Page 83 of Go, Rogue

“So it seems. Word is the lights on the estate have been turned on and the furniture is being aired out. I do hope he arrives in time for the Yule Ball. Promise me you’ll stay for it.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of leaving before,” Catherine says.

Not before she finds Andrew. His brother’s presence is all the confirmation she needs that he is here, in Jamaica. And not before she understands how the key—removed from her trouser pocket hours ago and discreetly nestled into her corset now—can ensure his safety.

“Wonderful,” Mrs. Masters says, and then moves the conversation on to the weather and Jamaica’s most prominent families. Catherine lets the words wash over her like a stream of noise.

She nods in all the right places, but she is only partly paying attention to the idle talk. She needs to find Rogers and tell him about Barclay. She needs to know if he’s had any luck in tracking down Andrew today at all.

“Don’t you think so, Miss Hope?” Mrs. Masters says, and Catherine quickly agrees, although she has no idea what it is she’s agreeing to.

She really must pay better attention. This woman has put her up, after all. Has given her clothes and food and a roof over her head. She shouldn’t be unkind. She just feels so wholly out of sorts with an afternoon spent trading gossip. She imagines that would be true whether or not the gossip revolved around Andrew, but the fact it was about him made it all the more galling.

It’s as if she’s slipped back on a favorite gown only to find it now too small for her, binding and pinching in places it shouldn’t. She squirms a little in her seat.

Lady Catherine West could handle this tea—and the dinner that is surely to follow—with aplomb. She would laugh charmingly and tell appropriate anecdotes and generally be gracious and lively.

But that version of Catherine is gone, left back in that country church in Surrey. She’s brought with her what she needs and left the rest behind: reputations and wedding dresses, jilted fiancés and the ton’s expectations. All fodder for a life that is not hers now and never will be again.

To hell with it all, she thinks. Fathers and brothers and their precious titles and a world created solely to further them.

She doesn’t want anything to do with that world. She is different now. Exhausted and lonely certainly, but also a woman of her own making. One who wants to be back aboard The Elphame with Andrew McGann as soon as possible.

I will find you, she promises him again. I will.