At last the Duchess spoke, her tone conversational yet weighted. “I am told my son has caused no small stir.”
Catherine inclined her head. “The stir, I believe, arose from Miss Worthing’s falsehoods.”
“Perhaps.” The Duchess’s mouth quirked, neither smile nor frown. “But James’s manner of reply was… dramatic. To raise his fists in Lady Sefton’s garden—how very unlike him.”
“You sound surprised,” Catherine said cautiously.
“I am,” the Duchess admitted. “My son is many things, but rarely impulsive. He is a creature of calculation and control. For him to abandon that control in so public a fashion…” Her gaze sharpened, unblinking. “You must be quite extraordinary.”
Catherine lowered her eyes to her cup. “I assure you, Your Grace, I am entirely ordinary.”
"I doubt that very much. James has shown no interest in any young lady since his return. Then suddenly he's making public declarations and brawling like a common soldier. That suggests something more than ordinary."
Catherine said nothing, unsure how to respond.
“How did you meet my son?” the Duchess asked suddenly.
The question Catherine had been dreading. Her teacup nearly slipped in her hand, and she had to force her grip to steady. She could not tell the truth, Heaven forbid she admit to a rain-soaked coaching inn and a night of reckless abandon, but lying to this woman, with those piercing grey eyes, felt impossible.
“We were introduced at a social event,” she said carefully, clinging to the half-truth. After all, an inn full of stranded travelerswasa kind of gathering, if one stretched definitions to their breaking point.
“Which event?”
Catherine’s stomach tightened. “I do not recall specifically. There have been so many.”
The Duchess’s expression did not soften; if anything, it sharpened, as though she could slice through falsehood with nothing but a raised brow. “Curious. My son has an unerring memory for names and faces. And yet I distinctly recall the shock upon his countenance when he saw you at his presentation ball.”
Heat flooded Catherine’s cheeks. She prayed it appeared no more than the effect of the fire. “Perhaps he did not recognise me immediately,” she said lightly, though her heart hammered with the memory of that moment. The way his gaze had struck her like lightning across the ballroom, familiar and dangerous all at once.
“Perhaps,” the Duchess echoed, though her tone suggested disbelief. She set her teacup down with a precise, deliberate click that made Catherine’s pulse jump. “Let me be frank, Lady Catherine. I know something occurred between my son and you before the Season began. I do not know what, nor do I require the details. What I must know are your intentions.”
“My intentions?” Catherine repeated, her throat tight.
“Yes. Do you intend to marry him?”
The bluntness of the question stole her breath. Her first thought was indignation—marry him? As though it were her decision to make.Her second thought, more treacherous, was an image of James’s hands braced on either side of her, his mouth descending upon hers, and how utterly helpless she had felt in his arms. Not helpless with fear but helpless with want.
“I… he has not proposed,” she managed.
“He will,” the Duchess said coolly. “The way he looks at you makes that inevitable. The question is notifbutwhen.The only question is whether you will accept.”
“Why should you think I would not?” Catherine asked, more sharply than intended.
“Because you are no fool,” the Duchess replied at once. “You know precisely what marrying a duke entails—the ceaseless scrutiny, the suffocating responsibilities, the loss of privacy, the unending demands of rank. You strike me as a young woman who prizes her independence.”
Catherine’s heart lurched. Shedidvalue it. The thought of being caged by rules and endless watchful eyes terrified her. And yet the mere memory of James’s gaze on her skin made her shiver. She hardly knew him. And still—still—something about him unsettled her very bones, made her body ache and made her thoughts betray her.
“I do value it,” she said softly.
“Then why would you sacrifice it for my son?”
That was the question Catherine had been circling for weeks. She could have lied. She could have spoken of wealth, of security, of a match that would elevate her beyond imagination. But something in the Duchess’s cool, commanding presence demanded honesty; if not with the world, then at least with herself.
“Because,” Catherine whispered, almost against her own will, “I cannot seem to stay away from him. I do not know him well, but… I cannot stop thinking of him. And that, I fear, is reason enough.”
The Duchess regarded her in long silence, her grey eyes unreadable, reflecting firelight and wisdom both. Silver glinted in her hair, and Catherine felt the weight of those eyes as though she were being measured on a scale. At last the Duchess spoke.
“Then the greater question is this: does he know?”
