Page 150 of A Very Bellamy Christmas

Katie hastily turned to Lord Crewe, who was in the middle of saying something to Mrs. Leeland and grabbed his arm. “Let us have a game right now! Before we are dragooned into decorating, my lord.”

Crewe blinked at her likely demented expression and said, “Of course.” He excused himself to Mrs. Leeland before allowing Katie to drag him off.

She chattered brainlessly all the way to the drawing room and while she set up the board, her gaze flickering to where Hy and Chatham stood, both regarding her in a way that promised no quarter.

An hour later—in the middle of her third game—her sister had obviously waited long enough.

Hy leaned over and hissed in her ear, “I want a word with you once you are finished with this game, Kathryn.”

Kathryn.

Katie swallowed at the sound of her full name. She wanted to ignore Hy, but something about becoming a duchess had transformed her erstwhile unassuming sibling into somebody who was slightly…terrifying.

“As soon as I am finished.”

Hy jerked a nod and strode away.

As much as she would have liked to draw the game out—preferably until after Christmas—she had already taken both of Crewe’s bishops, knights, and one rook. She’d had at least three opportunities to take his queen, but that would have made an already boring game unbearable.

Crewe heaved a heavy sigh—obviously realizing the futility of his current position—and set his king on its side. His single eye slid up to meet hers and he wore a rueful smile. He was virile, charming, and handsome and it was easy to see why Aurelia was so infatuated with him. Regardless of his woeful lack of chess acumen.

“Aurelia beats me quite soundly, but never as badly as this,” the earl said.

Katie suspected her sister—no mean player herself—probably had mercy on her attractive spouse.

“Will you play me next?” Doddy asked the earl. Her little brother had been hovering around the famous naturalist almost as much as he’d been dogging Lord Shaftsbury, who’d evidently been a famous Corinthian prior to losing his vision.

Crewe raised a brow at Katie. “If your sister is finished with me?”

“I will relinquish the chair, my lord.”

He looked relieved.

She stood and saw Hy waiting for her only a few feet away, her husband right beside her. It was a sign of their displeasure that both of them had given up thrashing all comers at cards in order to buttonhole Kathryn.

“The Jewel Room,” Hy murmured.

Hy and the duke walked on either side of her—as if fearing Katie would try to run—on the short distance to the cozy sitting room that was, inexplicably, called the Jewel Room.

“I have always wondered why this is called the Jewel Room,” Katie said when Chatham had shut the door. “Do you know why, Hy?”

Hy ignored her conversational ploy. “What have you done with Shelton and Miss Martin?”

Katie swallowed as she looked up several inches into Hy’s crystalline green eyes. They never looked exactly warm, but she could not recall a time when they’d appeared so very frosty.

She briefly considered pretending ignorance, but a quick glance at the duke convinced her otherwise.

“They are both safe and sound.”

Hy’s normally unreadable face shifted into an expression of profound shock, and she seemed at a loss for words.

Katie hurried on, “I was going to let them out tomorrow morning—before anyone was up and about. That way nobody would be the wiser that Miss Martin hadn’t really been ill and Shelton hadn’t really gone to see a horse.”

Hy’s jaw had sagged as she listened to Katie’s babbling. “When Chatham told me what he thought, I did not believe him.” She took a step closer to Katie, anger rolling off her long, thin frame. “What is wrong with you?”

Katie quailed at the disgust in her sister’s gaze.

The duke set his hand on his wife’s arm. “Hyacinth,” he murmured, drawing Hy’s rigid body against his.