Dangerous to Hold (14 page)

“Amy!”

Catherine wasn’t sure what she had hoped for, but almost at once, Amy’s harsh reply dashed her hopes. In a low, terse voice she said, “I wish to speak with you in private, Cat.”

Amy’s eyes darted around the hall, as if to assure herself that they were unobserved, and before Catherine could stop her, she quickly crossed to the study and entered it.

The candles had yet to be lit, but a welcoming pool of light spilled onto the hearth from the fire in the grate, suggesting intimacy. Amy was blind to everything except her purpose in coming here. She took a few steps into the room, threw back her veil, and cut Catherine off in mid-sentence.

“This is not a social call. I have no wish to be entertained in the parlor. What I have to say to you is best said here in the privacy of your study. I want to talk to you about Wrotham.”

The name deflected Catherine from what she was about to say. “What about Wrotham?” she asked cautiously.

Amy made a gesture of impatience. “I wasn’t born yesterday, Cat. I know when a man has taken a fancy to
a girl, and Wrotham fancies you. He described you to me. I saw his face. How far has it gone? That’s what I want to know.”

Catherine was frozen to the spot. The thought that was going through her mind was that Amy knew or suspected that she was married to Marcus.

Catherine’s silence unleashed a torrent of words in Amy. “You little fool! Don’t you know you’re playing with fire? He won’t marry you. He’ll marry a woman from his own class. They always do.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Catherine, lost in a maze of misunderstandings. “Marriage with Marcus is the farthest thing from my mind.”

The color washed out of Amy’s cheeks and she inhaled a shocked breath. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You’re not cut out to be a man’s mistress. You don’t understand what can happen to a girl when a man grows tired of her. I know what I’m talking about. Do you want to end up like me? Because if you do, you are going in the right direction. One false step, Cat, that’s all that is necessary and you can bid farewell to your chance for a home and children.” Her face hardened. “Think about it, Cat—no husband, no home, no children. Only a succession of protectors. Is that what you want? Don’t be a fool. No man is worth the sacrifice.”

As the spate of words continued unchecked, Catherine’s bewilderment quickly gave way to comprehension, and at the last, she understood far more than Amy realized she was telling her. Her eyes felt hot and no words formed in her mind to express what she was feeling inside.

“Amy,” she said finally, breaking into her sister’s harangue, “you are quite mistaken. Wrotham means nothing to me. He saw me coming from your house and mistook me for—for someone he knows. He’s curious about me. That’s all there is to it.”

Amy absorbed her words in silence and some of the fire went out of her. “You don’t love him?”

“I hardly know him.”

“Don’t lie to me, Cat. Not about this.”

“I’m not lying.”

All the fight seemed to go out of Amy. She turned away, then stiffened again as a gust of wind rattled the French doors. With one swift glare at Catherine, she called out, “Do come in, Marcus. You’ve been found out. No need to skulk like a thief.”

When nothing happened, she reached for the French doors and threw them open. The man who entered was tall and dark but the light made it impossible for her to see his face clearly. Then, as he came closer, she saw that he wasn’t Marcus and a little of the tension went out of her. He was young, about Cat’s age, and his clothes suggested a country barrister or schoolmaster.

Her eyes lingered on the stranger’s face and she thought him the most beautiful man she had ever seen. He wasn’t smiling, yet she sensed an inner radiance that seemed to be directed at her personally. His eyes, under a thick fringe of lashes, were almost black. She wondered how much he had heard of her conversation with Catherine, and color swept up her throat and ran into her cheeks.

“You must be Catherine’s sister,” he said. “Forgive me for not making my presence known before. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”

Catherine caught Amy’s look, half questioning, half accusing, and, inspiration failing her, she fell back on the truth—or as much of the truth as would smooth over the awkwardness of being caught alone with a handsome young man and no one to chaperone them.

“Robert is a priest,” she said.

Amy stayed for half an hour. She hadn’t wanted to stay that long, but Cat had produced a bottle of sherry and a plate of plum cake and insisted on making a celebration of her birthday. She’d been touched, of course, but what she’d really wanted to do was run away and hide. The young priest, Father Robert, made her feel transparent, as though he could see right through her, and it was a feeling she did not like.

She’d hoped for a private word with Cat so that she could question her further about Marcus, but the priest’s presence prevented it. Not only that, but he’d also invited himself along on the return drive to town, and there was no rational explanation for refusing him. She didn’t understand why she felt uncomfortable in his presence. He hadn’t alluded to her conversation with Cat. In fact, he’d said very little. But every now and then, she’d felt his eyes on her.

She allowed her eyes to stray to him now. They were in the hackney she’d hired to convey her to Hampstead, and he was on the opposite banquette. Her own carriage was so distinctive, so dashing with its yellow satin trimmings that she’d feared someone would recognize it and start asking questions about Cat. She didn’t care what people said about her. She was immune to gossip. But Cat was different.

He was looking out the window and she seized the opportunity to study him. He was very different from the men who moved in her world. He was young, much younger than she was. His clothes were shabby. Though his accent was flawless, she could tell he wasn’t a Londoner. She put him down as Irish. He was a priest. He was unworldly, innocent, chaste, and all the things that she could never be again. She didn’t know why her throat was so scratchy, then he looked at her and she did know.

“I’m not ashamed of what I am,” she said.

“What are you, Amy?” he asked softly.

Her dark eyes blazed at him. “You know what I am. You were listening on the terrace when I spoke to Cat. I think you knew what I was before I opened my mouth. I think Cat has told you all about me. What are you, her Father Confessor?”

“Why are you so angry?”

“I hate people who judge me. I don’t need a Father Confessor.”

