And yet she had not been through the past seventeen years for nothing. She knew how to overcome herself. To hide what she felt. Penury and obscurity had not made her soft. She looked him in the eye and willed her voice steady.
“Your father was a devil. Who preyed on a lonely, beautiful woman, and ruined her and her family with his selfish appetites. He used his power for ill. And that power was never taken from him. In fact, he left it to you. You wield it now. At this very moment. And she lost everything.Welost everything.”
In forming these words, even though she was still so angry, Catherine did feel a kind of relief. She had never had the opportunity to truly rail at another person for what she had endured through no fault of her own. It was delicious to blame the emissary of the man she had long held responsible.
John Breminster took a step towards her, bringing his face inches from her own.
“There have been times I have felt bad for you, Miss Forster, knowing that you did not choose your fate. But now I see that I needn’t have wasted my time. You forget that I know all about you. I remember very well that you nearly abandoned yourself to the advances of a penniless vicar in a dark garden. Who knows what you have done in the intervening years? I wonder where you learned it. Or is it inbred?”
Catherine heard her gasp before she felt it escape her mouth.
Many had insinuated his sentiment over the years. That she must be just as wanton as her aunt. But none had said the words to her face. And yet here he was, her enemy, presenting these smears to her as if they were curiosities to be mulled over.
“It seems we remember that night differently, Your Grace. I remember a young marquess playing games with a ballroom of respectable people and trying to seduce a young gentlewoman, at a private amusement, where she might have supposed herself safe. Some gentleman. Like father, like son.”
He reeled back at her words. She could see, even with his mouth closed, that his teeth were gritted.
Of course, Catherine knew she had not been all innocence that night. She had wanted to misbehave, to steal a little joy from the jaws of a quotidian life.
But she and this man weren’t the same. She had had one scrap of pleasure with him, it was true, but his life must be an absolute tapestry of such moments. It was not fair that he condemned her when he had done the exact same and more.
He didn’t move but merely kept staring down at her, his green eyes cold. A flare of fear went up within her at his expression. He was so much more powerful than her. When it came to anything that mattered—society, politics, money—he had it all at his disposal.
“Miss Forster, you are very lucky that I come here on averyparticular errand. I presume that you do not live in this hole—” he cast a disparaging glance around the dingy drawing room “—by choice. I advise that you sit down and listen to what I have come here to say. It is quite possibly the only chance that you will ever have to better your present circumstances.”
Catherine wanted to scream him from the room. She almost did. She was mortified by his insults and his sneers at her misfortunes, most of which she would have never experienced ifhisfather had been less of a beast.
“Sit. Down. Miss. Forster.”
She was ready to dismiss him. The words were at her lips.
Except the bottom of Lady Wethersby’s empty teapot flashed in her mind.I presume you do not live in this hole by choice.The words were cruel—but they were true. Lady Wethersby had taken her in when she was an orphaned child, when others would not have, and her life was now harder due to the kindness she had showed Catherine.
She couldn’t be selfish, she couldn’t give in to her impulses, not like her aunt and the late Duke of Edington, not like the man in front of her, not like she had before.
She had to listen to John Breminster.
Because she wasn’t in a position to refuse opportunities. From any corner.
She was desperate.
Most likely, his words would come to nothing. But if there was a chance, even a slim one, that it would benefit Lady Wethersby and Ariel, she had to hear what he had come to say.
Using every morsel of restraint she could conjure, she retreated to the divan and took her seat again, smoothing her skirts. She fixed her gaze on her lap.
She heard him move back across the room. He had won in this show of strength and she tried to not let it sting. She listened to him settle his body, large and powerful, back into the worn armchair. Silence, thick and tense, filled the room. It was almost worse, she thought, the silence. She couldn’t bear it, the pressure seeming to tick minutes from her life. Her hands ached in a tight clasp.
Thankfully, finally, he spoke.
“We will never agree about our families. We can never be friends or intimates. The past will always stand in the way. Our meeting at Tremberley Manor was an unfortunate mistake, an accident, for which neither of us can be blamed. I have forgotten myself just now but I will not again. I am not here today to dwell on old grievances and errors in which neither of us played a part. Our families were both damaged by their previous acquaintance. But perhaps if we can come to an agreement, we could both stand to gain before leaving the past behind forever.”
Catherine was a historian. She did not believe in leaving the past behind. Nevertheless she very much wanted to leavethis pastbehind her—the scandal, her aunt, his family, the Dorset parish where everything had gone wrong.
“What I am about to tell you, you cannot repeat to anyone. Can you promise me that? Not even your nearest friends.”
“I can assure you, your Grace, that we share not one friend in common. You needn’t worry about what I say to anyone.” She emitted a dry laugh and then regretted it. It sounded bitter even to her own ears.
“I am serious, Miss Forster. You may think of me what you wish and I am sure half of thetonwould agree with you. But my sister, she is an innocent girl. She does not deserve to be hurt.”
