Page 26 of The Lyon Deception

He shook his head. It wasn’t going to be easy, and all because he fell in love with a woman and lied to her to keep her smiling at him a little longer. He was paying the price now, and so he should. He deserved her anger and disappointment.

“Come, Sinclair, we have things to discuss,” Mrs. Dove-Lyon said irritably. “I have already sent a message posthaste to your grandfather. I am hoping he will be happy enough with you to agree to anything I propose.”

Sinclair seemed to regain his senses. He stared at her. “You sent . . .” he began. He knew there was something cagey about this. That list of duke’s daughters for a start. How had Bessie managed to gather those names together? Why? “Do you know my grandfather, Bessie? What have you been keeping from me?”

She waved a dismissive hand. “Lord Armytage wrote to me. He asked for my help to secure you a marriage with a duke’s daughter. It just so happened you had already found one. We should both congratulate ourselves.”

He was sure she was smiling, he could hear it in her voice. He opened his mouth to tell her he didn’t like being lied to, and then realized how hypocritical that would sound. Should he be angry with her and the old man? He felt manipulated. But then he reminded himself that if their machinations could get him and Cat what they both wanted, then who was he to complain?

Mrs. Dove-Lyon moved toward her desk, saying, “What matters is that your grandfather has what he asked for, and so do you. Now we just have to put the pieces together into an attractive parcel.”

She was right. Sinclair needed to pull himself together and start thinking of ways to ensure his grandfather agreed to his part of the bargain. It would not be easy. He knew all too well how avaricious Lord Armytage was. He would not want to let Bonnyrigg go. But Sinclair also knew how ambitious he was to have his heir rise to the top of the ton. A duke’s daughter was a prize indeed. Perhaps he would be willing to set aside his desire for more property and money in order to realize the greater objective?

He went to join Bessie. She already had a sharpened quill and paper at the ready. This was not about him. It was about helping Cat, and if he had to apologize to her endlessly and plead with his grandfather, then that was what he would do.

Chapter Fourteen

Cat and the two Snowden girls were huddled together in Cat’s bedchamber. She had told them what had happened, and they had seemed suitably sympathetic on her behalf. Although they kept flicking glances at each other, almost as if there were something unspoken between them, but Cat was too full of her own concerns to delve into it.

“I understand how cross you are with him,” Prudence said in an excessively careful voice. “He was so nice!”

Harriet added her thoughts. “He was smitten with you, Cat. I can almost understand why he didn’t tell you.”

Cat stared at them in amazement. “Well, I can’t! He should have told me. I would have understood.”

The sisters exchanged one of those glances. “But would you?” Prudence said. “Are you sure you wouldn’t have been furious and walked off? Not that I blame you of course.”

“No,” Cat immediately rejected the idea, and then rethought it. “Well, perhaps. But then I would have had to put my feelings aside, because I needed to talk to him. I needed to persuade him to help me. And knowing the truth then would have been so much better than knowing it now when I . . . when I . . .”

There was a silence which was broken when Bothwell leaped onto the bed and made the three of them jump. Cat hadn’t even realized he was in her room, but now here, he was being fussed over and petted.

“Sometimes people do the wrong things, but it doesn’t mean they are bad people,” Prudence went on. “And he seems determined to help you with Bonnyrigg. I truly believe he is on your side, Cat.”

“So he says,” she muttered, irritated with their championing of the Master. “I am yet to see the agreement they are drawing up. And who knows whether or not Lord Armytage will approve any of it! Mr. Sutherland . . . that is, the Master, seems to think his grandfather will not listen to him.”

“You need a solicitor to thoroughly examine the marriage contract,” Harriet warned. “In case there is some trick in there.”

Cat had thought about that. She knew she should get her Uncle James to read over the legal papers before she signed. However, though he was a pragmatic gentleman, there were some things he would never agree to, and this may be one of them. What if he refused outright to let the marriage go ahead? Not that he could stop it—she was of age. But if he informed her father . . . It would make things very awkward.

“I have to go through with it,” she said quietly. “I would not forgive myself if we lost Bonnyrigg. The family would be split apart!” Tears stung her eyes at the very thought. “I have to do this. I have to try.”

The two girls sighed and reached to clasp her hands. “I’m sure it will be all right,” Prudence said, although the expression in her eyes seemed to say otherwise. “You liked him, didn’t you, when you thought he was someone else? Perhaps in time you will like him again?”

Cat hung her head. She was so tired, too tired to think at all. Marrying a man she had thought she was beginning to love only to find out he was someone else? It felt risky, but what choice did she have?

She tried to remind herself again of how she had felt when she first set eyes on Mr. Sutherland. She had liked him, liked him a great deal. But he had lied to her and tricked her, so how could she forgive him? And yet how could she not forgive him when they must work together to save her home?

Three days more and she would have the marriage contract in her hands. She would wait until then. Perhaps it would all fall apart and she would be going home with Uncle James after all. She closed her eyes with a whimper, while Bothwell rubbed against her sympathetically.

Prudence gave her a hug, and Harriet followed. “It will be all right,” the two girls murmured. “Really, it will all turn out for the best.”

Christopher shot Sinclair a look, as if he were amused and dismayed at the same time. “I thought things were bad enough at the ball when you told me what you were up to, but this is worse. How on earth did you get yourself into such a mess, Sinclair?”

Sinclair groaned. He seemed to be groaning a lot lately. “I know, I know, I’m an idiot.”

“You don’t deserve her.”

Sinclair rested his head in his hands. “What can I do to make up for it? There must be something.”