He let out an odd little laugh. “Believe me, I’m the last person who should judge anyone.”

His words sounded sincere, and she couldn’t help asking what he meant.

He shrugged. “People have strange ideas about priests. They think we are saints, but we’re not. We are flesh-and-blood men, and subject to the same temptations as other men. I was a priest once, a long time ago. Catherine misled you there. I’m not a priest now. I discovered that I didn’t have the vocation for it. Fortunately, I had never taken my vows. I was a postulant.” He spread his hands. “Now, I’m not even a postulant. I’m a lay brother and I live with the monks at Marston Abbey.”

There was a prolonged silence as Amy considered his words. Finally, she said, “How does Catherine know you?”

“We are a Benedictine order, and the lay brothers are allowed to do good works in the community. Catherine supports these good works. She gives money, donates clothes, and gives shelter from time to time when some destitute person has nowhere to go.”

Amy looked out the window. “That sounds like Catherine,” she said.

He laughed. “We’re always looking for benefactors.” When she was silent, he said in a more serious vein, “There’s so much suffering in the world, so much that needs to be done. I could make it my life’s work and hardly make an impression.”

She gazed at him with cold eyes. “Leave me alone, Brother Robert. Find yourself another benefactor. I have nothing left to give.”

“I wasn’t talking about money.”

“Neither was I.”

It was too late to turn back the clock.
Amy rubbed her hands along her arms and repeated the litany as she paced back and forth before her bed.
It was too late to turn back the clock.

She stopped pacing. She wasn’t sure whether it was that brief interview with Cat or the carriage ride with the priest that had set her back on her heels. Probably a combination of both. Add to that a strange, intermittent restlessness that had plagued her for the last year, and she
was a prime candidate for going into a decline. Why was she so miserable? She had everything she wanted.

Catching sight of her reflection in the looking glass, she turned away so that she wouldn’t be forced to look at herself. She knew she was beautiful. That’s how all her troubles had started.

Cat thought she was little better than a common prostitute, and perhaps she was right, but that’s not how she saw herself. She’d had four or five protectors in her time, and a series of lovers, and there was nothing common about any of them, except perhaps for the first.

It had all started with Ralph. She’d eloped, thinking he was going to marry her. It’s what he’d promised to do. But he hadn’t married her. He’d cast her out. They weren’t all like Ralph. Marcus had been kind, and he’d never lied to her. And Give … she’d almost fallen in love with Clive.

Major Clive Barron had set her up in Lisbon where the British Army languished, waiting for money and supplies to go on with the war. She’d had her own little house. Everything was idyllic until the day her father saw and recognized her as she was alighting from her carriage. They’d fought terribly. Clive had only been defending her when he’d pushed her father out of the way. He hadn’t even known that it was her father. Then tragedy had struck. Her father had fallen heavily and hit his head on the pavement. He’d tried to rise, staggered, and fallen on his face, never to rise again.

She’d had to face Cat, whom she hadn’t seen in years, with the news of their father’s death, and what Cat had said to her had scourged her worse than any lash. There could never be anything between Cat and her after that.

God, how had it all gone wrong? All she had ever wanted as a young girl was to be loved. Then she’d met Ralph and she’d thought herself the luckiest girl in the world. She’d had a rude awakening, a savage awakening. She’d given up everything for him, and he’d cast her off without a penny. She wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. Her life’s work was to look after Amy Courtnay.
She wasn’t going to let Cat or some unworldly priest deflect her from her course.

It was too late to turn back the clock.

After removing her robe, she blew out the candle and climbed into bed. The oblivion of sleep eluded her. Restless, she turned on her side.

A week after she agreed to play the part of Marcus’s wife, Catherine found herself in a rented hunting lodge near Stamford in the wilds of Leicestershire. It was only now that she realized she had not really thought out all the implications of what she had agreed to do.

She was supposed to be preparing for the part she must play. Marcus wanted her to learn Spanish, or enough of the language to convince everyone that she was indeed Catalina. There were also riding lessons and pistol practice for the same reason. It wasn’t easy pretending to be inept when she was, in fact, accomplished in all the things he wanted her to learn.

There was one last thing she was dreading—she had not yet dyed her hair black. So far, she was sure Marcus was convinced that she was Catherine. But the final test would come when she altered her appearance, before they set off for London. She was walking a very fine line: she had to convince the world she was Catalina, and at the same time convince Marcus of the opposite.

“Me llamo Catalina Lytton,”
said Catherine in her cultured English accent.

Catherine’s tutor, Señor Matales, repeated her words back to her several times, trying to improve her intonation. He was under the impression, which was fairly close to the truth, that Catherine was an actress who was trying to perfect her latest role, with her husband’s help, far from the distractions of London.

The servants, who had come with the lodge, had been told what Señor Matales had been told, that Mr. and Mrs. Lytton were theater people and would be spending no more than a week or two in their rented lodge. Once
she and Marcus left here, they would never see any of them again.

Marcus’s family believed that he had gone to Spain to fetch his bride. Her own absence was more difficult to explain. What she’d finally hit upon was the same fictitious widow whose companion she’d once claimed to be to explain the year she had spent with the partisans. Mrs. Wallace, she’d told the McNallys and all her friends, had invited her on an extended tour of the Continent, now that there was peace in Europe, and since all expenses were to be paid by the widow, she had leapt at the offer.

“Me llamo Catalina Lytton,”
intoned the tutor encouragingly.

“Me llamo Catalina Lytton,”
repeated Catherine, mimicking his intonation, but not too perfectly. Though she spoke Spanish fluently, she didn’t want anyone to know it.