“The cake was excellent, by the way!” Lord Marlow called after her cheerfully. “Tell the cook I said so.”
“I will, Grandpapa.”
She told herself, on the carriage ride back to Baxter Hall, that she believed every word she had just said. She told herself this with some conviction.
She was becoming quite the accomplished liar.
Cathy knew that while her visits to her sisters gave her reprieve, she had no choice but to always return home. Her reputation and theirs depended on this slow and agonizing daily retreat. The carriage ride back to Baxter Hall each evening had become its own particular form of torture. She would sit with her ledgers in her lap and her eyes fixed on the passing streets, and she would think about him anyway. The way he had looked down at her. On her lips. Not many people could look at her from above, but he had the height for it—and the audacity.
She thought about that rather more than she would have liked.
She thought about the lie she had told him even more.
I felt nothing.
She thought that the Duke’s keeping his word and staying away from her would help matters. She had been wrong about that, too. He had not set foot in her chambers since that night. He barely spared her a glance during their shared meals. He was perfectly, impeccably, maddeningly civil, and somehow that wasworse than anything else he could have done. She had braced herself for pursuit. For the rake’s persistence that everyone warned her about. Instead, she got silence and the occasional politely worded inquiry about the weather.
It was, she decided, absolutely intolerable.
I felt nothing.
She knew the sentence was a lie. However, she had already made the mistakes that led her to where she was. Marrying a rake was the last thing she thought she would ever do.
Each meal shared with her husband was a test in endurance, but dinners were the worst. Both Cathy and Tristan would have to eat multiple courses in the most elaborate setting. They had to play a role for the staff for longer while enveloped by the scent of roasted meats, buttered asparagus, and fine cheeses.
“Would you care for some claret, Your Grace?” the butler asked, his voice polite and neutral as always.
“No, thank you, Henderson,” Cathy replied, taking a deep breath.
Across from her, her husband sat looking perfectly composed and entirely unreachable. His cravat was immaculate. His expression gave nothing away. She was not certain what she expected to find. Some evidence that the man who had pressed his body to hers and told her he had spent five days acutely aware of every hour she was not in the house was still somewhere beneath that impeccable surface.
There was nothing. Or if there was, he was considerably better at hiding it than she was.
“So,” he began, “are the Marlow accounts finally settled?”
She was startled that he even asked, but she somehow managed to compose herself.
“Almost,” she answered, even though she was not entirely certain.
“You spend so much time there, I am sure they must be in order by now.”
“Apart from the ledgers, I have to check in with my sisters as well, ensure their well-being.”
“You remind me daily of your duty to them,” he said. “Well, I would be loath to keep you from those duties.”
She swallowed a bite of her meat, trying her best not to make a sound. What was that? Was he baiting her?
Dinner continued in silence, one that made her ears ring. He did not look at her at all, seemingly focused on his task of slicing and eating his food. Meanwhile, she could not help but glance at his face, and even those hands that had held her so tightly. Capable hands. She hated that she was so focused on them, and the jolt it gave her stomach, making it flip.
I should do better.
The next day, the sun was as bright as ever. It almost felt like a mockery with its warmth and joy, streaming through Baxter Hall like the opposite of the plague.
Cathy spent most of the morning still on the Marlow accounts, even though she had told her indifferent husband they were almost done. She had so much to think about and to consider.
Portia’s education.
Selina’s dowry.