“This house is nothing,” she said. “Christian is what I deserve. I hope you’ll give Catherine a reason to feel the same about you.” She opened the door before he could reply, then turned away, her heels tapping off down the hall.
* * *
His wife sat across the room, swaddled in a thick blanket that she dropped as she rose. “Congratulations,” she said. “You won the land auction.” She tossed the newspaper onto the chiffonier, pages fluttering before they settled.
He eyed her as he approached. She looked cool, tightly buttoned, hair scraped back, expression impenetrable. She was wearing armor, all right. She wasn’t intending a reconciliation.
He glanced down at the newspaper. Caught sight of the small article on the sale of the lots on Orton Street. But one of the pages peeking out interested him more. He flipped to it. “You took out the advertisement.” A full-page spread, featuring illustrations of pieces he recognized from her rhapsodic descriptions during their dinners at Diamonds. The tambour-topped writing table. Clocks and chairs and whatnot.
“Yes. Come Friday, we’ll see how effective it was.”
He frowned down at the print. He trusted her judgment; if she said these things were valuable, then no doubt they’d fetch a fine profit. And it certainly wasn’t the artist’s fault that they looked so ordinary, now, to his eyes. But he couldn’t square them, these workaday things, with the way she’d spoken of them in his sitting room at Diamonds. Listening to her, he’d imagined fantastical treasures. Her words, her voice, her attitude had conjured visions to which mere objects could never match up.
She did that. She made him think outside himself. Not a small thing, for a man without formal learning. When reading was a struggle, when books were impenetrable, you got your knowledge from firsthand experience, mainly. You learned through trial and error. You focused on what lay around you, visible, tangible, real.
But she had a way of leading him into dreaming. She made him imagine, hope for, ideas and realities he’d never himself known.
She’d done it before she even knew him. He’d started to dream the first time he’d seen her, but at least, back then, he’d known it was impossible. Somewhere along the line, he’d lost track of that fact. Once he’d touched her, he’d begun to persuade himself that maybe impossible, fantastic outcomes could happen.
He wrestled with himself, still staring at the advertisement, seeing nothing. He didn’t beg. He wouldn’t. Nothing was worth that. Nobody worth it would ever demand it of him.
The air shifted, took on the faint scent of bergamot as she joined his side. She’d perfumed herself like a man again, for the first time that he could recall since their wedding day.
Strapping her armor back on.
“Look,” she said. She drew a line with her finger beneath the bold type at the bottom of the page:
Open to Public—
First Time in Company History—
All Are Invited to This Historic Auction
“Well, now.” A foolish sense of pleasure suffused him. “So you took my advice.”
“I did.” He heard her deep breath. “It seemed sensible. The regular crowd would be thinner at this time of year. Christie’s opens its doors to all and sundry. And . . . I thought I would take this chance to tweak Peter’s nose. The only one I might have.”
He caught the accusation in her voice. Slid a sidelong look at her. “I won’t apologize for leaving you behind that day.”
“No.” She was still gazing in the direction of the advertisement, but perhaps she was seeing something else, too. Her expression was very distant, her hands locked tightly at her waist. “I didn’t expect you would apologize. But at least you admit that it would be . . . appropriate, were you able.”
He didn’t like the sound of those words. The resignation in them. He faced her. “Look. He threw you into a madhouse—”
“Yes.”
“And the fact he’s still breathing is my gift to you, for it’s God’s own truth that I would slit his throat in a second if I didn’t think you’d feel the guilt for it.”
She lifted her chin. Looked directly into his eyes. “That’s true. He means nothing to me now. But I draw the line at murder.”
“Well, then.”
“He’s suing for his proxy back.”
It took him a moment to follow. “Christ. He—”
“He has petitioned the court to give him sole custody of the auction rooms. He alleges me to be of unsound mind. Mr. Denbury, from the asylum, has written a letter in support of his bid. He further claims that he is being menaced and forced into hiding by thugs in my employ. Is that true?”
