Page 25 of A Gamble on the Duke (The Gambling Dukes #4)

THIRTEEN

Catherine

Once, this had been the only place that felt like home.

Now it felt…empty. Barren.

Not as empty as the note that had arrived just yesterday. I hadn’t expected it to be from Alfred—from the Duke of Kineallen, but I should have known. The Gambling Duke’s seal was on the envelope.

It hadn’t been from him, of course. No, it was from a lawyer, someone with a surname a little too complicated. They said that the Duke of Kineallen was grateful for the way that I had completed my side of the arrangement, and there was a bankers note inside.

A note for at least ten times what we had agreed.

My breath had caught in my lungs in that moment and for an instant, I’d thought about sending it back. Ripping it up. Putting it in a drawer and completely ignoring it.

I took it to the bank that afternoon.

Part of me wished that I hadn’t. I felt…beholden to him, in a way that I hadn’t before. The money had been part of th e deal, sure, but until the money was actually in my hands, I didn’t think about it too much.

And now I had taken it from him, and I felt dirty. Like I had cheated myself. Sold myself out.

“I…I am your mistress, after all!”

I had tried to offer the Duke of Kineallen something more, more than we had agreed, more than I had ever thought I would share of myself, and we’d just never had the words for it. We’d not talked about it, and so it hadn’t mattered.

I breathed in deeply as I stepped into my shop. It was amazing, really. I hadn’t thrown down clay here in weeks, but I could still smell the different dyes and pigments, still pick out the red clay over the black.

It was good to be back. And yet somehow my shop felt…different. Empty. Colder. Distant. I couldn’t explain it, and there wasn’t anyone to explain it to, so I suppose it didn’t matter?—

“There you are.”

Trying hard not to groan, keeping my face in as much of a smile as I could manage, I turned. “Mr. Matthews.”

My landlord grinned awkwardly. “So…so you’re back.”

I nodded. Tears seemed to fall whenever I tried to think about Alfred, let alone talk about him, so I didn’t bother attempting to explain.

Anyway, I wasn’t sure what I would say. I am dreadfully sorry, Mr. Matthews, I’ve been off for a few weeks pretending to be the lover of a duke and accidentally caught feelings, but he never respected me so I cashed his bankers note and never looked back?

Not exactly the sort of conversation opener most people expected.

“Look, I wanted to say… ”

I braced myself. What was it going to be this time? A complaint that I’d not redirected my post, or given him my address while I was away? Please God, not another increase in my rent.

Alfred’s money—the money I had earned, I corrected myself silently—would see me through for a year. That gave me a year to think of some new ideas to get this business off the ground.

Perhaps I should have asked for my great aunt’s assistance.

I pushed the thought from my mind as Mr. Matthews prevaricated the bad news.

“It’s just…I had a think about it and I thought…well. I am sorry.”

I blinked. I must have heard that wrong. “I'm sorry?”

“No, I'm sorry,” my landlord said heavily. “Look, I don’t mean to be heartless—it’s just, I’ve got to keep a roof over my head, the kids are getting more expensive with every year and the twins have got a need for clothes like I had never imagined?—”

The man talked for about five minutes and I tried to follow. As far as I could make out, he was struggling financially too.

I had no idea. I had never thought to ask.

“—don’t want to be heartless as I said, but if your rent doesn’t cover the mortgage of this place, it puts me in a difficult situation?—”

“It doesn’t matter,” I interrupted, desperate to bring this conversation to an end.

Mr. Matthews blinked. “It—it doesn’t?”

“I didn’t mean—obviously, your problems matter,” I said hastily. Oh goodness, what had I managed to get myself into now? “It’s just, you don’t need to apologize. You’re a landlord, you have to ask for rent, that’s how it works.”

The relief was palpable. “Oh. Oh, good. And look, don’t worry about getting me next month’s rent immediately, I can?—”

“I can send you the next quarter’s rent,” I said, holding my head up high. “And I’ve got some ideas. Ideas on how to get this place in the black.”

