For Love of the Duke(25)

Those were not the words of a man who’d gladly wed her, nor were they the words of a gentleman she should like to wed. No, Katherine didn’t imagine she’d ever make a love match. She’d long ago accepted the cold practicality of an arrangement between her and a perfectly suitable, properly boring gentleman. That was the way of their world. But neither had she imagined herself wed to a coolly disdainful gentleman like the duke.

She shook her head. Mere desperation was what drove her fanciful musings.

“You have a gentleman whose captured your attention,” Anne said on a gasp.

Katherine felt a rush of heat climb up her neck, and flood her cheeks. She shook her head adamantly. “No. No. Not at all. There is not anyone. There isn’t,” she insisted when her sister continued to study her with a probing stare.

Anne tapped the tip of her finger against her lower lip in a contemplative manner. “We must simply find that pendant. If we find it, then you won’t have to bother with Mother’s efforts between you and that loathsome Mr. Ekstrom.”

A wave of guilt slammed into Katherine as she thought of the heart pendant contained within the reticule she’d lost at the Frost Fair. Even if she herself didn’t believe in the powers of the pendant, it did not mean her sister did not. Aldora believed it had led her to her true love, Michael Knightly, and now Anne believed it would guide her to her future husband.

Anne’s eyes lit with that mischievous glimmer Katherine had long ago learned promised trouble.

“No,” Katherine said firmly.

“I didn’t say anything,” Anne groused.

“You were going to say—”

“That we should return to the Frost Fair,” Anne finished for her.

Nausea churned in her belly at the mere thought of venturing out upon the Thames River. She fisted the fabric of her modest, sapphire blue skirts and gave her head a firm shake.

Anne gesticulated wildly. “We never were able to search more than a handful of tents for the pendant that will lead us to the heart of a duke.”

Katherine would require something a good deal more powerful than a silly talisman like the heart pendant to make a match. “No.”

“But…”

“I said, no, Anne.”

“Hmph,” Anne said with a flounce of her curls. “I’m merely trying to help you, Katherine.”

Katherine felt immediately contrite. Society saw Anne as one of the Incomparables, but little else beyond that. Katherine knew, for the world’s shallow perception of Anne, her sister was, in fact, good and loyal and would put her own siblings’ happiness before even her own.

Katherine glanced down at the toes of her slippers. “It’s unlikely I’ll make a match in the next fortnight before Christmas,” she murmured.

Again, the duke as he’d been yesterday morn, with his black cloak swirling about his long, well-muscled legs, came to mind.

Anne snorted. “You certainly won’t if you remain in your chambers reading poetry.”

Katherine managed a small smile for her sister. “Thank you, Anne.”

Her sister’s pretty blue eyes searched her face with an uncharacteristic seriousness. “I just want you to be happy.”

“I am happy,” Katherine said. She detected the defensive note that threaded those three words.

“Very well, I want you to believe in love.”

Katherine fell silent, and averted her gaze. There had been a time when she’d believed in love. Now, she knew that love was just the silly dreams of naïve young ladies. The world they belonged to was one made of advantageous matches, and familial connections. It was not a world that put any value on emotions such as love.

Mother had desperately loved their father. He’d repaid her love by abandoning her in the countryside and taking himself off to London to take part in the depravity of the gaming tables. In the end, he’d squandered nearly all their familial possessions, the un-entailed landholdings, and risked their good names for his own shameful interests.

If that was love, then Katherine was quite content without it.

“Surely not all men are selfish beasts like Father,” Anne murmured.

Katherine bit the inside of her cheek to keep from disabusing Anne of her childlike notions. Anne had seemed blissfully ignorant of the direness of their circumstances, and Katherine could not very well share with her now, the terror that had gripped her during those uncertain years.

“Katherine?” Anne prodded.

Katherine shook her head. “Forgive me. I was wool-gathering.”

Her sister sighed. “Very well. I’ll not bother you further with the matter for now, but do not consider this conversation at an end.”