“I recall meeting you,” he said. “Was it Charlotte who introduced us?”
“Yes,” she said. “Charlotte introduced us, but that wasfouryears ago. What happened next is something else.”
“Tell me,” he pleaded. “Tell me what it is that I did to you.”
She let out her breath slowly and paced away from him, stepping into the space at the bay window. He flashed back to the first night he’d kissed her. When they’d stood in that tiny space together, hiding from his friends, exploring…well, a future he hadn’t understood at the time.
A future that was dissolving with every cold glare Katherine sent his way.
“I came onto the terrace for air,” she said. “And you were there.”
He swallowed. There was a tingle of memory when she said that. A bleary flash of Katherine’s face looking up at him, trembling in the moonlight.
“Three years ago,” he said. “Before you were married.”
She didn’t look at him still. “You were drunk. It was April, and I-I understand better now why that date might have meant something to you.”
He pressed his lips together. He was always at his worst around the anniversary of his mother’s death. “What did I do?” he asked.
“You were just…you,” she said, peeking at him at last. Some of her anger seemed tempered then. “Flirted. Teased. And then you sort of…swung in on me and I knew, even in my innocence, that you would kiss me.”
He recoiled in horror. “Did I force that on you?”
“No!” she said, pivoting fully and stepping toward him. “Drunk or sober, that is not who you are. I know that. I…damn it, I wanted you to kiss me. You have always been what I could not resist it seems, even before I understood fully what you were. What you could do to a woman.”
“So we kissed,” he said, confused again.
“No, we were interrupted.” Her breath caught and tears flooded her eyes. “By my father.”
He staggered back a step. He knew enough about Katherine’s past, about her relationship with her father, to know what kind if damage such a thing would cause to her. “No,” he whispered.
“He was so angry. After all, you wereyou, with all your reputation. Catching me almost in your arms was ammunition in his war to declare me a whore. And he did, loudly. Cruelly.”
“Oh God.” The weight of what his worst impulses had caused crashed down on him.
“He threatened me with marriage,” she said. “I’d been allowed freedom to find my match and he took that away. My marriage contract with Gainsworth was signed the next afternoon.”
Robert couldn’t help his mouth dropping open in shock at that horrible revelation. “You were forced to marry Gainsworth because…because of me?”
She nodded. “Yes.” Her face fell. “No, not entirely. My father had wanted to do this for years. You were the excuse.Iwas the excuse.”
Robert jerked a hand through his hair. “If I had known,” he whispered. “If I had known, perhaps I could have done something to help you.”
Her face twisted, and the anger that had been tempered flared back to full life as she staggered toward him. Her hands shook at her sides and she glared up at him. “But you did know, Robert. You knew because I told you.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Three Years Ago
Katherine shook as she climbed from the hack she had hired and handed over blunt to the driver. “Wait here for me and there will be extra at the end of your fare,” she whispered.
The man looked her up and down, leering at her before he jerked his head toward the elegant townhouse they were parked before. “Why not? You’re not the first chit I’ve brought here. His Grace pays well for his tarts.”
Katherine flinched as she walked away from the chuckling man. His implication gave her no confidence in what she was about to do. There was a very good possibility she would only make things worse for herself, especially if her father ever found out she’d snuck from her rooms in the middle of the night to come here of all places.
But she was running out of time. Marriage contracts had been signed just hours ago and the Duke of Roseford was the only man who could help her. Save her. Surely when he discovered what their meeting on the terrace the night before had wrought, he would want to assist her.
He was a gentleman, wasn’t he?
