A Soulmate for the Heartbroken Duke

by Bridget Barton

  “I promise.”

  Chapter 7

  Just weeks later, Catherine wished she had stuck more rigidly to her brother’s advice. But as she stood in her father’s study, her legs feeling weak and as if they might not support her for much longer, she wondered what else she could have done.

  Catherine and Thomas had varied the times and days of their meetings, although they had always met at Stromlyn Lake. But after her talk with Philip, Catherine had urged Thomas to take different routes between Stromlyn Lake and Shawcross Hall, so as not to develop an obvious routine that might lead to their discovery.

  She was so sure that she had covered every possibility, disallowing him to smile at her in public, although brief eye contact was something that they had continued to make.

  And all of it broke her heart; why should she have to hide her love and pretend not to know Thomas? All for the sake of their selfish, antagonistic fathers, not to mention the immature, territorial grandfathers who had caused it all in the first place.

  “Of all the men,” her father said, his voice so low she was almost more afraid.

  She had heard him bellow with predictable regularity throughout her entire life, but it was always the quiet voice she feared. The quiet voice was not the threat of something awful to come; it was a promise. This was her father conserving energy because he knew he had a long and full day of punishing ahead of him.

  “Why him? Why the son of the Duke of Shawcross? Have I not kept you away from them?”

  Catherine knew better than to speak, even to respond to his questions. All she could sensibly do was hang her head; that was what her father was expecting. That was what he was looking for as her response. Not an explanation or a reasonable excuse. Not even the truth. None of it. All he wanted was total and utter capitulation.

  He wanted his enemy to prostrate herself at his feet and declare she had been beaten. And she was his enemy, absolutely his enemy. There was no doubt about that in Catherine’s mind, and the only question was, would it ever change?

  “And because I have been so careful to keep you away from them, I can only imagine that you have gone out of your way to consort with him. Something like that does not happen by accident; it is decided upon.” He paced up and down the floorboards of the large study.

  It was an austere room, always a little cold even if there was a fire in the grate, and it enjoyed so little natural daylight that it might as well not have had a window in it at all.

  And even though it was so ill-favoured in trapping the sun’s rays, every wall had been clad in dark oak paneling, making the room seem darker and more miserable still.

  Her father’s desk was made of mahogany and was so large that it would easily have seated six people around it for dinner. There were papers everywhere across it, just strewn here and there and not even piled neatly, leading Catherine to absently wonder how it was he ever managed to get anything done.

  His approach to his estate papers reminded her of his approach to his dinner plate. It was haphazard at best, and a downright mess at worst. There was nothing at all refined about her father, nothing to redeem him whatsoever. In everything, he was like a bull in a china shop. Every aspect of his life was something to be barged through, knocked out of the way, bullied into line.

  And Catherine knew that she was nothing more than the latest thing to be marched across and beaten. She was going to be dealt with, one way or another, and all that remained to be seen was the method that her father would employ.

  Catherine had no idea how it was her father had found out about her and Thomas. She knew with absolute certainty that Philip had not said anything. When their father had barged into the breakfast room that morning and ripped Catherine from her seat by her upper arm, Philip had looked shocked by it.

  He was as shocked as she was, and he was out of his seat in a heartbeat. He reared up against his father, and only Catherine’s protestations and heartfelt entreaties that he should remain calm had kept him from doing something regrettable.

  That had been more than an hour ago, and her father had yet to let her speak or get to the part where her punishment was made known. Perhaps he did not yet know how he would punish her; perhaps it was all too soon for that.

  But it was clear that the Earl of Barford had only received the dreaded information that morning. It could only have come to him in the moments before he had burst into the breakfast room and seized her.

  Poor Philip must have been suffering agonies wondering what was happening to her, how frightened she must be. But curiously, Catherine did not feel frightened. She simply felt exhausted as if the anxiety of the last few months had finally caught up with her and chosen that moment to make itself known.

  More than anything in the world, Catherine wanted to sit down. There was a small, hard wooden chair in front of her father’s mahogany desk, but she knew better than to sit down in it. It would do her no good to even ask. Her comfort was very rarely a consideration, and it most certainly would not be one now that he had found her out and was so very angry with her.

  But how? How had he found out? She racked her brains and felt sure that she had not been seen with Thomas anywhere. They had taken so much care of late, neither one of them taking risks at all.

  What did it matter who had given them away? In the end, what difference would it make? None. Knowing the identity of the person who had given away her secret would not make her punishment any the less.

