He nodded grimly in acknowledgment. “We need to talk. About Henrietta. The tutoring.”
He was looking at the picture of the former duchess, his mother. She was the one who had given him his sage-green eyes, Catherine observed. She doubted the woman, who had been ruined by her husband and Mary Forster’s relationship, would approve of Catherine’s presence in her home. Catherine swallowed hard.
As if experiencing similar thoughts, John broke away from the portrait. They moved down the gallery.
“You’re going to need to give Henrietta real lessons.”
“Of course I will have to give her lessons. Surely, your sister would begin to suspect something if her tutor didn’t actually teach her anything.”
Catherine looked over to search his face. His expression was unreadable, the line of his mouth giving no hint of his true feelings. The openness from yesterday had completely vanished. She had no idea what he might be thinking or why he was suddenly so closed to her. Well, she did have one idea. Clearly, she had been right that their newest intimacy had changed things between them.
“It hadn’t occurred to me.”
She said nothing. He clearly regretted choosing a cover that would involve so much contact with his sister.
He stopped in front of a picture of a puffy-looking ducal relation.
“It’s quite a lot of bother for a job you’re not even here to do.” He had almost returned to the mechanical politeness that he had offered her at the beginning of their journey.
“Consider it a part of my ten thousand pounds.”
He didn’t laugh, as she had expected, or even smile.
She wanted to ask what was wrong, but she didn’t. They started walking again.
Finally, he spoke.
“My sister does not know about the scandal. I ask that you say nothing of it to her.”
“What?” They had reached the end of the gallery and she turned to look at him, her back to the wall. “She has no idea what people say? Of what happened between your parents?”
“No.” They were face-to-face now in the corner. “And I don’t want to tell her. Not now. Not until I have her dowry back.”
“John, she deserves toknow.”
Catherine couldn’t believe that he and his father would let his sister live so long in ignorance over such an essential fact of her existence. Catherine, of all people, knew what his sister would face in society. The same scandal had ruined her own season. She remembered the eyes of thetonon her, how her face and body had grown too hot under her gown, and the whispers as she walked through the ballroom. At least she hadknownwhy they treated her that way. She couldn’t imagine being a young girl who expected acceptance and then met derision.
“You have to tell her before she comes out. She can’t go in not knowing.”
“I will decide what is right for my sister.”
“You haven’t been doing a very good jobdeciding, have you?” she retorted, incensed by his irritation at her, when she knew she was indubitably right. “Youoryour father.”
At the mention of his father, he took a few steps closer to her. His green eyes were hard, angry, angrier than she had seen them since that day in her drawing room, when they had faced off just like this.
“Don’t speak aboutmyfamily, MissAster. You are here foronething—to help me find Mary Forster. When you speak to my sister, you will follow my instructions.”
Catherine looked up at him, contempt for his irrational insistence on his authority beating through her. She refused to back down. Not when he was so wrong. She held his gaze, not letting her chin sink a centimeter towards her chest.
And, yet, looking at him, she once more reflexively admired his green eyes and inky curls, the handsome set of his jaw. She didn’t understand how they had gone from the intimacy of the carriage, back to the anger of their first meeting. He had done it. He had made it this way.
“It doesn’t seem that you know what is right, Your Grace.”
His expression didn’t change at her words, except for going, perhaps, an iota more stoic.
The door at the other end of the gallery swung open and they sprang apart.
A liveried footman walked through the door. “Breakfast for you and Miss Aster is served, Your Grace.”
