“I have,” she answered finally.
“Oh?” Lord Landry answered with a lifted brow. “I will not deny that I have been anticipating your answer anxiously for days. Are you going to finally put an end to my agony?”
Perhaps she could kiss him after all. That would be an answer, would it not?
Catherine swallowed hard against the impulse as she struggled to remain composed.
She glanced over her shoulder to her mother, who was pretending not to listen. So, she lowered her voice to where only he could hear. She leaned in closer to him to speak and was nearly distracted by the scent of his cologne. “You agree that should this not be in our mutual interest that this will only last for a single year?”
“If that is what you wish.”
“I will have your word on that, my lord?” Catherine insisted. It was for the best. It was always best to have an exit strategy. No matter how easy it was becoming to exist with him, she would never put herself or her mother into a position where they would have no choice but to rely on a man exclusively for their happiness ever again.
Richard’s smile spread slowly across his face. “You are going to say yes, are you not?”
“Your word, my lord,” Catherine repeated.
“My word, my oaths, you can have anything of mine that you wish, my lady,” Richard answered a touch too quickly. “If only you would agree to marry me.”
Catherine’s answering smile was just as slow.
“Oh, I could kiss you,” he whispered, something like reverence in his eyes.
Heat curled in her stomach at the very notion of it, pulsating lower as she studied him. This was not the look of a man who only wished to marry her for practicality and revenge. Was it? Could he truly have no romantic feelings for her whatsoever? It felt impossible to think.
Catherine could only hope that she was not making the biggest mistake of her life. But it felt soright.
***
“You said yes?!” Elizabeth could not contain her excitement as she walked arm-in-arm with Catherine. She bounced on the balls of her feet. “You must tell meeverything!”
“There is not much to tell!” Catherine insisted. The pair of women strolled along the very edges of the cottage’s property. The same lines where their home bordered up against Lady Elizabeth’s.
Catherine had asked her friend in passing if she had wished to have tea at her home, but Elizabeth had quickly changed the subject. Something that Catherine noted as strange, but she respected her privacy, so she merely filed it away under strange things that Elizabeth did. The instances that could fit that particular description were many and varied.
If something was happening in Elizabeth’s own marriage or home…she clearly had no intentions of speaking about it. Catherine could only hope that in time, should her friend choose to share, that she would know that Catherine was there for her in the same way that Elizabeth had shown up on her behalf nearly every day since arriving here in the countryside.
“I do not believe that for a single second. I left for a small turn with Lord Wentworth, and all of a sudden, you are officially betrothed?!” Elizabeth could not stop her excitement.
“Oh, it is such an important time in a young woman’s life, my dear friend. All of the excitement of planning a wedding and picking out a gown! Granted, as the daughter of a vicar, I had no high aspirations before I met my husband, of course. He was the one who opened my eyes to the finer things in life.”
It was an opening, and Catherine took it.
“I should like to meet him if you would be open to the notion? I do not know if he is the sort of man who is swayed by public opinion, but I should presume that he is not a man who is afraid of a little scandal,” Catherine pushed gently.
Elizabeth rarely spoke about her husband. When she did it was in generalizations or to proclaim how happy she was. Catherine had had no reason to doubt her…not before Lord Wentworth.
Perhaps there was a wholly different reason that she had so much free time to call upon her friend each and every day, and to stay the long hours that she did. While it was, of course, none of her business—she pried just a little. If Elizabeth told her to mind her business and to stop prying, then that would be exactly what she did.
Elizabeth’s smile flickered, and her light seemed to dim somewhat. “No, he certainly is not swayed by scandal. Perhaps the next time that he is in town, I can throw a dinner party! That would be fun, would it not?”
“Is he not at home?” Catherine asked.
Elizabeth shook her head. “No, he travels quite a lot for his business. He’s a very busy man, my husband. He works so very hard to ensure that he can provide a nice life for us both and any children that we might have…not that he is around long enough to attempt tomakesaid children.”
The last of her words were surprisingly bitter. She had not known that Elizabeth could speak so harshly about anything. She tried her best to approach the subject with as much gentleness as she could.
“Do you wish for children?” Catherine asked gently.