He gauged his reply carefully. “I’ve put some men to watch his comings and goings.”
“Have they threatened him?”
“I don’t see how. He hasn’t come back to Henton Court.”
“That’s not an answer,” she said evenly.
“Catherine.” He hadn’t intended to mention this, not until he felt certain it would work. “I may have found a way to get him out of your hair for good. But until I can be certain—”
“The contract,” she cut in, “laid out the terms by which you and I were to rub along. You have overstepped those bounds again and again.”
“Overstepped.” She was no solicitor, and he was no schoolboy to be lectured by her.
But words were her weapons. He wouldn’t bother fighting on that ground. Instead he grasped her face, felt her flinch at the touch of skin to skin. He held her in place, watching the color bloom in her cheeks, registering the way her breath hitched, waiting in silence until she found the spine to look into his eyes again.
“You want to pretend like that contract guided us for a moment? If you were honest,” he said, “you would have ceased speaking of it right after you rose from my bed that day we were married. Because you knew then—I saw it in your face—you knew it wasn’t going to be simple. You knew you were already in over your head.”
She licked her lips, then spoke very rapidly. “If I lose Everleigh’s to him—”
“What?” Here was the main fear, which she kept circling back to, which she held before her like a flaming sword to keep him at bay. “What if you did lose it? God’s name, Catherine—what if you stopped fighting for it? Imagine this: what if you simply let it go?”
Her jaw sagged. For a moment, she gaped at him, struck speechless. Then she twisted out of his grip, writhing like a snapping cat. “How dare you—”
“I asked you a question,” he said. “Answer it, for once. What would you lose? Apart from a company?”
“You—you can’t imagine,” she whispered. “You . . . I thought you knew. It isn’t simply a company. It’s . . . me.”
At least she had said it now. Put it into words. He saw, by the way her gaze broke from his, darted to the side, that she heard the foolishness of her own words.
And that alone killed his temper, and stirred compassion in its place. “I do know you feel so,” he said. “It’s how you made sense of the world, and your place in it. And it’s so deep a part of you that you’re not sure you can lose it and still remain whole.”
She nodded once, then bit her knuckle and bowed her head. “Then . . . how can you ask?” she said raggedly.
“Because I’m telling you that you’re wrong. You’re stronger than you know.”
Her voice emerged muffled. “I know how strong I am.”
“Then you should know that you’re bigger than the company. Everleigh’s isn’t you, Catherine. You are Everleigh’s. And far more besides. If you can’t keep hold of this version, then you’ll make another. A new Everleigh’s, grander and greater than the one that came before it.” He hesitated. “I could help you do it. I’ve got the funds.”
* * *
The offer caught her off guard. For a wild, staggered moment, Catherine dared to envision it. An auction house like none other, specializing in artwork that no other house would touch. A center of restoration and rare curation, for the mos
t select and knowledgeable patrons.
But at the next moment, the very prospect made her feel dizzy and disoriented and exhausted, as though staring up an endless cliff that she must scale without a map. “I couldn’t, though. It would never be the same. I couldn’t make it the same.”
He loosed a long breath. “I never thought to see you doubt yourself.”
She flinched. “I don’t.” It was the world she doubted. “Don’t you see? Without Everleigh’s behind me . . . I would be nobody.” Without the respectability of a known institution as her calling card—a credential that evidenced, even to skeptics, her claims of professionalism—she would be nothing but an ordinary woman, subject to the typical condescension of the male-governed world.
“You’d be somebody to me,” he said.
The tender note in his voice, the somberness in his thickly lashed gray eyes, struck her like an arrow to the heart. It made her chest feel full, and choked her breath. “As your wife, you mean.”
He stepped toward her. “Yes,” he said in a fierce voice. “Catherine O’Shea.”
