Sally entered with a dinner tray, her usual cheerful smile in place. “Dinner, Your Grace. Shall I serve it on the table?”
“Am I not dining with the Duke?” Catherine tried to keep her voice light, but something in her chest tightened.
“I'm afraid His Grace has gone to dine in town with Lord Everdon, ma'am.”
Of course he had. He hadn’t spoken to her since they’d left the lake. Hadn’t even looked at her while she dressed. Silent all the way back to the house.
Had he taken what he wanted and decided he was finished?
It made her feel used. She pulled the linen tighter about herself.
“Just set the tray down by the hearth. I will eat while I dry myself by the fire.”
Sally smiled and set down the dinner, picking up some of the damp, discarded linen sheets after relieving herself of the tray.
“Were you swimming, Your Grace?” she asked.
“I was.”
“In the lake in the woods? His Grace goes there a lot, I’ve heard.”
“Yes,” Catherine thought about how she had stood and watched him swim before he was aware of her presence.
It had been a rare unguarded moment in which she could observe one of his rituals, his habits. She had been thrilled at the insight she felt it gave her into Aaron’s character. His spirit. A man who bathed daily in a lake in the middle of a wood. That was no conventional gentleman. There was something wild about that.
“Do you know anything about the Duke’s past?” Catherine asked suddenly, thinking back to his scars.
“No, Your Grace. Very little. I came here not long after he gained the title. He was as he is now. I have heard of the scars in passing, from his valet, Jonathan.”
“Hmm. Has His Grace discussed those scars with his valet?”
“His Grace does not discuss anything with anyone, Your Grace,” Sally frowned.
Catherine thought back to the lake. To watching him emerge from the water like some pagan god, droplets sliding down that impossible body. Every detail was seared into her memory. The scars. The muscles. The birthmark on his upper arm—
Her breath caught.
The birthmark…
It had been on his right arm. The inside of his bicep. But in childhood, she vividly recalled tracing that mark with her fingerduring a summer game, and it had been on his left arm. She was certain of it!
Wasn’t she?
“Your Grace?” Sally was staring at her. “Are you quite well?”
Catherine realized she'd gone rigid, the bread frozen halfway to her mouth.
“I—yes. Just a headache. From all the exertion today.” She forced a smile. “That will be all, Sally.”
She sat alone for a long time after Sally left, staring into the flames. An uncomfortable feeling had been growing within her. The birthmark could mean nothing. Memory was fallible. Children noticed odd things, and she had indeed been very young.
But am I remembering correctly? Was iteveron his left arm? If it is no longer there, then I must have been wrong. My memory must be at fault.
An uncomfortable tension was tailoring into her shoulders.
Or perhaps I am remembering correctly. Perhaps they are all conspiring against me. Aaron, his friend. Even Bella, who appeared so suddenly and without being called for. But for what reason?
Another thought settled in her stomach like a stone just then. If the birthmark had moved—if it truly had been on his left arm in childhood—then the man Catherine had married wasn't Aaron Tarnley at all.
