Page 3 of Go, Rogue

Chapter

1

London, England

December 1853

Four Years Later

Lady Catherine West paces the vestibule of the church. Her blonde hair is powdered with glittering gold and her silk wedding gown fluffed with layer upon layer of underthings and petticoats and crinolines. Her cousin, Violet Crawford, stands pregnant and beaming beside her.

Violet traveled to Surrey from Kent just this morning to see Catherine marry in the small church of the Waverly Viscountcy family seat.

“Can you breathe?” Violet asks.

The stays of Catherine’s wedding gown are pulled as tightly as a drum, just as her nerves are.

“Not particularly. But there’s nothing to be done about it now.”

Catherine had spent the last six months practicing the art of self-defense alone in her bedroom at night, and those exercises have had their effects on her body. They’d made her bigger. And stronger. Such that the contours of her arms now dip and swell like a miniature mountain range. And the muscles in her thighs and calves have made themselves known under her skin, so much that she can trace their topography with her finger.

Her body, which has always felt small and frail to her, now feels hard. Competent. Like Andrew McGann’s.

Not that he’ll ever speak to her again after the last, disastrous time they saw each other. But she still has this last vestige of him. She has his exercises, and so she has his strength. At least a little of it.

Catherine isn’t surprised exactly at the fit of her wedding dress. She’s noticed the changes in herself over the last weeks and she’s enjoyed them. In her mind, there’s no downside to her new figure.

Or there wasn’t until her last gown fitting and the raised eyebrow of Madame Tremaux, the modiste. Her dress, which had fit for the last several sessions, had suddenly grown too small around her back and shoulders.

“Can you fix it?” Catherine asked.

“Oui,” the modiste replied. “Of course I can. It is only a surprise. Most brides, they do not eat. They become smaller. But you, cherie. You are growing.”

The French woman stepped back and surveyed Catherine in her gown. “It is good,” she declared. “Oui. You are perfection. I will deliver it tonight.”

True to her word, the altered dress arrived at Chester House that evening, starched and steamed and extremely fitted to Catherine’s new form.

This morning, the light of dawn gives way to a cold and gray wedding day. Not exactly picturesque, but Catherine doesn’t particularly care about the weather. She doesn’t need sunshine, blue skies, or a gentle breeze in the air.

She isn’t a romantic. If she was, she’d have chosen to marry in the spring, not the winter. And to someone else. Someone, preferably, not besotted with another woman.

But she’s made her peace with the arrangement, and she supposes her groom, the Honorable Henry Pembrooke, heir to the Waverly Viscountcy, has as well. This is not a love match.

It’s only ever been a marriage of convenience, embraced by the aristocracy and imbued with the familiar rhythm of its expectations: balls where they dance two dances together, fifteen-minute social calls where they drink tea under the watchful eyes of Catherine’s mother, and rides together in Hyde Park, where they speak of nothing more pressing than the weather or the ton’s latest on-dit.

She sighs, and Violet grasps her hand to still her pacing.

“Are you certain you’re alright?” Violet gives Catherine’s hand a tiny squeeze. “You look quite beautiful, but a touch,” she holds her hand to Catherine’s cheek, “pale.”

“Just nerves, I suspect. Didn’t you have them on your wedding day?” Catherine realizes this question is a mistake the moment it’s out of her mouth. Of course Violet didn’t have nerves.

“Never mind,” she says. “I retract the question. Yours is a love match for the ages.”

Violet takes both of Catherine’s hands in hers. “I will say this only once more, cousin. You don’t have to go through with this marriage. We’ll support you if you cry off. Alistair and I, and both our mothers. We’re here for you.”

Catherine squeezes Violet’s hands right back. “I know, and I am grateful. Truly. But this is for the best. Pembrooke and I fit.”

“If you say so.”