Page 3 of Kathryn

None of them said a word.

But Katie knew they would play. All of them.

And she would win. Not because she was smarter or more desirable, but because winning, no matter how inconsequential the prize, was the only thing that made her feel anything.

Chapter Two

Gerrit Boon Jaak Van Draak, the fifth Duke of Dulverton, swallowed a mouthful of champagne and then grimaced as the revolting beverage trickled down his throat.

“You will break that glass if you squeeze it much harder, Your Grace,” his uncle, Baron Bas van Renesse, teased in a jovial voice.

Gerrit scowled and gestured to a servant who was passing with a tray. “Take this.” He thrust the mostly full glass at the wide-eyed lackey. Once the servant had scuttled away, Gerrit glared down at his uncle, a man he’d only met once before tonight. “You said Lady Mariska would be here at ten o’clock. It is now thirty-seven minutes past ten.”

A faint smile pulled at the older man’s thin lips, as if something about this annoying situation amused him. “When have you ever known a woman to care about time?”

Gerrit’s scowl only deepened at the pointless generalization.

“Have patience, Your Grace.”

“I have been patient for two years,” he reminded his uncle. “I weary of—”

“Ah, there is Lady Palmer,” the baron interrupted.

A stout, well-dressed woman of middling years pushed her way through the crowd. She was red-cheeked and flustered, and her apprehensive gaze flickered to van Renesse and then to Gerrit and quickly away again.

Even Gerrit, abysmal when it came to reading other people’s expressions, could see the woman was distressed about something.

Lady Palmer dropped into an impressively low curtsy for a woman of her age and girth. “I am terribly sorry to be late, Your Grace, but—”

“Where is Lady Mariska?” Gerrit demanded, raising his voice to speak over her. Meeting people’s eyes was something that had never come easily to Gerrit—something about it had always felt almost like a physical touch to him—but his father had insisted the reaction was a weakness, so Gerrit had struggled for years to overcome his aversion.

The woman recoiled at either his harsh tone, pointed glare, or both, and van Renesse clucked his tongue and chuckled nervously. “You will have to forgive His Grace. He has forgotten his manners in his excitement to meet his prospective bride.”

Excitement? Gerrit’s hands clenched into fists at his uncle’s fatuous description of his current frame of mind. He opened his mouth to castigate the older man, but Lady Palmer recommenced babbling.

“I beg your pardon, Your Grace, but the heat in the ballroom was so oppressive that Lady Mariska went out to the garden to take some air.”

Gerrit’s jaw shifted back and forth, and he narrowed his eyes, keeping Lady Palmer pinioned. Why did he think she was lying? “She has only just arrived and is overheated?”

Lady Palmer swallowed hard. “Er… yes?”

“That sounded like a question.”

“No, no. She was feeling uncomfortably flushed.”

Gerrit snorted and turned to van Renesse. “What a tender bloom you have brought me, Uncle.”

Van Renesse quailed beneath Gerrit’s scathing tone and then gave another of his annoying chuckles. He reached out to pat Gerrit’s arm before recalling how much he hated being touched and hastily withdrew his hand. “Mariska is a modest girl, Your Grace. The very characteristics that will make her such a conformable, obedient wife also render her shy in public. She has only recently left a strict religious environment. This”—he made a gesture to encompass the room around them—“is the sort of sophisticated function that terrifies innocent young women.”

Gerrit had to admit there might be some truth to the other man’s words. Even though the girl was one-and-twenty—one of his conditions for the marriage—her family had kept her at the convent to ensure her virtue, something they had decided on after the last broken betrothal.

How must this glittering ballroom—overflowing with ogling peers and silk-clad women falling out of their gowns—appear to a girl who’d been cloistered away from the world for most of her life?

As Gerrit looked around him, men and women, one after another, quickly glanced away rather than meet his gaze. He gave a rumble of displeasure. He hated being the center of attention and any pity he might have felt for Lady Mariska was speedily dissipating.

“If she is so bloody retiring then why the hell did you suggest meeting here?” Gerrit demanded, turning away from the gawking party guests back to his uncle.

“It was a mistake, Your Grace, and I see that now,” his uncle said, his placating tone incensing Gerrit even more.