Chapter 29
Catherine’s heart was still humming from the evening’s tensions and triumphs when the last carriage wheels faded down the drive.
The Merricks had departed, Isabella flushed and happy, Jeremy laughing with her father, and even Lady Blackmere in high spirits.
For once, Caerleon’s ancient hall felt full of light.
Catherine had scarcely finished exhaling her relief when Aaron’s deep voice rumbled near her ear.
“Catherine,” he began, bowing slightly. “Now that we are alone once more, might I beg for a moment with the triumphant hostess in the study? A glass of sherry, perhaps, to mark the evening.”
His eyes smoldered. Catherine could see his desire in them. She did not know if it was her imagination, but she thought she saw something else in his expression. A keen hunger. A tension, such as a man waiting for an answer to a proposal of marriage, might show. She hesitated.
I can relieve that tension with a simple answer. I can tell him what he wants to hear. I want to. Oh Lord, how I want to!
Her gaze slipped instinctively to the staff, busy gathering the remains of supper.
“Yes, but first,” she replied softly, “I would like to congratulate Mr. McKay and the rest of the household for their efforts. This dinner would not have succeeded without them.”
Gideon stepped in close before she could take a step away. His hand caught hers gently but firmly, and he pressed a kiss against her fingers. The heat of it burned into her skin.
“You,” he whispered, his voice pitched for her alone, “were magnificent tonight. That brilliance at the piano-forte. Catherine, you dazzled them. You were born to be a Duchess. The title was made for you.”
His eyes were dark and searching, his smile genuine, and her body ached with the longing to surrender, to melt against him and forget every shadow between them. She blushed at his outrageous praise.
How can I be those things when I have no experience, no practice? I simply did what seemed right to help my friend.
Her breath caught, her lips parted with a half-formed confession.
But then—like a knife-edge—came the memory of secrets.
Things left unspoken. Lies wrapped around truths.
She pulled gently, desperate to be free of his grasp before her heart betrayed her resolve.
The effort to release herself felt like wrenching away a piece of her soul.
His fingers loosened slowly, as if against his will. When she turned from him, it felt like walking away for good.
The first step nearly undid her.
The second was almost as hard.
She did not look back but lifted her chin and lengthened her stride. She wanted this business done with.
And I want to go to my husband in his study. I want to give up my mind, my suspicion, and just… be.
The butler’s office was dimly lit, a single candle guttering on the desk.
Mr. McKay stood stiffly at her entrance, but tonight there was something different in his posture.
His shoulders sagged, and the stoic, military facade that usually defined him seemed to have crumbled.
A dish sat on the table, and a piece of paper was curling up in flames at the centre of the dish.
“Your Grace,” he said, voice low and strained, “forgive me. This is against my training and my nature. It is extremely difficult for me to do, but I must obey moral imperatives that go beyond my duties as butler to His Grace.
“I must raise a subject with you which… will be as difficult to speak as I suspect it will be for you to hear. Please, would you sit?”
He indicated a wooden, ladder-back chair on the other side of his desk. Catherine wondered if this chair was used for those members of staff summoned to Mr. McKay’s office for a reprimand. After she sat, he opened a drawer and drew out a leather folder, bound with string.
“I can remain silent no longer,” Mr. McKay continued, “not when you are drawn deeper into the orbit of a… a… godless rogue!”
Catherine gasped audibly. He had to be talking of Aaron, but calling him a godless rogue?!
“What are you saying?”
“His… no, I will not give him that title. Your husband,” McKay amended, bitterness in every syllable, “is not the man you think him to be. Before you came, he treated us with contempt and brutality!
Every servant you now see is new, for none who knew him before would remain under his hand.
He ordered a standing silence upon us. There was to be no mention of the past, no acknowledgment of those who left.
He forced me to burn letters addressed to former servants.
I watched him search rooms to ensure his commands were carried out.
“Disobedience, my lady, meant dismissal and character ruin. It happened more than once to the ruination of the individual concerned. It was wrong. It was not… English!”
His face reddened. His words sputtered from him like bubbling water from the spout of a boiling kettle. The words rang in Catherine’s ears, each syllable a strike against the fragile edifice of trust she had been building.
“No…” she whispered, shaking her head. “I know he was formal, cold at times, high-handed perhaps. But brutal? Cruel? Not the man I have come to know.”
Mr. McKay’s eyes softened. He opened the folder, looking at the contents as if trying to decide whether to show her or not.
“That is the danger, Your Grace. He hides his nature when it suits him. He must, in order to keep you near until his business with Sir Obadiah is secured.”
Her chest constricted. “How can I take your word alone?”
He took a sheet of paper from the folder and reversed it, laying it before her on the desk. Catherine recognized it instantly: the letter she had once begun to Isabella, the one that had been taken from her bureau.
Her hands trembled as she took it. “It was you!” she said accusingly.
“I found it before your husband could,” McKay said grimly. “Had he seen it, I fear for what his reaction might have been.”
Catherine’s breath faltered. A cold tide washed through her veins.
“What are you suggesting? That he would have hurt me to keep his secret?”
McKay nodded gravely. “It would not be the first time.”
“But what secret? Who is he?” Catherine demanded.
If Aaron had indeed ordered such silences, if he had indeed destroyed lives, then what was she to make of the tenderness he had shown her, the kindness she had seen at dinner, his sacrifice of pride for Jeremy’s sake?
