She tensed. Her nature. Yes, that was the trouble in all this. It always had been. But she refused to say anything in reply. She just entered the ballroom and left him without daring to look back.
As she stepped into her foyer, Katherine was still shaking from her encounter with Roseford, even though it had been over an hour ago. That damnable man was a menace. She had to stay far, far away from him or risk destroying herself even more than she already had been. She certainly needed to stop obsessing over his wager that he would win her body. She didn’t want that. Not in the slightest.
“Wilkes, you do not know how happy I am to be home,” she said with a forced smile as her butler took her wrap and gloves. “I’m going to have a drink and turn straight in. Will you ask Evelyn to meet me upstairs in a moment to help me ready myself?”
Her butler nodded slightly. “I will do that, my lady, but I must tell you that you have a visitor.”
Katherine froze and stared at him. “A visitor,” she repeated in confusion. “At midnight? Who in the world could be here at this hour?”
“Mr. Montague, my lady,” he said.
Any happy feelings she’d had at being safe and sound at home now fled. “My father,” she said softly.
Wilkes pursed his lips. “I did try to dissuade him from waiting, as we did not expect you home from the ball until much later, but he was insistent. I hope I did the right thing in surrendering the parlor to him.”
Katherine bent her head. “Yes, of course. He would not have been moved from his stubbornness no matter what you said, Wilkes. I’ll go see him. And I’ll ring for Evelyn myself when I’m ready—no need to find her for me now.”
The butler nodded and she walked away, legs shaking just as they had been after her encounter with Roseford. But for very different reasons.
She hesitated at her parlor door. It had never seemed so big and daunting before. She’d never dreaded opening it so much. And yet she did so because there was no other choice.
Her father was standing at her fire, staring at the flames. He had never been to this house. She’d liked that about this place. It was hers, not Gregory’s or her father’s or anyone else’s.
And now he stood in the middle of the room and somehow it was spoiled by his presence. At least for the moment.
“Father,” she said softly.
He pivoted and speared her with an immediate glare. “You look like a whore in that gown.”
She lifted a hand to her chest at the slur, spreading her fingers as if to cover the skin that her dress revealed. It was current fashion, of course, nothing the world would judge her on. Her father was another story.
“I’m surprised you are here,” she said, ignoring his glare and his heated, cruel words. “You don’t call on me, and certainly not at this hour.”
“I had to come when I heard you have made a return to Society,” he said. “You are a little fool.”
She set her jaw and crossed to the sideboard where she stared at the bottles lined up there. She had intended just a sip of sherry to calm herself before she went to bed. Now she grabbed for a bottle of scotch, Gregory’s best, one of the few things she’d brought with her when she departed his home months ago.
She poured half a tumbler full and took a long sip. “I’m tired,” she said. “And in no mood to hear you go on about my many sins. Perhaps you could write them in one of your many warm and wonderful letters. Isn’t that how we communicate? Why change things?”
His face twisted in anger at her impertinence and he took three long steps toward her. She braced herself, though she wasn’t certain for what. He had struck her before, of course, but not for a long time. He had very little power over her now, not when she had her own money and title and home.
Over her heart…well, that was another story. His ugliness had always moved her, cut her, made her long for acceptance.
“How can you go back after what you’ve done? You are a marked woman—they will never accept you. You will be seen as what you are and always have been. A wanton.”
She bent her head for the second time that night and blinked against tears. The worst part was that her father wasn’t wrong. There seemed to be no going back to Society, just as he claimed. She was seen as dirty or broken or damaged because of how Gregory had died.
“Please stop,” she whispered, willing herself not to break down in front of him. That would give him too much pleasure.
“I know you’ve been seeing your aunt,” he snapped.
She jerked her head up and saw that her father’s round face had gone purple in his anger. “Are you spying on me?”
“Reports come back to me,” he growled. “Do not question me when you are the problem.”
She almost laughed at that. The problem. Oh yes, she had always been that to him. Just as her mother had been. So many problems for a man with such piety.
“Then wash your hands of me,” she said on a heavy sigh. “This is the perfect time to do it, isn’t it? You can tell everyone that you will not support your whore daughter who killed her husband in the most shocking way. That should keep your godly friends praying for you for years.”
