She swallowed. “My name is Miss Katherine Montague, Your Grace. We met last night at the ball.”
His expression didn’t change. He folded his arms and glared at her. “Did we?”
Her lips parted. God’s teeth, he really didn’t remember. Here she had been reliving that wicked moment when he’d nearly kissed her over and over and he didn’t even remember.
“Yes,” she said. “We were on the terrace together. We were…er…talking.”
One fine brow arched and a slow smile began at the corner of his lips. “Oh. Talking, were we? And you came here so we could keep…talking?”
She gasped. She might be an innocent, but his implications were not. “Oh no! I mean, you almost kissed me, but there was nothing more to it.”
“Almost,” he drawled, stepping closer. “How incomplete of me. You wanted me to finish the job?”
She stood there as he swung closer, and for a moment she pondered letting him. Kiss her, maybe more than kiss her. She wanted him to, after all. And it would solve her problems. If he took her virginity, surely the earl would not wish to marry her anymore.
She shook those wicked thoughts away and backed up. He immediately stopped advancing and looked at her with confusion and doubt.
“No, not exactly. You see, Your Grace…oh, I didn’t think you wouldn’t remember.”
“I kiss a lot of women, my dear. An almost kiss isn’t something that stands out.” He turned to pour himself a drink at the sideboard. “Do explain yourself.”
She flinched at his suddenly cold tone. “Well, my father interrupted us, you see.”
He froze with his drink midway to his lips. “Yes.”
“And now he has a terrible idea about a great many things. It’s too complicated to explain fully, but he is marrying me off as punishment for my behavior. And I need your help.”
He set the drink down on the wooden surface beside him with a loud clink and glared at her. “Ah, I see what this is. You do have guts, I’ll give you that. Most of the ones who want to catch me just try to trick me into parlors at public events. I don’t think any one of you has ever snuck into my home.”
“Trick?” she repeated. “I don’t understand. I’m not trying to trick you into anything. I just need—”
“You need a rake to ruin you so you’ll get a better match than whatever one your father is arranging.” He smiled. “The Duke of Roseford is a catch, despite my reputation. Perhaps because of it.”
She stared at him as what he implied sank in. “No—oh no, I wasn’t trying to force a match with you, Your Grace. Not at all. I only wanted to see if you might come and speak to my father. Explain to him that I was doing nothing wrong and—”
He folded his arms. “Just come and speak to your father?” he repeated, and now he laughed, but it was cold. “You are clever. I come to your trap? And then I suppose you tell him how you convinced me and he calls me out and we are married at the tip of a spear by Sunday next.”
“No!” she burst out, stepping toward him.
His nostrils flared and his gaze swept over her, but then he backed away. “You are not the first chit who has attempted to steal my hand in marriage, my dear. You will not be the last. And while I applaud the boldness of your methods, you have failed. Go home, Miss Montague. Before I have the guard called and you are ruined in reality.”
He turned to go and she reached out to catch his arm. He jerked it away in what seemed to be shock. She felt it, herself, for normally she would not be so bold. And yet panic and desperation clawed at her.
“This is my life,” she whispered. “I cannot marry this man. Please.”
For a moment there was a flicker over his face. Something deeper than the cad he normally showed the world. Then he hardened himself and she knew, before he even spoke, what he would do.
“That is not my problem,” he said. “Now go home.”
She stared up at him. So handsome and so emotionless. “You are as cold-hearted as they say.”
He smiled, almost sadly. “I am. Proudly. Now goodnight.”
He left the room and she stood where he’d left her, shaking, shocked. And as she trudged back out the way she’d come, back to the hack and its grinning driver, the desperation she’d felt that drove her here turned to resignation.
Her life was over. This man didn’t care. No one did.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Robert’s stomach turned as Katherine recounted the scene in his London home three years before, then turned away from him. Where there had been anger on her face at first, now there was a blankness. As if she were reliving those awful moments, reliving how she’d had to harden herself to the future that had been ripped from her hands.
A future he had made no effort to save for her.
For what felt like an eternity, the chamber around them was silent, and they each stood, separate as they pondered the facts of their shared past. A past he couldn’t even recall, thanks to the man he had been then. The man he had chosen to become to protect himself from any pain, any injury, any connection that he perceived as dangerous.
In his haste to protect himself, he had destroyed her.
No wonder she hated him.
“Katherine,” he said, his voice thick and heavy as he forced himself to speak. “Oh God, Katherine, I wish I could say I remember that night.”
“That is the worst part,” she whispered. “When you almost kissed me on that terrace, when you rejected me in your home the next night, those are two of the most pivotal moments of my existence. And you don’t remember either of them. I was just another woman in a line of women who meant nothing to you.”
He flinched. “That is how I lived my life,” he admitted. “Encounter to encounter, using pleasure to mask the pain. Using seduction to keep anyone who could come too close at arm’s length. I was…am a bastard. Like my father.”
