The pair of them took a seat as she began to share her plan—one that just might work.
Chapter 13
Rosewood Haven—One week later
For the fourth night in a row, Catherine woke up in the dead of night with a sudden start. Like a bolt of lightning through her core that she could not seem to rid herself of. The warmth and tingling sensations that stirred her from sleep tended to linger forhours.
Catherine rolled over in her bed to see the book lying propped open on the bed beside her pillow with bitterness. It had been such a welcome diversion when she had been reading it, but now? Now, she detested it with a vengeance.
The colorful suggestions contained within those pages were bleeding over into her dreams, but instead of being faced with the handsome main character in the salacious book she had been reading—she was met with Richard. Night after night. His tall frame and soft eyes. She could not shake him. Every dream that she started with shifted and twisted into something…profane.
There was no reason for her to be this worked up. Catherine rolled underneath her bedding, her thighs pressing together, savoring the feeling of the soft chemise against her otherwise bare legs. The dream still hovered over her mind like an embrace.
She could practically feel strong hands on her thighs, pushing them apart until she felt the ache of it deep in the muscles before the heat that had pooled in her core started to move lower—curling and swelling into something else entirely.
She had never experienced such sensations before, but she ran her hands over herself now. Soft, feather-light, and almost nervously, she touched herself in the same patterns and places that the book she had been reading had suggested to her. With her eyes closed, she imagined herself in Richard’s bed.
Or what she imagined Richard’s bed to look like in the first place. She pictured how they might move together…the ways that he might touch her. Some, with his tongue rather than his hands.
As her hands ventured up her thighs to their junction, she froze—catching herself at the very last moment, and her eyes snapped open in the darkness of her room. Quickly, she snatched up the book that had planted these terrible ideas in her head and flung it with as much force as she could muster across the room so that there would be no more temptation to be had from it.
The book clattered against the wall loudly enough that the sound of her mother’s door frantically opening could be heard moments later. If only that was dreadful enough to wipe the heat from her body entirely. Instead, when her mother threw open Catherine’s door in a panic with her hair still wrapped in her ribbon curls, Catherine had to scramble to feel somewhat decent about herself.
“What is it? What is the matter? Are you all right?” the older woman exclaimed.
Catherine clutched her sheets to her chest and nodded frantically. “Yes, Mama. I am fine. I promise. All is well. Go back to bed.”
How humiliating.
“Are you certain, dear? Your face is quite flush…perhaps you have a fever? You have not been eating very well the last few days,” her mother continued as she moved to sit on the side of the bed closest to her daughter. She lifted the back of her hand to Catherine’s forehead and pressed it slightly against the skin. “You feel clammy.”
“I am under blankets, and it iswarm, nothingmore, I assure you. Please, return to bed,” Catherine continued to explain, though she could not make eye contact with her mother when such thoughts were still running rampant in her mind. Something had shifted between them on their walk.
Something that she could not put into words, but it truly felt like she and Lord Landry were finally on the same page. Her plan was a risky one, but one that she felt might actually work. Most important of all, she felt as if she were getting a grip on her own future. She would be in control of her own destiny going forward, and that would be the best thing for her and her mother.
Perhaps her dreams were nothing more than a byproduct of working so closely with a man that she was clearly very attracted to.
“Ah, I see what this is.” Arabella smiled mischievously as she folded her hands into her lap.
“And what is that, Mama.” Catherine cupped her hands over her face as she brought her knees up to her chest in an attempt to make herself smaller, as if she could hide a little from her mother’s scrutiny. She certainly was not going to imagine that she had just been imagining what it might be like to feel Lord Landry’s hands on her thighs…sliding higher…
Oh, that heat pulsed through her core again.
Stop it, Catherine.
“You have not yet made up your mind about the proposal, and now your worry is eating at you,” Arabella answered sagely. “Unless…” her voice trailed off because she looked towhatbook lay on the floor. Even her mother’s cheeks heated red at the title.
It was not the sort of thing that she would willingly read, but Elizabeth had practically spoiled the whole plot the other day when she had brought the book over in the first place. “Something else is keeping you awake? You could always write to him…summon him here and give him your answer.”
“I have already told you, Mama. I have given my answer, and I will not be marrying him. Over and over, you have badgered me. It ismy choicewhom I marry. Now, most of all,” Catherine said stubbornly. She turned her head away from her mother and pressed her cheek to the top of her knee.
“I still abide by the notion that you merely need more time to think about it.” Arabella huffed. “He could do wonders for your reputation. Among other things.”
Catherine’s mind shifted to envision what her life might be like while married to that man. It was hard to imagine Lord Landry without his father’s shadow looming over both of their heads. It was harder still to think of him as an independent person who had little to nothing to do with his father’s schemes and notions.
No, the man who was persistent in searching for what he wanted and continued to show kindness…that had nothing to do with the duke. In truth, Lord Landry seemed to have grown into his own person tospitethe duke and the way that he had undoubtedly been raised.
The way he had held her on the balcony had been so soft…the countless times where she had thought that he might have attempted to hold her hand and stopped himself during their walk…the way that he had brushed a stray hair away from her forehead just before getting into his carriage to leave for the evening…