  “So, since it is clear to me that you went out of your way to choose this young man, I can only assume that you did so as a means of betraying me. You seek to make a fool of me before the entire county, do you not?” He turned and glared at her, and Catherine wondered if he was expecting her to answer. “Well?” he said, and his voice had grown a little louder.

  “No, I did not,” she said quietly.

  “You did not seek to make a fool of me? But surely with your very behaviour, to make a fool of me was something that could hardly be avoided. So, it was something that you knew would come to me, you scheming little minx.”

  He had begun to pace again, and it was clear that her part in the proceedings was over, at least for the time being.

  Catherine began to feel hot and a little lightheaded, and she was certain that she could feel her body swaying just a little from side to side as if she were going off balance. It was true that she had taken nothing to eat that morning, given that her father had burst into the breakfast room before she had taken a single bite.

  But she knew that it was not simple hunger that was making her feel so weak and unwell. It was the fear of what was coming. Not the fear of what would happen to her, as such, but the fear of how life would move on from that point. And she knew, with absolute certainty, that whatever life held for her in the future, Thomas Carlton would not be part of it.

  As the thought came to her, a little noise escaped her throat, a squashed cry of pain. Her father paused in his determined pacing and turned sharply to glare at her. His face was becoming red, his anger slowly working itself up to a tangible, dreadful thing.

  “What was that?” he said gruffly. “What right have you to cry out? If anyone has a right to cry out in anguish, girl, it is me. After all, am I not the one who has been wronged? And not only wronged but wronged by my own kin? The very flesh and blood I gave life to!” He was whipping himself up into a frenzy again and, when he began to pace once more, Catherine held her breath.

  “How long has this been going on?” He took her off-guard with his question, for he seemed to have asked it quite rationally. “How long have you been meeting with Thomas Carlton?”

  “Five months, Sir,” she said in a tiny, strangled voice.

  “Five months?” he said slowly and deliberately. “For five long months, you have been content to humiliate me with this vile association? And in all that time, did you not once think of your duty to me? Did you not once think of the evil betrayal you were perpetrating? For make no mistake, girl, you have betrayed me. I have g
iven you everything in the world, everything you could possibly want or desire, and you have seen fit to go behind my back and throw everything I have ever done for you back in my face. What would you do with somebody who did that to you?” he said and continued to pace. “What punishment would you lay out for somebody who had treated you with such contempt?”

  Catherine could feel herself growing a little faint and blinked rapidly to stave it off. He had reached the subject of punishment much sooner than she had been expecting, and it had taken her by surprise.

  She felt coldness in the pit of her stomach as if it had been filled with ice, and yet her arms and legs seemed to be hot and cold in turns. There was a pricking at the back of her neck, and she felt clammy with fear.

  The pricking was causing a great irritation, and she wanted to reach up and lay a hand on the back of her neck. She knew, however, she ought not to move a muscle.

  If she did, it would just draw his attention to her and make him all the angrier. All she could do was stand there and hope that she did not keel over and that she would instead brave it all, whatever was coming.

  “Well, I have decided. I cannot have a member of own family betraying me as you have. I am the Earl of Barford, a man of great importance, not a man whose daughter, his very own daughter, would go against him,” he said, and for a moment she almost inappropriately laughed, for he had straightened up a little in his own description of himself and had puffed his chest out somewhat proudly. He looked ridiculous, and it was certainly not the moment for any sort of self-congratulation. “And so it is clear to me that I have only one course of action. I cannot have a traitor under my roof, not even if she is my own daughter. Especially if she is my own daughter!” He seemed to falter for a moment before correcting himself. “And so, I am going to disown you.”

  “Disown me?” Catherine said in a strangled sob.

  Of all the punishments she had expected, being disowned had not been one of them. In truth, it had not even occurred to her that her father would say such a thing. She had expected that she would be struck, bruised even. She had known that she would be disallowed Thomas Carlton’s company ever again, that was a foregone conclusion. And she had even thought that he would instantly marry her away to whichever young man was currently floating on the periphery of his mind as potentially useful to him at a later date.

  “You seem a little dismayed,” he said and turned, giving her a bitter, cruel smile.

  “What do you mean disowned, father?” she said, feeling all the more distressed in the face of her father’s apparent amusement.

  “I mean that you are no longer welcome to live under this roof. You will never live under this roof again.”

  “You are throwing me away?” she said and was unable to hide the accusation in her tone.

  “Do you think you deserve better?” he scoffed.

  “Yes, I do,” she said, thinking that she suddenly had nothing to lose. “I am your daughter, and it is unthinkable that you would cast me aside for one mistake.”