I witnessed those things first-hand, and the latter will have a profound effect on Aaron directly. Unless every word was a lie, and he has no intention of making Jeremy a partner. But if that got out, Sir Obadiah, the honorable man he is, would end the arrangement, surely.
Her mind was whirling, as though being spun by the batting paws of a playful cat. Aaron was kind. Aaron was cruel. Aaron was telling the truth. Aaron was lying. All seemed plausible. All seemed possible. As if sensing her hesitation, McKay produced another item.
Catherine frowned for a moment, not connecting the object to anything real. Then her mind cleared. It was a small vial of a white, milky substance.
“There is more. I keep a supply of poppy juice to treat the pain I get in my knee. An old war wound. Yet my supply has dwindled faster than I can account for by my own personal use. I believe your husband dosed your drink, to keep you compliant.”
Catherine felt anger flare bright and hot within her.
“That… that cannot be! He went to great lengths to free me from its grip—”
“I understand, Your Grace, but that was only done because you were refusing to take the medicine. I cannot say for certain, but I believe he will have blamed another and then continued dosing you with the poppy juice while claiming he was curing you.”
The words struck like lightning, and for a moment, Catherine was frozen. She had a vague, dream-like memory of being alone with Aaron in the woods, at night.
“No!” she cried, voice sharp. “He would not do such a thing.”
She shook her head in denial of what Mr. McKay was saying. Aaron had lied to her, but she could not believe him a brute capable of such cruelty. Yet, Mr. McKay persisted.
“Please believe me, Your Grace. I speak the truth. And I can prove it. Or rather, I can introduce you to a man who will prove it to you.”
Her breath came fast. “I… I must think.”
The butler bowed slightly, a soldier’s movement. “Then think, Your Grace. But do not wait too long. He is clever, and every day you remain, the net tightens.”
Catherine stumbled to her chambers, heart hammering. She summoned Sally and whispered that her mistress was suddenly ill, stricken with a severe headache, and would retire at once. Sally, wide-eyed, agreed to tell Aaron.
Catherine closed the door, leaning against it with a shudder. She hated herself for lying, hated leaving him alone downstairs, but she needed time.
Time to think. Time to breathe.
Sleep evaded him. The house was silent but for the groaning, cracking timbers.
Gideon paced his chamber like a caged animal, unable to shake the image of Catherine walking away from him after dinner.
The coolness of her hand slipping from his lingered as though she had torn part of his soul with her retreat.
The message delivered by her maid was clearly an excuse. Patently so. She wants time to consider if she will remain at Caerleon. Remain my wife.
His body ached for her. His mind refused to settle. It spun through the events of the last few days, the conversations, the revelations, the lies.
Would she be here by my side if I had told her everything? If I had told her my true name?
The fact of his own potentially fatal error drove him mad. He wanted to unburden himself, finally be free of the weight of his biggest secret. His hands slammed down on the windowsill, fingers gripping the ancient wood until it creaked. He tried to anchor himself.
Attachment is weakness. I will not be weak. Attachment is…
With a snarl, he threw himself across the room and out of the door. He stalked along the hallways until he reached the door of Catherine’s chambers. There, his thunderous passion abated. He raised his hand to turn the doorknob. Lowered it. Then he knocked.
“Catherine,” he called softly.
There was a pause. Then her voice through the wood, trembling yet firm.
“I cannot see you tonight. Please, leave me be.”
“I cannot,” he murmured, resting his forehead against the door, “not without knowing what you intend.”
Her silence stretched, heavy and suffocating.
“Tell me the truth. About who you are. About what you have been.”
Her voice was suddenly closer, just the other side of the door. He reached for the doorknob, his hand driven by instinct rather than reason.
There was the click of a key in the lock of the door.
Desperation clawed at him.
“Open the door,” he urged, voice rough. “Let me in. Whatever shadows haunt us, we can face them together.”
“Tell me the truth,” she mumbled.
A centuries-old door of solid oak separated him from Catherine. Hard as stone but only a few inches thick. Such a trivial encumbrance to hold at bay such a monumental passion.
He raised his hand to deliver a blow to the door, but thought of what Catherine had learned about his violent past. The blow never landed. Instead, he placed his hand gently against the wood, applying pressure as though trying to feel through it.
Words built up within him. Confessions of his past, of his emotions. He opened his mouth, wanting to tell all, how much he needed her, how much he feared losing her.
But nothing would come.
The dam, which he had built from childhood to make himself resilient, was too strong. The training that told him his words made him weak was an unbreakable chain.
“If… if I let you in, my judgment will falter. And I cannot allow that. Not yet.”
His hand tightened against the doorknob. He imagined wrenching it open, shattering the lock, and sweeping her into his arms. Every doubt would be silenced with his touch. The ache in his chest grew unbearable. His voice turned harsh.
“Damn it, Catherine, if you bar me out, I’ll break this door down!!”
Inside, her breath caught audibly. Then, very gently.
“If you love me, you will not.”
The words pierced him.
There it is. She had more courage than I. She was able to speak those words when I could not.
He clenched his jaw, breathing hard, then stepped back.
“Very well. But know this, you are mine, Catherine. Whatever choice you make, you are mine.”
He turned away, fury and desire tearing at him, and left her behind the locked door.