Page 42 of The Duchess Games

Cat sighed, suddenly tired. “Let’s be realistic, if you please. I could win every challenge from here to Judgement Day and I still would not be a duchess.”

Viola didn’t reply but she narrowed her eyes in a way that Cat couldn’t quite interpret. Cat narrowed her eyes back on principle. Then she stuck out her tongue.

“Very duchess-like,” Viola snorted.

“See? I told you.”

“I’ll leave you both to rest.” Lady Ruby didn’t know what to make of them. That much was obvious. Still, when she stood it was somewhat reluctantly. “That’s very pretty lace,” she said noticing the piece Cat had yet to sew onto her dinner dress. “I hardly ever see such pretty work these days. My modiste would kill to have such stock again.”

Cat did not look at her sister. Her sister did not look at her. “Viola makes it herself.”

Ruby glanced at Viola’s hands. They weren’t the soft hands of a lady, but nor did they have calluses from lace bobbins. She was not naturally stooped, after hours hunched over delicate work. Only another woman who knew of such things would notice. Mr. Armstrong would have no clue. Cat had no doubt Lady Ruby was far more intelligent than ten revenue men. “Does she now?”

Viola just nodded.

“Your work is very French.”

“Thank you. And thank you for the honey,” Viola said softly. Lady Ruby nodded and turned away without saying anything else. Viola watched her leave. “I think she might be lonely.”

“Do you?” She might also be a candidate to help Cat move her contraband lace to London. She suddenly liked the other woman enormously. It was a risk, of course. But everything was.

“She’s really very nice. Much nicer than I thought at first. She’s just prickly, like a hedgehog.” Viola collected hedgehogs. She had a way with them. She snuggled back against the cushions. “I think she wants the thrill of winning the competition more than she wants the actual duke.”

“And you?”

Don’t say you want Callum. Please, don’t say you want Callum.

Not that it mattered in the end.

“I’d like never to have to eat pilchard again.”

Relief, however short-lived flowed through her.

She dipped her finger into the honey now that Lady Ruby wasn’t here to stop her. “A love sonnet, if I ever heard one.”

Cat, wisely, did not descend to dinner that night.

She took a supper tray in the sitting room with Viola, not wanting to have any more of the dowager duchess’s attention on her. Or anyone’s for that matter. Lady Imogen’s father had taken to baring his teeth at her. It was disconcerting. And not just because he’d earlier bragged that two of them were taken from brave soldiers who died fighting the French.

She went out into the gardens as soon as the sun had set and crawled around under the library window.

Where she found mushrooms, pebbles, a hawk feather—and no ducal ring.

It was already gone.

Had a gardener found it? A helpful guest?

Did Callum remember her pointing out the hawk’s nest?

Did he suspect her at all?

Chapter Sixteen

The next morning Cat went home.

Mostly to reassure herself that her brother was safe, her animals cared for, and her cellars undiscovered. They might be empty but hopefully that wouldn’t be the case for much longer.

Sleep eluded her as usual. But this time, between bouts of fretting, she couldn’t stop remembering the feel of Callum pressing against her. The things he’d said to her. The things he’d done to her. It was a mistake to replay them in her head, over and over until she was squirming with need. A mistake, but utterly impossible to avoid.