She put her hand to the back of her chair, clawed into the silk fabric, searching for her will. “Your wife, whom you will overrule whenever you deem it fit. Your wife, whom you will lock away when her desires strike you as inconvenient.”
“To hell with that,” he snarled. “If I think you in danger, yes. That’s what a man does—for his wife, for his friends, for anyone he loves. You think I give a damn if you’re angry now, so long as you’re safe tonight?”
She barely heard the rest of his words, after he’d spoken the one. Loves. She blinked at him, but it did not bring him into clearer focus. Her vision seemed to have clouded over. He’d not confessed anything just then. He’d said just enough to knock her off her balance, to unsettle her from the tight, swaddling layers of indignation . . .
“You promised,” she whispered. “You promised to respect me.”
He stared at her. “And you think I don’t.”
“I . . .” Her gut, her instinct, had never been so at odds with her clamoring brain. You showed you didn’t, her brain nattered, when all she wished to do was reach out and brush away that single black curl falling across his cheek. To trace the rough line of his nose. These battling influences held her motionless, mute and agonized with indecision.
Marriage, Catherine, is the most perilous risk a woman ever takes.
He gave a sharp tug of his mouth. Turned away, clawing his fingers through his hair as he stared at the mantel. “Maybe I’m the fool here,” he muttered. “Swallowing your nonsense, hook, line, and sinker.” He pivoted back, his face harder, his voice implacable. “Well, I won’t bite. I’m done listening to you. Because what matters is what I see, and that’s a coward, hiding behind lies.”
She sucked in a breath, stung beyond measure. “If you refer to me—”
“That’s right. A businesswoman, you call yourself.” His voice drilled, cold as iron. “But a businesswoman wouldn’t turn away from opportunities. She wouldn’t shrink from risk. You can’t trust me to respect you? You can’t build a new company? Bollocks. Bloody excuses. You said it to me once—afraid to try and fail. Well, that’s you. It’s got nothing to do with me. You say you don’t believe in me? You don’t believe in yourself. That’s what ails you, Catherine—in the end, it’s you whom you lack faith in. Your own ability. Your judgment. What you actually want.”
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Fear. He was accusing her of fear. And God above, but . . . it could be no coincidence that her heart was pounding; that she felt unable to defend herself.
He made some noise. It sounded like contempt. He turned on his heel for the door.
Suddenly she was lunging for him, catching his elbow and dragging him around. “You want to talk of fear?” She glared up at him, at his stony face, that space of safe remove he’d created for himself. “Then tell me. Who sits on the Board of Works for Whitechapel? Is it you?”
He shrugged out of her hold. “You’ll not duck this matter with accusations—”
“I’m not accusing you. I’m only speaking the facts. You spoke before that board—you brought them to heel, you made them hold that auction. What else could you do, if you made them listen to your voice every day? Perhaps you could get the sewers fixed. You once said that you would tell my brother to argue for it. But why should a man from Bloomsbury care for your streets? Why would you force others to fight your battles, when you’ve proved you could do it better? What’s stopping you? It’s not lack of care. Would you call it fear? For if I’m afraid, so are you! And if I’m a coward—are you less of one?”
A muscle in his jaw ticked as he stared at her. “Fine,” he said at last. “Fine. A fine pair we make. I’ll not argue it.”
His reply frustrated her. It provided her no inroad, no grounds on which to argue with him further.
And she saw, in the way he shifted his weight and glanced toward the door, that in a moment, he would leave anyway.
So she looked for her courage and gave him what she could. “I want to be able to trust you,” she said roughly. “I want . . . to be the woman who would take that risk. And I want you to be the man who deserves it. Who deserves me. But I . . . I must know, in my head as well as my heart, that the risk is worth it. That it’s wise.”
His mouth softened. Not quite a smile. “You idiot,” he said gently. “This . . . between us . . . it isn’t supposed to feel wise. Even I know that. And nobody ever called me a romantic.”
