Chapter 9
Lady Beatrice looked up in surprise when her housekeeper announced Catherine's unexpected arrival.
The drawing room was quiet, with only the soft crackle of the fireplace breaking the afternoon stillness.
Beatrice had been reading correspondence from their various charitable endeavors, her silver hair catching the warm light as she worked at her small writing desk.
"Catherine, my dear," Beatrice said, rising to greet her young protégé with obvious pleasure. "What a lovely surprise. Though I should mention there is no meeting scheduled for today."
Catherine smiled, pulling off her gloves as she settled into the familiar comfort of Beatrice's drawing room. "My visit to the library was unexpectedly cut short, and I found myself with time on my hands. I decided to come and see you."
"Of course, you are always welcome here," Beatrice replied warmly, gesturing for Catherine to take her usual seat near the fireplace. "Let me ring for tea."
Catherine sat. She had rehearsed several ways of approaching the subject on the drive over, and discarded all of them, and now found that under Beatrice's level grey gaze none of them would come.
"May I ask you something," she said at last, "that has nothing to do with the work?"
"You may ask. I make no promise to answer."
Catherine almost smiled. "How does one know," she said carefully, "whether one's judgment can still be trusted — once one's feelings have become involved?
" She turned her gloves over in her lap.
"I have always prided myself on seeing clearly.
On weighing a person by what they do. But I find that when I try to weigh a particular person now, I cannot tell whether I am seeing him truly, or only seeing what I have begun to wish were true.
And I do not know how to separate the two. "
Beatrice was quiet for a moment. She did not, Catherine noticed, look remotely surprised.
"That," Beatrice said, "is the most intelligent question you have asked me in some months.
And I will not insult you by pretending it has a comfortable answer.
" She folded her hands. "You cannot trust your judgment of him.
Not now. You are quite right to suspect it.
A woman who has begun to care for a man is the worst possible judge of his character, precisely because she has the strongest reason to judge it kindly. "
Catherine's face fell. "Then how am I to—"
"You stop asking the question you are asking.
" Beatrice leaned forward slightly. "You are asking whether your heart is reliable.
It is not — no one's is. So set it aside.
The heart is not the instrument you use here.
You watch what the man does, Catherine. Not what he says, not what he makes you feel, not what he confesses on a moonlit terrace.
What he does, when it costs him something, when he believes no one of consequence is watching.
Words are the cheapest currency in England.
Deeds are the only coin I trust, and the only coin you should.
" She sat back. "Judge him by that, and your feelings cannot mislead you, because your feelings will not be the thing doing the judging. "
Catherine absorbed this slowly. It was not the reassurance she had come hoping for. It was, she realized, something considerably more useful.
"You have not told me to be careful," she said.
"Would you have listened?" Beatrice's mouth curved very slightly.
"I have known you long enough not to waste my breath.
You will do as your nature requires regardless of my counsel.
I would simply prefer that you do it with your eyes open.
" She paused, and something passed behind the grey eyes — there and gone.
"I have some small experience of what it costs to mistake a feeling for a fact.
I would spare you the tuition, if I could.
I cannot. But I can at least tell you where to look. "
For a moment neither of them spoke. Then Beatrice straightened, and the warmth folded itself away, and she was entirely the strategist again.
"Now. Since you are here, and since you are plainly of no use to anyone in your current state of mooning, I have something for you to do. Something only you can do."
Catherine sat up. "A task?"
"Your father. Is he attending Lord Harrowby's dinner on Friday?"
"He is. He mentioned it only this morning." Catherine's brow furrowed. "Why?"
"Because that dinner is where the new housing bill will be discussed — the one the papers have been calling a great mercy to the working class.
Harrowby has gathered exactly the men who wrote it, and exactly the men who will profit from it, and they will speak far more freely over Harrowby's port than they ever will in the House.
" Beatrice's voice sharpened. "And you, my dear, are the only one of us who could possibly be in that room.
