“Your Grace,” he said in a low voice, “I am terribly sorry to intrude. May I have a word? A matter of extreme urgency. It concerns… your husband.”
It seemed as though he had struggled to call Aaron anything other than ‘Your Grace’, and Catherine felt a chill run up her spine at the notion that a man so rigid and formal as Mr. McKay would ever call his master by anything other than the proper title. Something had changed in the loyal retainer. It made her heart lurch. The glow of the evening dimmed, shadows creeping back in.
“I will come and speak to you after we have said goodbye to the Merricks,” she told him in a low voice.
“Thank you, Your Grace. May I suggest not mentioning it to your husband?”
That confirmed it. Catherine was about to hear something she would not like.
CHAPTER 29
Catherine’s heart was still humming from the evening’s tensions and triumphs when the last carriage wheels faded down the drive. The Merricks had departed, Isabella flushed and happy, Jeremy laughing with her father, and even Lady Blackmere in high spirits. For once, Caerleon’s ancient hall felt full of light. Catherine had scarcely finished exhaling her relief when Aaron’s deep voice rumbled near her ear.
“Catherine,” he began, bowing slightly. “Now that we are alone once more, might I beg for a moment with the triumphant hostess in the study? A glass of sherry, perhaps, to mark the evening.”
His eyes smoldered. Catherine could see his desire in them. She did not know if it was her imagination, but she thought she saw something else in his expression. A keen hunger. A tension, such as a man waiting for an answer to a proposal of marriage, might show. She hesitated.
I can relieve that tension with a simple answer. I can tell him what he wants to hear. I want to. Oh Lord, how I want to!
Her gaze slipped instinctively to the staff, busy gathering the remains of supper.
“Yes, but first,” she replied softly, “I would like to congratulate Mr. McKay and the rest of the household for their efforts. This dinner would not have succeeded without them.”
Gideon stepped in close before she could take a step away. His hand caught hers gently but firmly, and he pressed a kiss against her fingers. The heat of it burned into her skin.
“You,” he whispered, his voice pitched for her alone, “were magnificent tonight. That brilliance at the piano-forte. Catherine, you dazzled them. You were born to be a Duchess. The title was made for you.”
His eyes were dark and searching, his smile genuine, and her body ached with the longing to surrender, to melt against him and forget every shadow between them. She blushed at his outrageous praise.
How can I be those things when I have no experience, no practice? I simply did what seemed right to help my friend.
Her breath caught, her lips parted with a half-formed confession. But then—like a knife-edge—came the memory of secrets. Things left unspoken. Lies wrapped around truths. Shepulled gently, desperate to be free of his grasp before her heart betrayed her resolve. The effort to release herself felt like wrenching away a piece of her soul.
His fingers loosened slowly, as if against his will. When she turned from him, it felt like walking away for good.
The first step nearly undid her.
The second was almost as hard.
She did not look back but lifted her chin and lengthened her stride. She wanted this business done with.
And I want to go to my husband in his study. I want to give up my mind, my suspicion, and just… be.
The butler’s office was dimly lit, a single candle guttering on the desk. Mr. McKay stood stiffly at her entrance, but tonight there was something different in his posture. His shoulders sagged, and the stoic, military facade that usually defined him seemed to have crumbled. A dish sat on the table, and a piece of paper was curling up in flames at the centre of the dish.
“Your Grace,” he said, voice low and strained, “forgive me. This is against my training and my nature. It is extremely difficult for me to do, but I must obey moral imperatives that go beyond my duties as butler to His Grace.
“I must raise a subject with you which… will be as difficult to speak as I suspect it will be for you to hear. Please, would you sit?”
He indicated a wooden, ladder-back chair on the other side of his desk. Catherine wondered if this chair was used for those members of staff summoned to Mr. McKay’s office for a reprimand. After she sat, he opened a drawer and drew out a leather folder, bound with string.
“I can remain silent no longer,” Mr. McKay continued, “not when you are drawn deeper into the orbit of a… a…godless rogue!”
Catherine gasped audibly. He had to be talking of Aaron, but calling him agodless rogue?!
“What are you saying?”
“His… no, I will not give him that title. Yourhusband,” McKay amended, bitterness in every syllable, “is not the man you think him to be. Before you came, he treated us with contempt and brutality!
