Page 81 of The Duchess Games

“You played me well, that much I’ll give you.”

“Callum, it wasn’t like that. You have to—”

Summer appeared at the door. “There you are. Mother wants you to close the dancing seeing as you did not lead the opening as she promised. If you don’t choose, she will.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore.” He held Cat’s gaze before stalking out of the library.

Summer frowned at his back, then at Cat. Cat smiled, pretending her eyes weren’t welling with tears.

“Take heart, Miss Sparrow,” Summer said. “I don’t know what just happened, but my brother is a good man. The duke, on the other hand, is frequently an ass.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Cat went home.

What else was there to do? To say? What was the point in staying to torture herself, to watch Callum dance with a perfectly trained aristocratic lady, all smiles and diamonds? To see them curtsy and bow until his transformation into a marble statue was complete.

The village women had risked their lives for her and her schemes. She could not stay here and mope. She owed them so much more than that.

As it happened, it turned out she was perfectly capable of moping and working at the same time. She walked all the way home in her pretty gown, leaving the rest of her belongings and a note for Viola. The sea welcomed her and the tiny cottage with yellow lamplight at the windows. Her dogs pressed against her, tails wagging.

Her brother took one look at her and asked no questions. He passed her his mug of ale.

She did not sleep. Her old lumpy mattress had been replaced with a feather tick and a beautifully carved four poster bed. Callum had sent it without telling her. Matthew had performed some interesting maneuvers to keep the trapdoor hidden while the bed was carried inside by three footmen.

She sat up making calculations, working out transport routes, wondering where she could hire a barrel maker, how best to hide packets of tea, choosing the next cargo: more lace, green tea, salt.

She could not be a duchess. Or a mistress.

But she could be this. She could do this.

Even through a chest that felt so tight it might crack. She could survive anything if it meant keeping her sister and brother safe and healthy, if it meant extra potatoes for Granny Goodwin come winter, salt for the next pilchard harvest, pain cream for Ambrose’s leg. Callum would return to London and her life would go back to being her own.

She briefly wondered how it was possible to feel both unbearable numbness and unbearable pain.

But wondering did not pay for salt. It did not mark the tides or track the revenue men. It did not fight the French.

Viola came home the next afternoon. She wasted no time in harassing her. She was much braver than Matthew. “What happened?”

“It doesn’t matter now.”

“I can see by your face that it does. And by the way the duke was suddenly back to being so proper, I feared a single glare might turn us all to stone.”

She missed that very particular glance down his straight nose. The stern eyebrows. His mouth on her skin. The way he smiled at her, as if startled that he knew how.

She pushed the images away and tore a page out of the ledger, holding it to the candle’s flame. The numbers burned, taking with them any threat of evidence. She would remember every addition, every subtraction, every guess. “He’s gone back to his life, and me to mine.”

“Did he hurt you?” Viola demanded.

Cat shook her head, smiling sadly. “I hurt him.”

“Then apologize.”

“I did. But I would do it again and he knows it.”

“Hmph.”

Cat took the last cask of brandy to the Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor, hidden under cabbages. They ordered tea from her for her next delivery.