Not even for him.
She would have to break off the engagement.
She felt a sob almost come up from her throat, but she swallowed it. She didn’t want her aunt to see what her confession had cost her.
“You needn’t look so despondent, Cathy. For you see, this story has a happy ending. I love my husband, Mr. Ryerson, very, very much. He may not be a duke, but he is everything a man should be.”
Catherine found she couldn’t speak. Instead, she barely managed a murmur in reply.
“I do not approve of your engagement. And I doubt the marriage itself will ever transpire. I do not trust any Breminster to do right by any Forster. But you are, after all, my niece—my only brother’s child. And I can hardly deny Henrietta what should be hers. I will accept the annuity. You can tellyourDuke of Edington that.”
“Thank you, Aunt Mary,” she gasped, finally finding her voice. She had accomplished their goal, but she felt hollow. It had come at a terrible price.
“Mama?”
Catherine turned and saw, at the door, a young girl, around the age of ten. Vaguely, Catherine realized that she must be the twin of the little boy she had seen earlier. She had warm brown eyes. Catherine had an intuition that they were just like her father’s.
“Come here, my love,” her aunt said, in a tone completely unlike any she had used with her or John.
The child came into the room, gazing at Catherine with curiosity, as she leaned into her mother’s embrace.
“This is Cathy,” her mother said, “a little girl to whom I used to teach sums and letters. But she is all grown up now.”
The girl snuggled into her mother’s arms and Catherine saw a smile play on her aunt’s face as she embraced her child. Yes, Catherine thought, she was a good mother. She had been a good mother to her. It was why she had always missed her.
“She is leaving,” Mary said to the child. “Will you go fetch Maria, my love? We are going to lend Miss Forster our carriage. She has to go all the way back to Edington Hall.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
John waited inthe lane, simmering with worry. Which then morphed into resentment as the moments slid by and still he saw no sign of Catherine.
Every minute seemed an hour.
And, finally, something like an hourhadpassed and he couldn’t wait for Catherine any longer.
He told Marcel to turn the carriage around and return to the farmhouse, which was difficult on the narrow country lane. The maneuver took another painful ten minutes.
Finally, he found himself back at the sweet farmhouse, desperate to find his fiancée inside.
The same maidservant answered the door. He was told that Catherine had already left in Mary Forster’s carriage. John was aghast at this revelation—it went against their plan—and he inquired where the carriage had gone.
“To Dorchester, sir. To the stagecoach, I believe.”
His mind flashed back to a simple carriage that had passed him on the way here with all of its windows drawn.
John swore a string of vile oaths that caused the maid’s jaw to drop.
Then, he got back into his own coach and told Marcel to drive as fast as possible to the Dorchester coach stop.
John didn’t know what Mary Forster had said to his fiancée.
He only knew that he needed to find her.
When he arrived at the coach stop, however, it had already departed, and there was no sign of Catherine. He assumed she had gone back to London, but he couldn’t be sure. He could chase down the coach, but he wasn’t sure if that made sense. Perhaps she hadn’t left at all. Perhaps it was a trick Mary Forster was playing on him. He didn’t understand.
After all, why would she have gone?
He decided to return to Edington Hall, hoping to find his fiancée there. Instead, when he arrived, Mrs. Morrison informed him that Catherine had not come back.