When he said that last sentence, his heart broke. He could see now how true it was. The thing he had been running from, the monster who had always lived beneath his bed, he hadn’t avoided him. He’d become him. Hurting innocents.
And why could he see that? After all these years of his friends trying to open his eyes, to change his path, what made him so aware now? This woman. This amazing woman who had changed him long before she confronted him and made him look at what he’d become. Made him want to change what he was. Become what she thought he could be, or used to think.
“Your father was honest, at least, in what he was,” she said, turning her face. “He did not pretend to change, at least not in any of the stories you have whispered to me in the dark. So you won your bet, Robert. Bully for you.”
She moved toward the door and he panicked. She would leave. Tomorrow she would go back to London. This would be over, truly over, if he didn’t stop her now.
“Please, Katherine. You are not about a bet for me. You never truly were.” He caught her arm and turned her back toward him. “You must know that I—”
Her eyes went wide and she jerked away to interrupt his confession. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t you dare. Just let me go, Robert. It is what you are best at.”
She said nothing more, but left the room, left him. And the heart that he had spent a lifetime stifling, putting up walls so he could pretend it did not exist, shattered.
Katherine stumbled, blinded by tears, as she careened through the halls toward the stairs that would take her to her chamber. She wanted to lock herself away. Away from her argument with Robert, away from his voice echoing in her ears. Telling Berronburg that she was a conquest, that same voice telling her she was more. She was so tangled by all that had transpired, she just wanted to hide from it all.
And knew she couldn’t.
She raced up the stairs and turned toward her room. Just as she was about to reach it, the door across the hall opened and Isabel stepped out. For a moment the duchess smiled at her, but then her face fell. “Oh, Katherine,” she said, racing to
her. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” Katherine muttered, fumbling with the door and finally getting it open. “Oh, nothing, please go back to the party.”
Isabel followed her into the chamber, hands on her hips. “I will not. Not when you look so stricken. What is going on?”
Katherine faced her. She had become friends with Isabel in the previous weeks. With all the duchesses. That, at least, she knew was true. And she could tell her friend what had happened. There would be catharsis in that. And a good ear to help her sort through her tangled emotions.
But then she thought of Robert. He already felt on the outside of his group of friends. If they knew what had happened tonight, certainly they would all confront him in their own way. Katherine could not, would not, be responsible for breaking his world to pieces. For pushing him out of the only group of people he truly loved.
Loved. Was that what he was going to say to her before she pulled away from him and left the parlor? That he loved her?
“Katherine!” Isabel’s voice was sharp and she caught Katherine’s arm with both her hands. “Your look and your silence are frightening me.”
She drew a few breaths. “It’s nothing,” she lied. “Just a bad night.”
Isabel’s brow wrinkled in confusion and deeper concern. “What happened? Is it Robert?”
Katherine flinched and knew that gave the answer she’d been trying to avoid. Still, she pulled away from Isabel and walked to her bed. She set her hand on the coverlet, trying not picture the nights she’d shared this room with Robert. Making love. Laughing. Talking long into the night with no thought of tomorrow.
Now she questioned if all those moments were just a lie, meant to manipulate her. They were soured. Ruined.
She bent her head. “I’m just ready to go home,” she breathed. “Tomorrow cannot come fast enough.”
Isabel was quiet for a long time. So long that Katherine thought for a moment she might have simply left the room. But at last she took a breath and said, “Katherine, please—”
She faced Isabel, loving that her friend was so concerned. Hating that this break from Robert would probably ultimately mean an end to her friendship with the duchesses, too.
“Don’t,” she whispered. “There is nothing that can be done. If you are my friend, and I know you are, you will just go downstairs and pretend you didn’t see me. You’ll make my excuses and you’ll let this go. It is not something that can be fixed.”
Isabel’s expression softened and she nodded after a moment. “If that’s what you want.” She moved forward and caught Katherine’s hands gently. “Anything can be fixed, my darling. Even at its darkest, night gives way to dawn.”
“When dawn comes I’ll be gone,” Katherine whispered. “And it’s for the best.”
Isabel’s expression saddened, but she didn’t pry any further. She didn’t push. She just kissed Katherine’s cheek and left her alone. To think. To remember. And to mourn the moment when she’d believed her love for Robert could be enough.
Now she knew it wasn’t, and her world would never be the same.
When the door to the parlor opened, Robert jerked to his feet and pivoted to face the intruder, praying it was Katherine returning to finish their conversation. Instead, Isabel stepped into the chamber.
He frowned and retook his place slouched before the fire. “I’m sorry to be rude, Your Grace, but I am not in the mood for company.”
“I would assume not,” Isabel said, looking around the room like she was seeking an answer to a riddle. “But I’ve been searching the estate for you in the last half hour and here I am.”
He shook his head. He had one thing in common with his friends: not a one of them had been drawn to what was commonly called a biddable bride. Spitfires all were their loves and lovers.
