Page 24 of A Gamble on the Duke (The Gambling Dukes #4)

TWELVE

Catherine

So…whatever this was, I liked it.

We hadn’t talked about it. We hadn’t put a name to it. Trying to label it would just restrict us, make it harsh and small and dull.

And I couldn’t describe what we had as dull.

The routine wasn’t something we had discussed, it just…happened. Breakfast together, Alfred ordering French toast, me pouring the tea. It took me a little precisely how the nobility took their tea, but apparently it was with lemon, never milk.

I kept drinking mine with milk and three lumps of sugar.

Alfred spent more and more time at home.

More and more time on the sofa. My head in his lap, his legs in mine, we would find a way to be comfortable and there we were.

He would read from those ledgers of his, writing out letters and marking up reports, and I would read some of the art books—well, the new art books that he bought me. New designs, new ideas, new plans .

Perhaps I could one day buy my own shop, not rent. Perhaps I could create designs for the rich, sell things for more than the clay plus ten percent.

We never spoke of marriage. What was the point? He had made it perfectly clear that he did not wish to marry again, and I had no one to offend or scandalize—save for my great aunt the Dowager Countess of Ormkirk, and I rather thought she would never return from Bath.

The days slipped by. We’d meet the Earl of Tuxford, and laugh, and Alfred would look at me like I was the most precious thing in the world, and by the time we reached our townhouse—our townhouse, I don’t know when it became ours—it was difficult to keep our hands off each other.

Making love, slowly in our bed, fast and hurried against a wall, in the bathroom with my hands pressed against the tiles, in the dining room on the table…

There wasn’t an inch in that place that we hadn’t made love.

And still, we didn’t talk.

Oh, we talked. But we didn’t talk. We didn’t speak of the future, of what this was, of what label we should call it.

Alfred called me his lady when we were out in Society, and I smiled, my heart racing so hard I was certain that everyone there could hear it.

When we were alone…we just were.

I knew it couldn’t last.

It was a Thursday. The last meeting with the Earl of Tuxford was tomorrow and I knew it, Alfred knew it, and we just…weren’t talking about it. Talking about it would make it more real. More powerful. More painful.

My feet were in his lap, Alfred’s brow furrowed as he stared at something clearly puzzling on his ledger. My scrapbook was propped against my knees, pencil in my hand. I’d been working on a floral design for a plate but couldn’t quite get the leaves right.

I hummed as I tilted my head.

Alfred’s gentle laugh was accompanied by a question. “What do you look so worried about?”

I looked up and smiled at the warmth in his eyes. Was it really possible that we’d just met randomly on the street a few weeks ago?

It felt like I’d known him forever.

“I'm working on a difficult leaf,” I said with a wry look. “It’s not behaving at all.”

His smile widened. “God, I’d love to have your problems.”

“What, your Gambling Dukes thing a little more complicate than a fern leaf?” I quipped, luxuriating in the feeling of being close to him.

And yet somehow, his smile vanished. “Yes, you could say that.”

Alfred’s eyes returned to the ledger, his frown reappearing.

I waited for a moment, then nudged him with my foot. “Tell me about it.”

He snorted. “You wouldn’t understand.”

The instant dismissal wasn’t exactly something that I relished, but I was willing to talk about it. Hear about it, at the very least. How dull could it be, really?

“Go on, try me.”

“You wouldn’t understand, Catherine.”

Maybe it was his complete unwillingness to even explain, that had always rubbed me up the wrong way with other people. I was a potter, yes, but I was so much more than that. I was not rich, not nobly born, but I was a gentlewoman. I had noble connections—he knew about my great aunt, after all.

“Come on, you can’t explain it? Just a little, just to give me an idea of how I could help?” I said quietly.

When Alfred sighed and dropped the ledger none too carefully onto my feet, there was a look of exasperation on his face that I had not expected.

“It’s a small matter of precedence. The Earl of Tuxford and the Viscount Kirekwall, they are friends, they will not care, but we have an Irish earl attending the dinner tomorrow and from an earldom which is older, more prestigious, and yet as it is Irish—look, I told you. It’s complicated.”

It was, but it was also incredibly simple. After all, I’d sat around a dinner table with a few earls in my time. It was not the building of Rome.

“Have you tried looking at hosting the dinner at the Duke and Duchess of Markham’s? Their dining table is more circular, emphasizes precedence less,” I pointed out lightly.

Alfred snorted. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

That was new. “What?” I said, putting down my sketchbook onto the floor.

There was a hot strange sort of tingling in my chest. Like I knew an argument was coming, but I didn’t know how it had got here, or how I could avoid it.

“Pretend like you understand,” Alfred said with a heavy sigh, picking up his ledger. “You just go back to your leaves.”

My sketchbook remained untouched. “What do you mean, go back to my leaves—I made a good point!”

“And I'm sure it’s something I’ve already taken into account,” Alfred said, his voice distracted now.

I watched his eyes flicker as he scrolled through what looked from where I was sitting like another long and boring report. A report that he was barely reading. So…had he taken it into account? Or was my idea brilliant?

