Hearing that gossip about her aunt had knocked something loose in her. She felt even more anxious about Henrietta and the bodies seemed to press in even more. She closed her eyes and tried to think of where she could have gone.
Then a sweat broke out across her entire body.
She had once been not much older than Henrietta, feeling desperately hurt and neglected, and finally in a place where she might win some recognition, some attention. She had been young and high-spirited and ready to make a mistake just to see how it felt.
She couldn’t have.
And yet Catherine knew better than anyone that she very muchcouldhave. Catherine had gotten lucky that night seven years ago—her indiscretion with John had never been discovered. Not every girl, she knew, was that lucky.
“Bollocks.” She tore off in the direction of the ballroom, not caring that she jostled people rudely out of the way. She sent a man’s glass of port sailing onto his waistcoat and barely mumbled an apology. She pushed her way through the crowd and finally made it to the ballroom, where movement was easier. She didn’t look for John. It was more important to reach Henrietta. She tore onto the balcony, where couples and triads congregated, many speaking loudly over one another, already in their cups. But none of these groups contained Henrietta. She exhaled. Perhaps, she had worried for no reason.
She saw a row of stone steps that led down to the garden. Somehow, she knew.
Catherine tore down the steps. Still, over the sound of the revelers above, she could hear little.
Then, a voice. “Please. I don’t—not—I don’t want to—”
“Henrietta!” she called, running in the direction of the girl. “Henrietta! Where are you?”
As she ran, her mask fell to the ground. She did not bother to pick it up.
She saw the green dress and then Henrietta’s crying face. A man had her pressed up against a wall of ivy, but she clearly had no interest in his embraces.
“Get off of her!” Catherine shouted.
At the sound of her voice, the man released Henrietta. Catherine grabbed her hand and pulled her away.
“Catherine!” Henrietta sobbed. Catherine put her arm around the girl.
“Henrietta,” she said soothingly. “It will be fine. I am here now.”
She looked at the unfamiliar man, who had gone stark white, and looked about her own age. He had a shock of dark brown hair and not an unpleasant countenance, although, right now, it was disfigured by a snarling, aggressive look.
“There has been a misunderstanding,” he began but before he could say more Catherine stepped forward and slapped him across the face.
He looked up at her in shock. Then he lurched towards her.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
John had seenCatherine exit the ballroom through the balcony doors. He followed, wondering what the hell she was doing and why she would think that Henrietta had gone outside.
After he had followed the steps off the balcony, he saw Henrietta, who looked terrified, her face streaked with tears, and Catherine, facing a man who he couldn’t quite see.
He saw Catherine step forward and slap the man, hard, across the face. The man lunged at her.
And then John was hauling the man off of her. The man had grabbed Catherine by the shoulders, but John pushed him off, yelling curses, and the man hit the paving stones of the garden path.
When he looked up, he saw that it was his cousin.
Damn it, hissecondcousin.
Baron Pierce Falk.
“Bastard!” John shouted down at him.
Falk grinned. His face had always been a few shades too pale for the rest of him. In the moonlight, it looked particularly ghostly, as if he were a corpse that had been reanimated.
“Your sister gave herself up to me in this ivy. Or she would have if we had had a few more minutes to ourselves.”
