“We will fix this, Henrietta. I promise. But we will need to talk to your brother.”
Henrietta cringed and more tears leaked from her eyes.
Catherine thought about her own season. Lady Wethersby had insisted that she have one, over the doubts of her husband, and, yet she had also steeled her for the reality. She had gone to many balls with the Wethersbys, but at only a few of them did she have any hope of attention from anyone approximating a suitor. The only reason she had kept going after the first was because of Lady Wethersby.
When she had cried in the carriage on the way home from that first ball, unable to control her emotions, Sir Francis had looked like he would die from discomfort. Lady Wethersby had reached over and taken her hand. Catherine still remembered what she had said:It’s not your fault, my dear. It has absolutely nothing to do with you, my love.Those words of kindness had meant more to her than she had even known at the time. Maybe, she thought, biting her lip, she could do for Henrietta what Lady Wethersby had once done for her. Maybe, in her brief time here at Edington, she could make at least one thing right, even if everything else went wrong.
“I’ll be there,” Catherine continued, “and we will discuss how you should deal with this issue in society. Everything will be fine. I promise.”
Catherine knew she took a risk making this promise. She wouldn’t even be here in three weeks. She would leave after they found her aunt. And yet she remembered being seventeen, about to greet an unkind world, and she wished that she had had more friends. She wanted Henrietta’s experience to be different. And it would be. She had her brother, she had the power of a dukedom, and for now she had Catherine.
Chapter Twenty
John spent themorning with his steward in the library, running over parish matters, and he had dispatched a few letters to London. He had sent letters to his friends, telling them that he had reached Edington Hall. He also told them that his sister had fallen gravely ill but had made a miraculous recovery, which, in true Henrietta fashion, was nearly irksome in its rapidity.
He also sent a letter to the most popular modiste of theton, Mrs. Warburton, and asked her to come to Edington Hall at her earliest convenience. He offered to pay her an astronomical sum if she would travel to Edington and fit Henrietta for her first season.
Then he had gone for his ride, trying to clear his mind of Catherine and his anxiety over Henrietta. While he found it easier than he should have to forget his worry about Henrietta, he couldn’t stop thinking about his argument with Catherine. He didn’t understand how their conversation had gotten so off track. He had panicked when she had admonished him for not telling Henrietta about the scandal. He knew Catherine was right. His sister would have to learn what everyone said about her in theton. But he wanted to secure her dowry before he presented her with this reality, so he could reassure her that she would have every other strength to overcome the gossip. Catherine had pushed him and he had overreacted. She was probably angry with him now and he deserved it.
Despite these thoughts, the country sun managed to burnish both his face and his spirits. He couldn’t fail to return to Edington Hall in a better mood than when he had left. He would make it up to Catherine, he told himself.
Luckily, Catherine met him at the threshold of his home.
“May I have a word, Your Grace?”
He winced at her use of “Your Grace,” even though he knew she was only using the honorific for the ears of others.
He was seized, suddenly, with the impulse to kiss her.
Instead, he merely nodded at her request.
Before he could stop her, she had stepped into the study.
His father’s study.
He wanted to call her back, but she had already disappeared. He chastised himself for his weakness. He could enter astudy. He was being ridiculous.
And yet when he followed Catherine into the room, he shuddered. He had hardly entered the chamber since he had exposed his father and Mary Forster. By contrast, his father had spent more and more time there as the years wore on.
John sat down on the great oak desk, crossed his arms, and waited for her to speak, trying to put distance between them. After all, he didn’t want anything improper to happenhere, of all places.
“I have just returned from a walk with your sister.”
With her words, his heart sank. He had left them to get acquainted. He had wanted to show Catherine that he trusted her with his sister and that he was sorry for his harsh words in the gallery. Henrietta was probably too clinging and forward for her tastes. She could be a bit exuberant. He had imagined Catherine might be charmed by her innocent, affectionate ways and that, after spending some time with her, she might understand why he was so worried about her. The girl was all tenderness and spirit. He was afraid she would buckle when exposed to what the world held in store.
Over breakfast, he had seen how Henrietta had been instantly besotted with Catherine, as he had known she would be. His sister had long needed a friend, a mentor, a woman of her own class to show her how to approach the world. It was hard to imagine a woman better suited to such a task than Catherine, who was both tenacious and soft, intelligent and feeling.
Unfortunately, Catherine appeared to have already tired of his sister.
“And how was it?” he said, steeling himself.
He realized suddenly she looked angry. A fire glinted behind her blue-black eyes—and not the kind he liked.
“Sheknowsabout the scandal, John. She told me in the garden that she doesn’t know how to talk to you about it. I can’t believe that you and your father never had a conversation with her about it. She thinks it isherfault. That you are embarrassed ofher.”
“What?” John said, his heart lurching in his chest. “She knows?”
“I am ashamed that I myself did not suspect it immediately. Of course she knows.”