“It was a good suggestion, and you should consider it,” I said quietly. “I just think you should?—”

“Look, Catherine, you’re just a potter!” Alfred said sharply, turning his head to glare at me. “Just a woman I picked up off the street. You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

I could see the stress furrowing his brow, the tension in his jaw. The pressure he was under was extraordinary—how many people ran an estate that employed so many people, that so many people depended on?

But that wasn’t an excuse to be so arrogant and unpleasant.

“There’s no need to be rude,” I snapped. “Besides, you could do well to listen to me?—”

Alfred scoffed and it made my pulse quicken.

“You should!” I said suddenly, pulling my feet out from his lap and clasping my knees to my chest. “I have a great aunt who is a dowager countess as you know, I’ve attended dinners?—”

“I’m sure you have,” he muttered darkly.

The callous way he spoke was more than enough to get my back up. “Even without my connection to Lady Ormkirk, you should respect my opinion! I…I am your mistress, after all!”

Kineallen

“Even without my connection to Lady Ormkirk, you should respect my opinion! I…I am your mistress, after all!”

Mistress.

It was the word that we did not speak in the townhouse. God knows when we’d decided that—now I came to think about it, I don’t think we ever did. Not out loud, anyway. It was just something that had happened over time, and it was working.

And now Catherine had to go and ruin it.

I knew the tension across my shoulders and the sick feeling in my stomach had nothing to do with her.

It was this damned ledger—the ledgers, and the way the Earl of Tuxford was dragging his heels.

I was spending a small fortune wining and dining them, and still they didn’t seem about to make up their minds.

And now this.

I tried not to laugh. This was ridiculous, and once Catherine and I had calmed down, I knew we’d be amused by it all.

I couldn’t see it right now, but…

“Look,” I said as calmly as I could manage, “it was a good lie. A clever one, even, I said before that I never would have thought of it.”

“Lie?” Catherine said quietly. “I know this relationship started as just a contract, an agreement, a fake courtship?—”

“I'm not talking about that,” I said, cutting across her. No, the last thing I could think of was trying to untangle just what this woman meant to me. Everything. And yet at the same time, I didn’t know how to—but that could wait.

“I mean the dowager countess thing. Look, it certainly painted you in a good light, got my friends to respect you, but?—”

“Sorry, when did I say I was lying?” Catherine had moved now, risen from the sofa and stepped away from me.

God, I hadn’t realized just how much having her close to me kept me calm. With every inch of distance between us, the tension increased in my chest.

I tried to take a deep breath. This argument was ridiculous. “ We both know you don’t have a great aunt who is a dowager countess?—”

“Oh, do we?” Catherine’s voice was cold, distant—and angry, angry in a way I had never heard before.

“Did my mother know that, who was the niece of Lady Ormkirk ? Does my great aunt’s solicitor know that, who drew up her will which makes me heir to her fortune?

Does my great aunt, the respected Dowager Countess of Ormkirk know that? ”

I stared at her in complete confusion. What on earth was she talking about? “There is no Countess of Ormkirk, there is no such place in England, it is clearly a made up?—”

“Oh is it?” Now Catherine was truly angry. “And when was the last time you went to Ireland, Your Grace?”

The fury on her face and the way that she let the words hang in the air made me realize, even if it took me a little while.

“Oh hell.”

“Oh hell indeed,” Catherine said dryly. “What, you think I couldn’t possibly have a noble connection merely because I worked for a living?”

This was getting out of hand. “No, I just?—”

“You just thought that any advice I could give you was automatically worthless because I'm not a duchess,” said Catherine, turning from me and striding away.

I followed her, feet unconsciously moving because it was far too painful to lose sight of her. “Catherine, wait?—”

“You know what, I think I have been more than reasonable, but this—this has got out of hand,” she said, pulling on a pelisse.

My surprise that she had managed to read my mind was cut short by the realization of what the movement meant. A pelisse. She was leaving. Catherine couldn’t leave, she was mine—my Catherine. My…God, I didn’t even know what we were to each other.

More than lovers. More than friends. Not quite my wife.

“Catherine, I'm sorry, I just?—”

“Just didn’t think my opinion was worth anything,” Catherine said dully, grabbing her reticule.

“No—”

“Look, I thought we had—that we could have been…” Her voice trailed off as she pushed a stray lock of hair back behind her ear.

I knew that was the opportunity for me to say something—to say that I loved her, that I needed her, that I wanted her.

Words that I needed to say. Words that wouldn’t come out of my mouth.

“When you decide out what you want, don’t tell me,” Catherine said with a wry smile. “Tell someone you respect.”

I stood there, dazed, unable to move, and only the slam of the door roused me. “Catherine!”

By the time I had stepped out of the door, she was long gone. The streets of London were busy at any hour but particularly at this point in the afternoon, and though my gaze raked through them, I could not catch sight of her.

Her. The woman I loved.

I slowly sank down onto the top step and dropped my head into my hands.

Well, damn.