  “Please, do not sound so hard done to,” he said dismissively. “I am not making you homeless; I am simply sending you away. Just because you will never sleep under this roof again does not mean that you will not have somewhere to sleep.”

  “And where am I to go?” she said, her voice wavering badly with fear and desolation. “Where am I to live?”

  “I am sending you up north, Catherine. You will, from this point forward, live with your aunt.”

  “My aunt?” Catherine said, not aware that she had an aunt in the North of England.

  “I have a sister in Derbyshire. I intend to write to her this morning and tell her that I am sending you up to her. As soon as I have her reply, you will leave. And I will never look upon your traitorous face again.”

  “You would be happy never to see me again, Father?”

  “What else do you expect from me?”

  “I suppose from a man who has always treated me as if I were no more important to him than an old piece of furniture I expect very little. I should perhaps have easily expected that you would have no more compunction scraping me out of your life as you would scraping uneaten food into a pig pen.”

  “I think you would be well advised to mind what you say.”

  “Why? You are casting me aside forever; what more can you do to me? If I am not to have my say now, then when?”

  “You do not get to have a say, not after what you did.”

  “Be honest, Father. I did not get to have a say before that. There are times when you have not even acknowledged me when we have sat to eat at the same table. And if I am crying now, Father, it is not for fear of never seeing your face again because, in all of this, that is the only relief.”

  “I have told you to be quiet.”

  “I will not be quiet,” she snapped angrily, the weakness in her legs suddenly disappearing and an urge to strike out at her father so very strong. “My only regret in leaving this place is not seeing my brother again. And my only regret in leaving the county is that I will not see Thomas Carlton again because I have never met a finer man in all my life.”

  “You will not talk of him in this house.

  “Thomas Carlton is a man, a real man. He is not some fool who cannot see beyond a petty disagreement between his ancestors. He is clever and wise and kind; and I will love him until the day I die.”

  By the time she had finished, Catherine was shouting. She had never shouted at her father in all her life; in fact, she had hardly ever shouted at all. And once she had begun, she could not imagine what on earth could stop her.

  That was, of course, until her father struck her so hard across the face that she fell backward. Catherine landed hard on the floor, every ounce of air being forcibly propelled from her lungs.

  As she lay on the floor wondering if she would ever be able to fill her lungs again, if she would ever take another breath, she was glad of one thing, and one thing only; she had finally spoken out in defiance of her father.

  Chapter 8

  Some days later, Catherine was sitting alone in the breakfast room staring at the small patch of peeling green paint and wondering if she would be able to eat a single bite of the food she had laid out on her plate.

  The closer it was coming to the time for her to leave Barford Hall forever, the more she began to take notice of her day-to-day life there. This was to be her last but one breakfast in that room, and she very much doubted that she could manage a single thing the following day before leaving.

  “It is only me,” Philip said gently when he walked in through the door causing her to look up sharply. “Fear not, our father is still in his bed and likely will be for some time yet. He filled himself with strong liquor last night after dinner.”

  “Pity he does not drink himself to death,” Catherine said angrily and was true to say that she meant it wholeheartedly.

  “Perhaps one day he shall,” Philip said and smiled before sitting down next to her.

  “Are you not eating, Philip?” she said and looked over at the heavily laden sideboard of platters of hot breakfast food.

  “Forgive me, Catherine, but as the time draws near for you to leave, the fact is I cannot eat at all.”

  “Philip, you must not make yourself ill over it all. I could not bear it.”

  “I cannot bear any of this, Catherine,” he said, and she looked at his young, handsome face and felt her heart break to see his eyes filling with tears. “I cannot bear the thought that I will never see you again.”

  “We will see each other again, Philip. Our day will come.”

  “Only when he is dead,” Philip said firmly. “He will not relent in this, Catherine. He is most determined, even all these days later, that you will not be welcome under this roof again. And he has demanded that I cut all ties with you, refusing to give me the address to which he sends you.”

  “Then you cannot even write to me? I am to be completely removed from my family then, am I?”

  “I
will do everything in my power to find out where this aunt lives. Believe me that I will not rest until I have sent my first letter to you.”

  “I do not know how you are to achieve such a thing, Philip. Neither one of us even knew that father had a sister in the North, nor even what her name is. She might well not even be an Ambrose, for it seems likely that she would be married.”

  “I will not rest until I find it, even if I have to search through Father’s study. It must be written down there somewhere, in an old letter or something of that nature. He must surely have maintained some contact with his sister over the years to be able to write to her with the news that he was sending you to Derbyshire. Since you are going, it is clear that she has written back and agreed to it all.”