“Because,” he pinned Markham with a pointed gaze, “I honor my debts.”
“Very well.” Markham nodded curtly. “But it does not signify. You will succeed.”
Would he?
I will.
He was not the heartless marquess’s son by blood, but he’d been relentlessly drilled to assume the marquess’s spirit. What he wanted, he took. And what he took became his own. And of his own, he was master.
How much of a challenge could a simple spinster be?
…
“Percival William Henry Stanley.” Katherine’s voice frayed with exasperation. She loved her brother, but his stubborn persistence? That, she could do without.
Crumpling his missive offered little solace. She abandoned her morning project’s still-damp ink and wandered past her sister Julia to lean on the window sash.
The library, which spanned the back of Southford Manor, had always been her refuge. Leather-bound treasures decorated ivory-painted shelves, and floor-to-ceiling windows framed a soothing aspect—Southford’s stately beech trees lined its wandering drive in perfect symmetry.
Atop a distant hill, she could just make out the faint outline of her mother’s Grecian folly, and just beyond the invisible ha-ha, sheep grazed in blissful, bucolic oblivion.
Of course,theywere blissful.Theywere not wholly subject to interfering little brothers.
Her breath made a cloud on the window.
Why couldn’t Markham understand? She did not want his help. She was content to live by a line she’d read:Independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.
She was not, of course, truly independent, but, at Southford, she was safe, at least, from further humiliation. If Markham had his way, despite all she’d relinquished, and everything she’d denied, she’d be no more protected than she’d been the night Brummell had turned his cold glare in her direction and sold her future for the price of a halfhearted chuckle.
Groaning, she pressed her face against cool glass.
“What has Markham done now?” Julia asked.
“It’s not what he’s done but what he plans to do.” Katherine turned and waved the crumpled missive. “He expects to return to Southford Friday, next.”
Julia rested on her elbows, thudding one foot against her chair. “Isn’t that good news?”
“Percy,” Katherine replied darkly, “is not coming alone.”
“Markham hates when you call him Percy… And what is so terrible about a visitor? No oneevervisits.”
What is so terrible about a visitor, indeed. Katherine’s scandal had finally begun to fade. However, a stranger would rouse old speculations, resurrecting the past and putting an end to her hard-won peace.
On the other hand, how could she expect Julia to understand? Julia had been a child at the time of Katherine’s so-called scandals.
“Percy brought a friend to Southford once before,” Katherine explained. “That friend had wormed his way into our dear brother’s good graces just to get an up-close look at his infamous sister.”
The insufferable fop had sought her out as if she were a curiosity, salivating at the chance to pen her name into his roster of conquests.A penny, sir, to see the unmarriageable maiden. A half crown if you want a go.
“I don’t remember any visitors,” Julia said.
“Well, it’s been…” Three—no, four—no. Goodness, had she been out of Society five years? She tucked her hair behind her ear. “It’s been a while.”
“Katherine, you’ve smeared ink on your cheek.”
“Have I?” She opened her hand. Dark stains bled over her fingers and now, apparently, her face. Her cheeks once again grew hot. Her last batch of iron gall ink had lacked proper thickness, hadn’t it? And yet, she’d stubbornly carried on with the task of copying Royal Primer pages.
Perhaps she had not changed at all. Perhaps she was still the same willful, foolish, impulsive—
