Page 54 of The Icy Duke Claims a Bride

“This is all subject to the marriage contract negotiation, of course,” Lord Sedgehall cautioned. “It’s important to get the financial details tied up. We will not be making any legal commitments or announcements outside the family until all the details are finalized.”

“Was Lady Harvey not mentioned in her husband’s will, then?” Catherine blurted out, sneering.

“Catherine!” Jemima gasped, aghast.

“I do not believe that the terms of Lord Harvey’s will are any business of yours, Catherine,” Albion returned hotly. “I don’t know where you get such ideas, and certainly not why you would choose to speak them aloud. Marriage has not improved your temper!”

Hugh was trying to catch Catherine’s gaze, but she refused to look at him, her eyes fixed on her father. “You really don’t know, Father?” she shouted back. “You really cannot imagine why I am so upset? Was it so very easy for you to forget how you betrayed our mother for so long with that woman and God knows how many others?!”

“I will not be spoken to in this way, Catherine!” Albion thundered. “Discourtesy aside, it is unfair, and you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I heard you were in love with another woman even when you married Mother!” she hissed. “Unfaithful from the first day—from the moment you took your vows!”

Catherine was dimly aware that Jemima’s smile had vanished and that she was now sobbing, Hugh at her side, trying to comfort her.

“Unfaithful?! Yes, I was in love with someone else when we married. I have never denied it. I was in love with Daisy Leamington, the woman you know as Lady Harvey. If I’ve everbeen unfaithful, it has only been to Daisy, and only because the law, the church, and your mother demanded it.”

This incredible revelation silenced Catherine as nothing else could have done. Her father looked as though he might burst into tears, and her hand flew to her mouth in horror.

Hugh was instantly beside her, his arm wrapping around her shoulders. “Excuse us for a few minutes, My Lord, Jemima. I think that Catherine is not yet herself. Refreshments will be sent to you shortly.”

He drew her forcefully out of the room and across the hallway, then into the library, closing the large wooden doors behind them.

Catherine expected that she might have gone too far, this time. How would Hugh punish her? Lock her up? Spank her like a child? Or something worse?

CHAPTER TWENTY

“What in God’s name is going on, Catherine?” Hugh demanded, evidently confounded by the scene he had just witnessed in the drawing room. “How you feel about your father is a family matter between the two of you, but I cannot have guests in my house treated so rudely.”

“What have I done?” Catherine whispered to herself.

Remembering her sister’s weeping and the awful expression on her father’s face, she barely heard Hugh’s words and did not engage with him until he stopped his vexed pacing and studied her more closely.

“Catherine?” he prompted, lowering his voice. “Something is very wrong, isn’t it?”

“What have I done?” she repeated and put her hands over her eyes as if she could block out the memory.

“You’re shaking,” Hugh noted, snatching a blanket off one of the comfortable leather chairs and wrapping it about her shoulders. “Have you even eaten anything today? I must call for the physician. You are not well, in mind or in body.”

“I do not know what is wrong with me, Hugh,” she admitted desperately. “Perhaps I do need a physician. Perhaps I am mad and you should put me away. It’s as though the anger inside me won’t ever just let me be.”

Hugh sank into one of the chairs, and she allowed him to pull her onto his lap and tuck the woolen blanket around her shivering form.

“I would never put you away.” Hugh pressed a kiss to her temple. “You are my wife. Don’t ever think of such an absurd thing. But why such anger towards your father? What can he have done to merit such wrath? Was he a drunkard or a wife beater? Did he deprive your mother of her money or freedom?”

“No, nothing like that. He just… never loved her,” Catherine said, hearing the desolation in her voice.

“Many husbands and wives do not love one another, but it does not necessarily inspire such enmity in their children,” Hugh continued. “There can still be mutual respect, liking, and companionship in marriage, even when there is no love.”

Was he talking about their own marriage? Hugh had certainly never claimed to love her, but he had shown her respect, liking,and companionship. She should have been grateful for so much, but this thought made her feel even sadder somehow.

She hid her face in the crook of his neck and closed her eyes. “My mother was so unhappy,” she tried to explain. “The whole marriage seemed always a millstone around her neck. I know that she stayed with my father only out of duty. If she had lived longer, there would have been a legal separation. I heard them discussing it.”

“It sounds like a sad situation and one that shouldn’t have involved children, but I still don’t understand why you blame your father so very much.”

“Because even though he could not love Mother, he loved someone else. Mother hated Lady Harvey and all of Father’s other women.”

“Lord Sedgehall said that there was only ever Lady Harvey. Could that be true?”

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