Page 11 of The Icy Duke Claims a Bride

Catherine hung her head. As someone who normally prided herself on her rationality and unswerving adherence to her principles, she knew exactly how ridiculous and vacillating she sounded. But what other options were open to her? She was trapped.

“It’s ridiculous, Father, I admit, but it’s also possible. We could pack up everything and live very cheaply in Italy, just the three of us.”

“How would I ever find husbands for you both in Italy? We don’t even speak Italian, and I won’t have my daughters marrying foreigners. Well, not unless they hold a title.”

“We don’t have to marry at all,” Catherine countered, knowing that her words were futile. “Can’t you see that?”

Lord Sedgehall sighed and rubbed his temples, which were likely aching both from his eldest daughter’s unexpected outburst and the after-effects of the afternoon’s champagne. “Catherine, you are now betrothed to a man of rank and wealth. Your sister is at the start of a very promising Season, and I have no doubt that she will be engaged by autumn—perhaps equally well. Your prospects here are excellent, by any standard. Why would I jeopardize either of my daughters’ futures by gallivanting off to the Continent? You’re making no sense.”

“I don’t want to marry,” she said, enunciating each word.

“You don’t want to marry, then you do, then you want to go to Italy… Catherine, you can’t keep changing your mind and can’t always have what you want. None of us can. Do you think I wanted you on the shelf for seven years rather than respectably married by twenty? Of course, I didn’t. But I had to accept that situation and others before it. Now, so must you.”

“You never listen to me, just like you never listened to Mother. I don’t believe you’ve ever cared what any of us say.”

“That’s unfair, Catherine. We all live under the constraints that life has put on us. Your mother and I both understood that, even if you don’t.”

“Constraints that lay far heavier on her than they ever did on you, I suspect,” Catherine remarked tartly.

Whether with self-consciousness or anger, her father’s face flushed redder than it was already. Catherine doubted it wouldbe shame. Even now, she knew he visited Lady Harvey whenever he could. In fact, the carriage had made at least two visits to Harvey Mansion that week alone. She knew no better than her mother whom Albion’s other woman might be.

“I do not care to ask exactly what you are implying, but that is enough, Catherine,” Lord Sedgehall said, his voice stern but surprisingly calm and more than a little sad.

Seeing the distress on Jemima’s face, Catherine simply made a sound of vague disregard and resumed eating the creamed chicken and summer greens on her plate. She avoided looking at or speaking to her father for the rest of the meal.

It was always harder to bear his company when he seemed reasonable and easier to maintain her anger towards him when he shouted or fought back. Tonight, he had not, and she hated the guilt that this evoked in her. Catherine left the dinner table before pudding was served and went to her room.

Half an hour later, a faint knock sounded at the door. At first, she ignored it.

“It’s me,” Jemima’s voice said after the third knock went unanswered.

Reluctantly, Catherine slid out of bed and let her sister into the room. “I’m sorry, I thought it might be Father. I don’t want to talk to him right now.”

Jemima sighed and closed the door behind her. “Do you have to fight with Father so much, Catherine? He really does care, and he only wants the best for us, even if he goes about it in such a clumsy way. Father was really very hurt this evening. He always is when you say such things and then mention Mother.”

“That will be his guilt, not my words,” Catherine said grimly, refusing to acknowledge her renewed twinge of sympathy for her father upon hearing the effect of her accusations.

Jemima looked at her in bafflement.

Catherine sighed, not wanting to share everything she knew about their parents’ marriage with her younger sister. Jemima had probably noticed very little of their parents’ unhappiness at the time, and would remember even less. It would be pointless and hurtful to explain matters to her now.

“Can we talk about your current crop of suitors instead, Jemima? I’d much rather do that tonight.”

Jemima smiled. “We can, but you’re not to say bad things about everyone. Well, not unless they really are bad like Lord Mickledown, who had a mad wife hidden away on his estate and two mistresses in his townhouse but still proposed to Jessica Williams last year…”

They both laughed at the memory of the biggest scandal of the previous Season. Jessica Williams had actually since managed to become the Dowager Marchioness of Hasselford, having swiftly married an elderly widower on the rebound from her doomedaffair with rakish Lord Mickledown, and then apparently worn her husband out within six months of marriage.

“Although, if you had Lady Hasselford’s fortune and independence now, you would never have to marry again. You’d be free,” Catherine noted enviously.

“You forget that I want to marry,” Jemima reminded her. “I want to fall in love and have children with a good man who will take care of us all. I’d rather have love than have all the money in the world.”

Catherine smiled and found herself thinking again of her brief intimate moment with the Duke of Redbridge that afternoon.

Hugh. When she thought of his kisses, she could only think of him as Hugh.

She recalled Hugh’s expression when she told him that she would want to see his face when they lay together. It had been such a curious mi of vulnerability and… well, lust, she supposed, although it didn’t repel her as it should have done.

“I think that the Duke of Redbridge might be quite handsome under that mask,” she commented, not wanting to focus on the desire she had glimpsed in him, and even less the desire she herself had felt. “A few scars don’t really matter, do they?”

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