its absence. I have seen both,” he muttered soberly.
Catherine lifted her teacup, but she set it down seconds later as its contents spilled over the rim. She fought against nausea.
Fixing him with a level gaze, she murmured, “The boy I knew was heir to a Dukedom, yet you speak as though you grew up in the hells of Cheapside or Whitechapel. Where did you see such things?”
It was confrontational, and she knew it. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to care. The need to know the truth burned inside her. There was an ache in her bones that made her want to crawl back into the caverns of her bed. She felt cold and hot at the same time.
The same symptoms that Mama had. I remember her suffering so.
“Who can remember every step in a life’s journey? I have seen and done many things away from Caerleon,” Aaron waved a hand dismissively.
Catherine felt defeated. Her questions were brushed aside once again by a man who seemed to trust no one, nor to allow anyone to see his interior.
She felt as though she was staring up at unassailable walls.
And on the other side was a young boy whom she had once played with. Once been happy to call a friend.
His eyes narrowed.
“Is it important?”
Catherine shook her head.
“No. Merely a whim on my part.”
He nodded sharply, eyes never leaving her face. She wondered if they were the eyes of a suspicious man attempting to gauge if his secret had been discovered. Or a man who could not look away from his obsession for very long.
The latter is how she found herself feeling when looking at him.
“I must confront them,” she pressed on. “I must hear the truth from their own lips. And I ask that you come with me—”
“I will.”
Simple. No hesitation. She had scarcely finished speaking when he had given his assent.
She found herself smiling. It made her feel safe.
Protected. Relief flooded her, though his ready agreement did startle her somewhat.
For once, he had not weighed, not measured, not turned cold. He had simply said yes.
McKay entered then to announce a visitor. “Master Charles Napier, Your Grace.”
Aaron frowned for a moment. Then realization dawned.
“My accountant,” he explained to Catherine.
Then he turned to Mr. McKay.
“It is no longer convenient to receive him,” he snapped his orders. “I shall make our appointment for another time and date. He may write to us to discover a more convenient—”
He glanced at Catherine and his mouth tugged into a smile.
“No. That will not be sufficient. Make my sincere apologies and inform Mr. Napier that an emergency has arisen and my time is no longer my own. Ask him what date would better suit him.”
Catherine thought she saw the glimmer of approval in Mr. McKay’s militarily stony face as he turned smartly on his heel and marched away. She caught the butler’s eye and smiled. Mr. McKay’s eyelid flickered in response, the equivalent of a wink from another, more expressive man.
My influence, I wonder? Do I flatter myself?
Whether she did or not, Catherine found her heart lifted in foolish gladness. Aaron had chosen her first.
They rode in silence to Haventon Manor. The grand house rose from the fields like a grey sentinel at the gates of some dismal underworld realm. It was cold. Proud, grandiose, but ultimately soulless. There was no homeliness within those walls. Catherine’s stomach clenched as they approached.
Aaron will protect me. No! I will protect myself! I am not returning to my former life. Not ever again.
Another carriage stood on the drive outside the house. Catherine recognized it with a sinking feeling. She had come to dread the sight of it during her last days at Haventon Manor. She looked away, not wanting the reminder.
“You do not have to do this, you know,” Aaron whispered, brushing a thumb over her knuckles gently. “We can write to them.”
“No. I—I do.” She gathered herself. “That carriage belongs to the Earl of Stafford. He must be here.”
Aaron looked at her with unreadable eyes.
Does he regret becoming involved in my chaotic life? Does he wish for a simple marriage to the daughter of a Duchess with no past and no thought in her head?
He gave her his arm as they alighted and set foot on the porch. Reaching for the door knocker, he rapped thunderously. A footman, Randall, received them with a kind nod at Catherine. From there, he ushered them into the foyer beyond, where they were greeted by Aunt Nora.
She swept forward like a magpie in court silks, all false sweetness. “Catherine, dear. What a surprise!”
Her uncle followed suit, heavy-jawed and even heavier in the stomach.
His hair was fire while his wife seemed composed entirely of monochromatic, gray and black.
Uncle Benjamin gave away his emotions with a narrow-eyed stare that adjudicated the pair.
Behind them stood a guest, a lanky man with a thin face, his smile too slick.
The Earl of Stafford.
“You look pale, my dear,” her aunt tutted fussily. “The curse grows worse, I see.”
“Then perhaps we should not be standing in the hall as though we were at Court,” Stafford put in smoothly, “but instead resting in comfortable seats. The purple drawing room?”
Aunt Nora peeped at him and revealed the same narrow-eyed stare her husband had just exhibited.
“Quite,” Benjamin said after a moment, “please, follow us… Your Graces.”
“To what do we owe this pleasure?” Aunt Nora chirped, falling in beside Catherine.
“Questions I should like answered,” Catherine murmured.
“What a coincidence!” Stafford bellowed with a throaty chuckle.
He was older than Aaron and regarded him with a challenging stare, as though his equal. Catherine patted her husband’s arm more than once, feeling the tension in those coiled muscles. She prayed he would ignore the provocation until she had discovered what she wished to know.
“Rather, we will go to the breakfast room,” Aunt Nora quickly interjected, “the drawing room has not been completed.”
Catherine tilted her head. “The renovations still aren’t complete?”
That particular renovation had commenced a year before and was supposed to have concluded before the beginning of the summer.
What can have persuaded Aunt Nora to delay her precious renovations for so long?
Aunt Nora liked nothing better than the expenditure of money in pursuit of the latest fashions, whether that was clothing or interior decoration.
“What coincidence?” Aaron harkened back to the previous comment calmly as they all strolled across the hall to the open door of the breakfast room.
Stafford grinned. “I have never received an explanation for being jilted by my fiancée.”
Aaron glared at the man.
“You do not deserve an explanation. Nor a fiancée.”
Catherine stroked his arm. Those muscles were iron cables twisted to their physical limit. If they snapped, they would unleash a terrible potential energy.
“You look awfully pale, Catherine,” Aunt Nora repeated into the charged silence as the group rounded the breakfast table.
It had been cleared except for a large fruit bowl and a basket of bread.
“I should take care, Your Grace,” Benjamin said with a sidelong glance, “the doctors could never say for certain that the disease was not contagious when it struck down my sister-in-law and her husband.”
Catherine glanced at Aaron, who was regarding Benjamin with a deadpan stare.
“Then your devotion to your niece’s health, and that of your wife, not to mention the Earl of Stafford, is all the more laudable,” he drawled vacantly. “How you must have feared contagion.”
Benjamin cleared his throat, shifting in his seat uncomfortably.
“She is our niece,” Aunt Nora said as though that explained all.
“Whom I saved from a thrashing the night I returned her to you,” Aaron pointed out.
“Ah. But don’t you discipline your hounds? Your horses?” Stafford inquired with a lifted finger.
Aaron’s look could have severed Stafford’s head from his shoulders.
“I do not thrash beasts. Certainly not women.” A pause. “But I’ve a rather ill streak when it comes to a particular sort.”
Stafford’s lips went thin, and he distracted himself by selecting a piece of bread and biting into it.