Page 87 of Kathryn

“Goodness! Mrs. Kent is wasted as a housekeeper. She should purchase a crystal ball and make her fortune having her palm crossed with silver.”

“Somebody hurt you and you have tucked yourself away—just as Gerrit has done.”

“You are even more skilled than Mrs. Kent. She, after all, spent several hours in my company while you”—Katie snapped her teeth shut and cast a pointed look at the clock as she stood—“why look at the time. How rude of me to have overstayed my half-hour.”

Mrs. St. Clare raised her hands in a placating manner. “Please, I have managed this badly. Do not leave yet. Especially not angry. I just wanted to help—”

“You do not have the slightest notion of what it is like living with Dulverton,” Katie snapped. “It is like trying to squeeze emotion from a brick.”

“I know exactly what it is like, and I have been able to break through Gerrit’s reserve, so I know it can be done. I know he can be warm and confiding and caring.”

Katie gritted her teeth, not with anger this time, but with jealousy. She wanted to fling hurtful words at the other woman, to point out the immorality of being proud of not only taking another woman’s husband, but her son, too. But her anger was seasoned with a fierce yearning to know how she had pierced Gerrit’s seemingly impenetrable shell of reserve.

“How do I get through when there is not so much as a crack in his veneer?” she asked, not caring about the desperate quaver in her voice.

“Never give in when you should stand firm. Do not let him put you at arm’s length. I can see you are attracted to him. Do not allow your pride to stand in the way of showing just how much you want to get to know him. Do not let him treat you as he did his mother. Somehow, you must shake him from his—his complacency and seize his attention. And then keep it. The time to claim your marriage and your husband is now, Your Grace. Not after you’ve given him a child. Do not wait even another day. Demonstrate that you are a force to be reckoned with. That you are formidable, and he needs to respect you.”

Katie shook her head, her eyes burning with unshed tears and frustration. What did she need to say to make this stubborn woman—and Betje—understand just how little power she had in her marriage?

“Can’t you see?” she demanded, her voice breaking. “There is nothing I can do that will—” She stopped and stared at the woman across from her, surprise blooming in her chest. Surprise and maybe something else; maybe… hope.

No. That is a terrible idea—terrible. Don’t you ever learn? her mother’s voice demanded in her head.

“What is it, Your Grace? What are you thinking?” Mrs. St. Clare asked.

“There is nothing I can do,” Katie finished, her voice barely a whisper.

But that was a lie. There was one way Katie could show Dulverton just how formidable she was. But she wasn’t sure that respect would be his reaction. In fact, it was just as likely to drive him away forever.

Chapter Twenty-One

Gerrit stared at the chessboards, the only parts of his body not frozen in shock his eyes, which bounced from table to table to table. He looked again, hoping he would see something else.

But he saw the same thing again.

Somebody had moved pieces on all four boards.

Somebody.

For almost thirty years Gerrit had tested himself by playing multiple games and not once had anyone touched the pieces. Not his father, who had—quite remarkably—disliked the game, not even his flibbertigibbet of a mother—even though she had been in the same house with him for weeks, and never had any servant disturbed so much as one piece.

There was only one person who would dare.

The door to the library opened and Kathryn swept in, carrying the tapestry bag that had become ubiquitous every evening for the past weeks.

Evenings were spent trying to ignore his mother and wife, even though his ears extended as if on stalks each and every time he heard the low, soothing murmur of Kathryn’s voice in response to his mother’s grating falsetto.

How pathetic was he to enjoy those few hours a night in proximity with a wife who no longer wanted the one thing Gerrit had to offer a woman? And wouldn’t she mock him if she ever discovered how he had abbreviated conversations with his steward or secretary just so he could get to the library a few minutes early to be near her?

And this is how she repays you.

Kathryn’s eyes darted to the boards and then back before she settled in her usual chair and began rooting about in her bag.

Was she really going to pretend as if she had done nothing?

“Did you move pieces on any of these boards?”

She looked up and blinked her ridiculously green eyes in the cool, dismissive manner that brought to mind a cat. “Any? No.” She looked down and plucked something out of her bag. “I moved pieces on all four of them.”