Chapter 30

Wych House, earlier that same evening, two floors below…

Kathryn

Katie found herself seated between the Earl of Crewe and the Duke of Chatham at dinner that night. Although she had lived in the duke's house for months, she could not claim to know him. Nor was she very comfortable in his presence.

Especially not since she'd locked his cousin in the priest hole.

Lord Crewe, who was also scarred, handsome, and extremely intimidating, caused the same fluttering in her belly that all her sisters' husbands seemed to do. Not because of anything inappropriate they said or did, but because Katie now knew what these men did with her sisters in their respective bedchambers.

Had what her mother shouted at her several mornings earlier really been true? Was sexual intercourse all these men had wanted from any of them? Were they only married because her sisters had denied them pre-marital favors? Could that really be the only difference between Katie and—

"You are not eating your dessert, Lady Kathryn. Are you not hungry?"

She looked up at the sound of the Duke of Chatham's quiet voice, his cool gaze causing the same disorganization of thoughts it usually did. "Er, no. I think I ate too many cakes earlier when we were decorating."

Katie couldn't help noticing that his own baked custard had barely been touched. "You d-didn't care for yours?"

He ignored her question. "Her Grace went to check on Piquet just before dinner."

Katie's mind spun at the sudden change in subject. "Er, is he injured?" Piquet was the name her sister had given to the massive dun gelding the duke had given her several months earlier. The animal was, in Katie's opinion, brutishly ugly and ill-tempered—he'd snapped at Katie on more than one occasion—but Hy loved the beast.

Again, the duke ignored her question. "Can you guess what the duchess saw in the stables?"

"Um, horses?" Katie gave him a cheeky grin, but it died a quick death at the frosty look in his eyes.

Footmen appeared behind their chairs and the duke nodded, as did Katie.

Chatham continued to stare at her through narrowed eyes as the servants collected their mostly untouched desserts. "Your sister and I wish to speak to you after dinner."

She swallowed. "Er—"

Lord Crewe's voice came from her other side, sparing her from the duke's icy gaze. "Aurelia tells me that you are an exceptional chess player, Lady Kathryn."

Katie latched onto Lord Crewe's question like the lifeline it was, wrenching her gaze away from Chatham and turning to her newest brother-in-law.

"I have been told I am," she said with a forced smile. "Do you like to play?"

"I do. Perhaps you will honor me with a game?"

She forced a bright smile. "Of course."

He leaned closer, the action bringing his scarred but handsome face and single, magnificent eye close enough for her to see the shards of blue that comprised his iris. He dropped his voice and said, "I never again want to play cards against Chatham and Her Grace. The last time I was mauled that badly I lost an eye."

His words startled a laugh out of her. "Yes, they are…savagely skilled."

He grinned, suddenly looking boyish. "I could not have worded it better myself."

Phoebe, seated at the foot of the table, stood. "Ladies, shall we retire to the drawing room? I believe there is still a great deal of decorating left to do."

Katie breathed a sigh of relief at the prospect of escaping Chatham's brooding presence and began to stand when Lord Needham's voice cut across the murmur of voices.

"We gentlemen will forgo our nightly ritual of port and cigars to assist you, my dear."

So much for Katie's chances of escape.

Beside her, Chatham opened his mouth.

Katie hastily turned to Lord Crewe, who was in the middle of saying something to Mrs. Leeland and grabbed his arm. "Let us have a game right now! Before we are dragooned into decorating, my lord."

Crewe blinked at her likely demented expression and said, "Of course." He excused himself to Mrs. Leeland before allowing Katie to drag him off.

She chattered brainlessly all the way to the drawing room and while she set up the board, her gaze flickering to where Hy and Chatham stood, both regarding her in a way that promised no quarter.

An hour later—in the middle of her third game—her sister had obviously waited long enough.

Hy leaned over and hissed in her ear, "I want a word with you once you are finished with this game, Kathryn."

Kathryn .

Katie swallowed at the sound of her full name. She wanted to ignore Hy, but something about becoming a duchess had transformed her erstwhile unassuming sibling into somebody who was slightly…terrifying.

"As soon as I am finished."

Hy jerked a nod and strode away.