“I saw Katherine,” she said as she shut the door behind her and leaned against it.
He jerked his gaze to hers. “Was she…was she all right?”
Isabel’s expression softened. “Physically, yes. I cannot speak to her emotional state, as she would not tell me what had happened. But it’s obvious from your own broken expression that it has to do with you.”
He stood up and walked to the window. As he looked out into the night, he said, “You told her about my wager.”
Isabel was quiet a moment, and then she stepped forward. “Yes, I did. I will not apologize for it.”
He faced her slowly, and the anguish of what he’d done felt raw and heavy in his chest. “I wouldn’t ask you to. She had every right to know. Every right to destroy me for my cruelty.”
“And yet she didn’t. She came here and she made the best of it. You two were obviously involved in something far deeper than friendship certainly much more powerful than a bet. We were all thrilled to see you open yourself up.” Isabel shook her head. “Robert, what happened?”
He shut his eyes, reliving those moments of confrontation with Katherine. Feeling himself burn in the fire of her contempt. “She saw me. The true me,” he said. “And that is what sent her away.”
He saw Isabel’s pity for him. And why not? He was pitiable. He had been thus for years, even as he strutted about reveling in his depravity. Crowing at the fact that he had erected a tower so high that no one would ever scale its walls and get to him.
Until one very unexpected woman had done just that. And what had he done? Burned everything down around them both.
“I would say you are right,” Isabel said. “Katherine did see you. The true you. The good man you are deep in your soul.”
He snorted out a pained laugh. “And you know so much, do you, Isabel? You have known me all of a few months.”
“That would be a fair point, I suppose,” Isabel said. “Except that my husband has known you almost all his life. My good, decent, steady husband has loved you through all your adventures and schemes. As has James, as has Ewan. These men who shy away from those who would proudly declare themselves libertines and rogues embrace you with the intensity of brotherhood. Why do you think that is?”
Robert poured himself a drink and downed it in one slug. “Every court needs its jester,” he mumbled, thinking of how Katherine had gently teased him about his role in their merry group of gentlemen. Perhaps she had come closer to the mark than he had ever been able to admit.
Isabel was shaking her head. “Not true. These men see beyond the mask you wear. They see your true heart. You are the man who supports every piece of legislation in the House of Lords that gives freedom or hope to those beneath his station. You are the man who has stepped up and offered support to his friends. The man who welcomed me into this group despite the fact that you initially saw me as only a liar who was bent on destroying Matthew.”
He jerked his face up. “He told you that?”
She shrugged. “You were decent at hiding it, but I felt your hesitance at first.”
“Well, I’ve come to see you as far more over the months,” he said. “I was wrong about you.”
“You are wrong about yourself, as well. Robert, this woman brings out the best in you. She challenges you to reach for far loftier heights than you have dared to try. Matthew and I were talking about it just two nights ago—do you know what he said about you and Katherine?”
“That I’m an ass?” he asked. “That’s what he says to my face.”
She smiled but was undeterred. “He said to me that you try with her. That in all the years he’s known you, you have never tried with any other person, save the others in your club. That the moment things get hard, you turn away. But with Katherine, you don’t do that.”
“And yet here we are,” he said, holding up his arms. “So what use was it?”
She stepped closer, and her hand closed around his forearm. “You clearly hurt her deeply. I see how much that breaks your heart. Don’t run away from that or you will regret it the rest of your life.”
He knew she was right. “So what do I do?”
/> “Let her go back to London. A few days on her own, a few days to let this settle, that will do her good. But do not let another week go by before you try again to make it up to her.”
He looked into the crackling fire. “I am in love with her,” he whispered. Saying the words out loud was like falling off a cliff. And yet there was no fear behind them. Only truth.
“Then you have much to risk, but far more to gain.” Isabel squeezed his arm gently and then backed away. “And there are nine other men and eight of their wives who would do anything in their power to help you. But only if you try.”
She smiled at him and moved toward the door with a quiet goodnight. After she was gone, Robert let out his breath in a ragged sigh. He felt like he’d been torn into shreds, first by the pain he’d caused Katherine, then by the admission of how much of his heart she held.
And yet, when he thought of fighting for her, truly fighting for what he wanted, what she deserved…what they could have if he could just step forward instead of running away…
He knew it was worth the risk. And he had at least three days ahead of him to figure out how to make amends for what he’d done so that he could come to her as the man she wanted him to be. Not the man he was.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Robert strode into his foyer, tugging at his gloves as he did so. His butler, Jenner, was waiting, a grim look on his face. “Welcome home, Your Grace.”
Robert gave him a cursory nod as he handed over the gloves. “Thank you. I assume you received my missive from the road?”
“I did, sir.”
“And are they here?” He smoothed his jacket. His armor for the face-off to come. The one he had been planning in the four days since he last saw Katherine. Since she’d left James and Emma’s home at dawn without so much as a word for him.
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