Not Sarah. Not me — I have not been received in a house like Harrowby's in fifteen years.
You. An earl's daughter, on her father's arm, perfectly placed and perfectly invisible. "
Catherine felt something kindle in her chest that had nothing to do with Alexander Harrington. "You want me to listen."
"I want you to listen to everything. Who speaks for the bill and who speaks against it, and which of them does which when they think only friends are present.
I want to know what this mercy will actually cost the people it claims to help.
" Her eyes were flint now. "They have presented this legislation to us as a blessing.
I have lived too long to believe powerful men give blessings without an invoice attached.
I want to know the price before it is announced, not after — so that we may be ready to answer it. "
"I will ask my father tonight," Catherine said. "He will be delighted. He has been trying to get me to attend such things for a year." She gave a short, surprised laugh. "He will think I am finally coming to my senses."
"Good. Let him think it. A pleased father asks no questions.
" Beatrice rose and crossed to her, and her tone changed — lower, exact, the voice of a woman passing on something learned the hard way.
"Now hear me, because this is the part that matters.
You are not to go in there as a reformer.
You are not to ask a single pointed question.
The moment you appear to care about that bill, you become a woman to be careful around, and they will say nothing of use in front of you ever again.
" She held Catherine's gaze. "You will be charming.
You will be a little frivolous. You will let them find you decorative and harmless and flattering to talk near.
Be playful, be cunning, be everything that drawing room trained you to be — and use it, for once, for something that matters.
Let them underestimate you. It is the single greatest advantage a woman in your position will ever possess, and most never learn to spend it. "
Catherine looked at her — this formidable woman handing her, at last, a real weapon and the instruction to use it — and felt the confusion she had walked in with quietly reorganize itself into purpose.
"I understand," she said.
"I believe you do." Beatrice returned to her desk and took up her pen, the audience evidently concluded. But as Catherine reached the door, the older woman spoke once more, without looking up.
"And this Duke of yours." A pause. "When the moment is right, you will bring him to me. You cannot judge him clearly — we have established as much. I can. I should like to take his measure myself, before you hand him anything that matters. Including your trust."
Catherine stopped. She had said a great many things in the last half hour. She had not, she was quite certain, said any of them about a Duke.
"I never told you who he was," she said slowly.
Beatrice dipped her pen and resumed her writing.
"No," she agreed. "You did not."
"Then how—"
"My dear, you have been a different woman since the Wexford ball.
There is a particular light a person acquires when they have met someone who unsettles them in the best possible way.
I have seen it before." She glanced up at last, and there was dry warmth in it.
"That, and you have mentioned a man who shares our convictions and wishes to fight injustice no fewer than four times this month, while taking great care never once to give him a name.
A woman does not guard a name so carefully unless it has begun to matter to her. "
Catherine felt heat climb her cheeks. "Am I so transparent?"
"Only to someone who is watching. Which, I would remind you," Beatrice said, returning to her correspondence, "is precisely the skill I have just asked you to employ on Friday evening. Go home, Catherine. Speak to your father."
Catherine inclined her head, and went out into the grey afternoon.
◆◆◆
Jack Morrison stood in the grand entrance hall of Harrington House, his weathered hands unconsciously smoothing his worn coat as he took in the opulent surroundings.
The marble floors gleamed under the light of crystal chandeliers, while oil paintings of Alexander's ancestors gazed down from gilded frames with expressions of aristocratic disdain.
"Good God, Alex," Jack breathed, his voice echoing slightly in the vast space. "When you said you had inherited a dukedom, I thought you meant a modest estate and a fancy title. This is..." He gestured helplessly at the grandeur surrounding them. "This is a palace."
Alexander watched his old friend's reaction with a mixture of amusement and something that might have been embarrassment. "It is rather overwhelming at first," he admitted, leading Jack toward his private study. "I am still adjusting to it myself."