For Love of the Duke(42)

Katherine set her book down beside her on the sofa. “Your point is quite clear, Anne.”

Anne grinned and continued to play flawlessly. Her quick fingers moved expertly over the keys.

Katherine thought of the rather pathetic list she’d given to Jasper and winced. There’d been nary a ladylike quality to recommend her as a wife. Anne could fill several sheets of parchment with all her ladylike attributes. It had never mattered to Katherine the vast differences in them—until now. Now, she wished she didn’t possess the tight brown ringlets and a remarkable lack of skills on the pianoforte, and embroidering, and watercolors, and…

“You’ve gone all serious again.”

Katherine trailed the tip of her finger over the bruised leather spine of Wordsworth’s volume. Several tumbles into the thick blanket of snow when she’d last met Jasper had resulted in a hopelessly ruined leather cover. “Have I?” she murmured, distractedly. It had been three days since they’d last met.

Three days since she’d given him that silly list.

Three days since he’d accepted her offer of marriage.

And since then, she’d not heard a word from him. Not a letter. Not a visit.

Katherine jumped to her feet and began to pace.

She’d surely shocked him with her request at Hyde Park. Perhaps he’d merely come to his senses and merely intended to carry on as though that particular exchange had never occurred. Katherine would then have to go on to marry that horrid Mr. Ekstrom. Her stomach tightened into pained, twisted knots, and she wanted to blame them upon that horrid Mr. Ekstrom, but knew it was the thought of Jasper altering his decision that caused those pained, twisted knots.

“You seem rather upset.”

Katherine glanced over at her sister. “I’m not upset.” Only filled with panic at the prospect of wedding Mr. Ekstrom.

“It is that Mr. Ekstrom, isn’t it?” Anne stopped playing. She shoved back the bench at her pianoforte and it scraped along the wood floor. “We merely have to find that pendant…”

“The pendant will do nothing, Anne. It is a foolish, childlike, wishful dream.”

Anne’s brow wrinkled. “But Aldora and Michael’s…”

“Aldora and Michael’s marriage had nothing to do with that silly trinket,” her cry filled the cavernous space of the parlor. Her throat worked reflexively. Oh, how she envied Anne her innocence. Anne believed in dreams and wishes and magical pendants given to hopeful ladies by greedy gypsies.

A flash of hurt filled Anne’s pale blue eyes. She tipped her chin up a notch. “I know what you believe of me, Katherine. You and Aldora. You believe I’m fanciful and that I don’t possess a brain in my head.”

Katherine shook her head, besieged by sudden guilt. “Never, Anne.” She’d seen her as the sister in need of protection from the woes thrust upon their family by a wastrel father, but never an empty-headed fool.

Her sister continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “You both believed I wasn’t aware of our financial circumstances. You believed I remained immune to the direness of our situation.”

Shock slammed into Katherine, but Anne went on. “I am not silly or—”

“I don’t believe you’re silly—”

“Empty-headed,” Anne said, her eyes blazed with more emotion than Katherine ever remembered in her gentle eyes. “I am, I might be, fanciful. And I might dream of love, and happily ever afters, but that does not make me silly.” She angled her head. “Well, it might seem silly but I believe it is more hopeful. I’m hopeful that there are men who are good and don’t squander their family’s wealth, and leave them destitute, and force them to sell off all their possessions and release all their servants.”

Katherine searched her sister’s face, and the guilt inside spiraled and grew as she confronted the reality; she’d not protected Anne from their family’s dire situation, no more than Aldora had protected Katherine. They’d all been touched by their father’s selfishness.

Suddenly, she wished she had that heart pendant, wished she could turn it over to her sister who believed in love, and…Katherine blinked…

“What is it?” Anne asked.

…and realized she believed in love, too. She did not love Jasper Waincourt, 8th Duke of Bainbridge. She could not. She would not. Not when such a gentleman would never be able to love her in return.

“Katherine?” Anne asked again.

No. She appreciated his forthrightness, his regard for poetry, and his passionate embrace. There was nothing more.

There couldn’t be.

“I’m so sorry, Anne.” For not protecting you, for not sharing with you my fears, for losing the heart pendant worn by Aldora and her friends.