He leaned down. His lips brushed hers softly—too softly; he didn’t try to open her mouth, to clasp her against him or deepen the kiss, even when she caught his shoulders and squeezed in a silent petition.
And when he pulled away from her, she could not work out the grounds by which she might pull him back. She was the one, after all, who had left him.
He still stood before her, but the distance seemed unbridgeable, widening with each second that she wrestled for what to say. When she did speak, the words emerged unbearably stiff, all wrong. “You’ll come to the auction, I hope.”
And by the shadow that passed over his face, she realized that she had proved, at last, that she had no feminine wiles in her. No tricks by which to keep him, no art that might make her face and body communicate a message contrary to her words.
Never had she regretted that deficiency so keenly.
“Do you want me there?” he said.
She floundered. “Yes, I . . . it’s important that it go off well, for . . . Everleigh’s sake.”
His smile was brief and humorless. “For yours, you mean.”
“Well—yes. It would go far to proving I’m in full possession of my faculties,” she said hesitantly. “If I am seen to coordinate a successful sale.”
He clapped his hat onto his head and said, “I’ll come, then.”
She stood there watching as he walked out. Such cold words on which to part.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Was she afraid? Could it be that he was right? Catherine asked herself this as she stood before the little mirror in her office the morning of the auction. The thick door, hewn of Berkshire walnut—her father had been so proud of that; he’d always insisted that no place in the world could rival Berkshire for walnut—usually proved stalwart against the noises in the hall. Today, however, the tumult seeped through. Downstairs, the doors had been thrown open, and for the first time in the company’s history, the footmen were not taking names to check against a list that had been pruned to an elite and exclusive number. She had already looked out the window once and felt at first sick, and then thrilled, and then sick again at the crush in the road.
The advertisements had worked. All of London, it seemed, had turned out to attend the auction. Whether any of them had money to spend was another question.
She looked at her face now, so pale and tight in the mirror. What had she done, inviting the public? If the auction failed, if the sales were meager, Peter would no doubt use this as eviden
ce against her. She had no doubt he was plotting in some hidey-hole. That they were locked in a battle now that would not end until one of them had won sole control of Everleigh’s.
Let it go, O’Shea had suggested.
And then, as though to show her how it was done, he had left her. Not a backward glance. Not a visit in the intervening days. Lilah, noting her wan mood, had offered to visit him, to inquire after his health.
But Catherine had refused the offer. She knew he was hale. She had no fear for his well-being. She had full faith in him to look after himself.
She thought of him every waking moment.
She also thought of her father. What would he have thought of Nicholas O’Shea? Too easily, she could imagine his horror. A man who put himself above the law. Who ran an illegal club, and boldly owned his crimes.
But . . . she could also imagine a different story, in which her father saw his ambitions. His accomplishments. Her father had made a wish for her, once, which she had never forgotten. A man of discerning tastes, who knows brilliance when he sees it, and knows to treasure it, too.
A man. He had not said a gentleman.
A knock came at the door. She opened it. Mr. Hastings stood before her, attired smartly in his formal blacks. “I believe we are ready, miss.”
She blew out a breath. “Have you taken a glimpse of the crowd?”
He shifted his weight, his leather shoes creaking. “A . . . mixed lot, miss. But I think I see some goers. Lord Hambly and Lord Monteford are among them. And Sir Wimple. Also, I believe, some new faces, very promising. Come, see for yourself.”
She followed him down the stairs, her heart drumming harder with each step. Her father seemed to be walking beside her. He had urged her never to forget the auction rooms. Would he have approved this innovation? Art is our calling. You will be the soul of this place.
They entered the saleroom through a private door. She lost her breath at the crowd jammed inside it. The crush spilled out into the hall. The balcony, so rarely used, had been opened, the screens thrown back. People leaned over, some only to gawk, others to examine the first lot, the tambour-topped writing table, which two assistants were arranging on the dais beside the rostrum.
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