As much as she would have liked to draw the game out—preferably until after Christmas—she had already taken both of Crewe's bishops, knights, and one rook. She'd had at least three opportunities to take his queen, but that would have made an already boring game unbearable.

Crewe heaved a heavy sigh—obviously realizing the futility of his current position—and set his king on its side. His single eye slid up to meet hers and he wore a rueful smile. He was virile, charming, and handsome and it was easy to see why Aurelia was so infatuated with him. Regardless of his woeful lack of chess acumen.

"Aurelia beats me quite soundly, but never as badly as this," the earl said.

Katie suspected her sister—no mean player herself—probably had mercy on her attractive spouse.

"Will you play me next?" Doddy asked the earl. Her little brother had been hovering around the famous naturalist almost as much as he'd been dogging Lord Shaftsbury, who'd evidently been a famous Corinthian prior to losing his vision.

Crewe raised a brow at Katie. "If your sister is finished with me?"

"I will relinquish the chair, my lord."

He looked relieved.

She stood and saw Hy waiting for her only a few feet away, her husband right beside her. It was a sign of their displeasure that both of them had given up thrashing all comers at cards in order to buttonhole Kathryn.

"The Jewel Room," Hy murmured.

Hy and the duke walked on either side of her—as if fearing Katie would try to run—on the short distance to the cozy sitting room that was, inexplicably, called the Jewel Room.

"I have always wondered why this is called the Jewel Room," Katie said when Chatham had shut the door. "Do you know why, Hy?"

Hy ignored her conversational ploy. "What have you done with Shelton and Miss Martin?"

Katie swallowed as she looked up several inches into Hy's crystalline green eyes. They never looked exactly warm, but she could not recall a time when they'd appeared so very frosty.

She briefly considered pretending ignorance, but a quick glance at the duke convinced her otherwise.

"They are both safe and sound."

Hy's normally unreadable face shifted into an expression of profound shock, and she seemed at a loss for words.

Katie hurried on, "I was going to let them out tomorrow morning—before anyone was up and about. That way nobody would be the wiser that Miss Martin hadn't really been ill and Shelton hadn't really gone to see a horse."

Hy's jaw had sagged as she listened to Katie's babbling. "When Chatham told me what he thought, I did not believe him." She took a step closer to Katie, anger rolling off her long, thin frame. "What is wrong with you?"

Katie quailed at the disgust in her sister's gaze.

The duke set his hand on his wife's arm. "Hyacinth," he murmured, drawing Hy's rigid body against his.

"I did it for them ," Katie protested, grimacing as she noticed that her reasoning—when spoken aloud—sounded less than convincing. "For their own good," she added lamely.

"You destroyed both their reputations for their own good?" the duke repeated in a tone of cool disgust that was even more cutting than her sister's anger.

Katie flung up her hands. "Were you not listening? I told you that nobody will ever—"

"Even if what you say is true—and I am not yet willing to believe that— they will know, Katie," her sister said. "Can you imagine how Miss Martin will have worried these past few days? And Shelton has only just begun to be somebody I might want to claim as family."

The duke cut his wife a startled look at her admission, but Hy wasn't finished. "What do you think this will do to him? To both of them?"

"They both like each other—a great deal. This is the only way either of them would have acted on their attraction. I merely gave them a—a push."

Her sister and the duke looked at her as if she'd suddenly sprouted a second head.

Desperate for understanding, she turned to the duke. "Do you know why Shelton ran off with Miss Creighton and then abandoned her?"

The duke's pale cheeks darkened with displeasure. "That is hardly—"

"Because Sarah Creighton begged him to."

Was it satisfying to see their thunderstruck expressions? Yes, it was. And yet somehow, Katie suspected their surprise would not help when it came to digging herself out of the hole she'd made.

A few minutes later, after she had related the details surrounding Sarah's confession, her assessment was borne out.

The duke had briefly looked delighted to hear about Shelton's innocence, but the moment did not last. Instead, he now fixed her with a look of such cool disappointment that Katie wanted to crawl under the settee. "As relieved as I am to hear my cousin is not guilty of that particular crime, it was not your place to make decisions for them. Regardless of whether their disappearance goes unnoticed or not, you might very well have taken away their choices when it comes to marriage."

When he put it like that…

"Er…" Katie could not think of a word in her defense.

"Now. Where are they?" the duke demanded.