“I have no idea why he would make some wager on me,” Katherine muttered, more to herself than to Isabel. “He made it more than clear he wants nothing to do with me.”
Isabel stood and tilted her head. “Oh…I thought your comment on Robert’s character had more to do with his public reputation. I had no idea you were personally acquainted with him.”
“We interacted.” Katherine ground out. “But perhaps he does not recall it. I wouldn’t doubt that was true, drunk as he was on both occasions. I suppose then it is almost as if it only happened in my mind.”
She flinched at the memories that flooded her once more, sharper now as she let herself drown in them. Roseford’s breath on her neck. His gaze locked with hers. That flare of desire in her belly that she hadn’t understood at the time. Then she’d been an innocent. Now she had known pleasure, been desperate for it.
“Katherine?”
“No,” she said, jolting herself from the thoughts that made her body weak. She was better than this. She could overcome it.
Isabel stared at her in confusion. Then her expression softened with empathy. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice barely carrying.
Katherine thrust her shoulders back, forcing strength she didn’t feel into her countenance. “Well, just because that pompous man, or any other of his ilk, has decided that he wants me doesn’t mean I have to surrender to him. Or stoop to his level.”
Isabel took a tentative step closer, worrying her hands against that tiny belly. “I—did I do the wrong thing in telling you, Katherine?”
“No.” Katherine reached out and took Isabel’s hand, squeezing gently as her rage was tempered. “Truly, you did me a kindness. There are challenges facing me. I knew that would be true before I dared take a step into a ballroom. Now I understand those challenges better than before.” She shook her head. “And perhaps that helps me establish what my limits will be.”
“Limits?” Isabel asked, drawing Katherine back to the settee. “What do you mean?”
Katherine swallowed hard, trying to bypass the lump that had formed in her throat. “I just…I wanted to return to Society, you see. I have a little of my own money, no longer have my father or my husband to police my actions.”
“You feel now that you can’t,” Isabel said.
Katherine nodded. “I must be practical, mustn’t I? The reaction of Society when I walked back into the ballroom was…not good. And now that I know these so-called gentlemen have placed a wager on who will make me spread my legs…it won’t help my cause. I must accept that I may never have a true place in good society again.”
She said the words and they tasted like sawdust on her suddenly dry tongue. She’d spent a lifetime under one man’s thumb or another. She had so looked forward to being free. Now that future seemed dimmer and dimmer.
Thanks to Roseford.
“If I can help…” Isabel began.
Katherine yanked herself back from those dark thoughts and shook her head. “I appreciate it, as I said before. But hearing what you have to say, it makes me question why you would. You and the other duchesses cannot truly wish to involve yourselves with a woman who inspires such urges in the men of Society.”
Isabel pursed her lips. “First off, that they would make a wager like this reflects onthem, not you. And secondly, you didn’t know me before.”
“Before?”
“Before Matthew,” Isabel whispered. “Before I was his wife, at any rate. You don’t know how I came to be the duchess that I am now. If you did, you’d realize I know a little of what you must feel. I know a little about scandal and the desperation it hatches in your chest.”
That was an apt description. A hatching of fears and pains and longings that then spread. “Do you?”
Isabel took her hand again and nodded. “I do. And I want to be your friend, Katherine. Truly.”
Katherine held her stare in disbelief. Until that moment she hadn’t truly realized just how much she’d held herself off from others during the past few years. Fearing their judgment. Anticipating their recrimination. Unable to trust that anything another person offered was true or that it would last.
But here, sitting with this woman, she wanted to take that leap. To believe that the friendship Isabel held out to her was something she could truly take without fear.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
Isabel leaned forward and bussed her cheek. Despite the forwardness of the action, Katherine couldn’t help but smile as her new friend pulled away. “All right, that is done. Now I do not wish to talk about this anymore. We will chat about happier things and truly get to know each other.”
The duchess crossed to the sideboard to pour the tea. Katherine allowed it and kept the smile on her face as Isabel watched. But deep in her heart she couldn’t stop thinking about what Isabel had told her. About the men in Society. About Roseford.
So even if they didn’t discuss it, Katherine knew it would be a topic she would not stop thinking about for a very long time. Nor would she stop searching for an escape from the prison the Duke of Roseford thought to put her in.
Chapter Four
