Catherine began to answer Lady Wethersby’s question and, before she could help it, the whole story spilled out: the night at Tremberley gardens with John; the duke’s will; her aunt and Henrietta; and why it all meant she and John couldn’t be together.
When she had finished, Lady Wethersby looked shocked but pensive, as if she had divined some moral from the tale that had eluded Catherine herself.
“I knew he loved you,” Lady Wethersby said, “from the moment I saw how he looked at you in our dingy little drawing room.”
“I don’t think he’ll come for me. I know that we can’t be together, but still…I want…I wish he would.”
“He will,” Lady Wethersby said. “You’ll see.”
Catherine shrugged. She couldn’t be as sure.
“I am sorry your aunt was so severe with you. That must have been very painful.”
“I had always thought of her as my mother. When I heard she was alive, I didn’t understand why she had never tried to find me. Now, I understand why—I wasn’t the child she left behind.”
“I doubt it is that simple. And I suspect that she, too, will come around. She might have feared your anger and your judgment.”
“I don’t know, Elena.”
“Well, you’ll have to be patient. Although I have to say I have more faith in the duke.Hewill be back. Do you love him, my dear?”
Did she love him? Of course she did. She had never been able to imagine herself with anyone else, even before he had showed up again, more handsome than ever and tortured by circumstances beyond his control.
“I do.”
“Then the two of you will find a way.”
“But—”
Lady Wethersby held up a hand. “I can’t say how you will fix the problem of your aunt and Henrietta. But I do know that two people who are truly, desperately in love, will always find a way to come together in the end.”
With these words, Lady Wethersby kissed her cheek and said good night.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Yesterday afternoon, Johnhad awakened feeling shaky but much better than he had in days. For the better part of a week, he had barely been capable of raising his head from his pillow. He had snapped up in bed, waking his sister, who dozed on a nearby chair.
“John! You’re awake!”
She had started crying then, saying that she had been so afraid that he would die, and that she couldn’t find Catherine and that she had hardly known what to do without her. John managed to tell her, despite the buzzing in his head, that Catherine had gone to visit her family in London. He wanted to tell Henrietta the truth about their relationship. However, he couldn’t tell her now, when he and Catherine were no longer engaged, and when he had just awoken from an intense fever and could barely focus his eyes.
The doctor saw him and pronounced him on the mend. Then he slept through the night again. In every waking moment, he thought of Catherine, and his fever dreams had been full of her, too. These visions combined strange flashes of the past and what he presumed was an imagined future. He saw them with a mob of silver-haired children with green eyes in the orchards of Edington Hall. He saw the silver-haired children walk in the park outside Forster House and, in his heart, he knew that they owned the place. These dreams were vivid and detailed. And they only led him to yearn for Catherine more before plunging him back into that viscous sleep.
Finally, twenty-four hours after that visit from the doctor, he stood in his chamber, fully dressed, with the intention to travel to London immediately to see Catherine.
He heard a knocking at his door and bade the person to enter, expecting to see Mrs. Morrison informing him that his horses had been saddled, but instead Henrietta appeared.
“Mr. Lawson is insisting on seeing you,” she began with no other preamble. “I told him you were too ill to speak with yoursolicitor, but he is insisting.”
John felt a stab of panic. He worried that Catherine had sent back the money he had forwarded to her—or that Mr. Lawson hadn’t been able to find Mary Forster.
“Where are yougoing?”
“I have to go to London on business,” he said. “I will be back in short order.”Hopefully with Catherine.He needed to explain everything to Henrietta, but he didn’t want to be delayed any longer. He could explain when he returned.
“You can’tleaveagain.”
“Retta, it will be for a very short period of time. My illness has delayed me but my business is very urgent.”