Why did everyone always look so surprised when I talked about my ideas? “You…you do?”

I sighed. “Yes—look, I have the money, let’s just leave it at that.”

“But…how?”

Swallowing hard, I tried out a variety of explanations in my head. I had sold a few possessions. I had found a gentleman friend. I was a woman for hire. Look, I met this incredibly handsome duke and after covering him with raspberries…

No. I couldn’t see any of those explanations going down well.

Besides, I wanted to keep Alfred to myself. He was my secret, my pretend courtship duke. If I didn’t talk about him with other people, there was a small part of me that wondered whether he would come back.

It was foolish, of course. I’d been harsh and he’d been thoughtless and we hadn’t even talked about what we wanted from each other. For all I knew, I was nothing more than a convenient lover.

“It doesn’t matter how,” I said, my voice slightly strangled.

The shop felt painfully empty as my landlord nodded. “And was it worth it?”

I swallowed hard again and shrugged with as bright of a laugh as I could manage. “You know, I don’t know. I suppose I’ll find out.”

Kineallen

And that was how I ended up on Georgiana’s sofa with my hand in my hands and a bottle of whiskey beside me.

“You are an absolute?—”

“There aren’t any words that you can call me that I haven’t already called myself,” I said bleakly.

There was a snort from my left. “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve got a few ideas.”

I raised my head, just for a moment, to glower at my friend Fynn. “Seriously, man? Kick a man when he’s down?”

“If you’re the one to knock yourself out, don’t blame me,” he said with a wry smile. “Seriously, man, what were you thinking?”

Thinking? I hadn’t been thinking, not properly, from the moment that I had met Catherine, raspberry pastries and all.

There was something about her that stopped the brain, or at least, my brain.

No rational thought appeared to have occurred there since I caught sight of her, and every moment since had been an exercise in not thinking.

Kissing her was like breathing in the sea.

“I didn’t know what to do,” I said quietly. “I mean, I thought—and then I realized, I didn’t even know where the woman lived.”

My stomach tensed. How could I not even know that?

But then, there were quite a few things that I did not know about Catherine Shenton, it seemed. Like the fact that her mother was truly nobility, or at the very least descended from one. And that meant that Catherine was not the poor woman with no prospects or connections that I had believed.

And somehow that was not the thing that had shocked me.

No, it was the fact that I did not care who her great aunt was. I just wanted her.

I wanted Catherine Shenton, but she no longer wanted me.

“I am sorry,” I said softly, glancing at my sister-in-law with a twist in my heart. “I should not—I do not suppose you want to hear about?—”

“Olivia would not have wished for you to be alone for the rest of your life, Kineallen,” said Georgiana softly, warmth flickering across her face. “She would have wanted you to love again.”

“And you do, quite clearly,” said her husband cheerfully.

My friend shot him a glare.

“I’m just saying,” Fynn said with a shrug, throwing a hand in my direction. “A man doesn’t mope about like this if he isn’t in love.”

“Was this how you moped about for me?” teased Georgiana.

I cleared my throat. The two of them flushed, though there was still a smile dancing across both of their faces.

“My apologies,” Fynn said with that grin I was starting to know well. “But my point stands. You love her.”

“I did not even know it until the woman walked out of my life,” I groaned.

“Ah, that feels familiar,” Georgiana said quietly.

“And I was such an idiot?—”

“That’s the part I remember,” cut in Fynn with a wink .

I scowled. “Can the two of you stop reminiscing for five seconds, so that I can complain?”

Dear God, even I could hear how petulant I was being.

But there did not appear to be anything else I could do. I loved Catherine Shenton, and the woman had been injured by me. She had not wished to hear my apologies, had not halted to see if she could forgive me.

No, I had upset her and she had not wished for any sort of reconciliation.

And it burned, it burned within me like a brand. I was not enough to stay behind for; to reconcile, to talk through our misunderstanding and restore ourselves to perfect harmony.

All my life I had been enough: a duke, a duke who had made his fortune and gained even greater respectability.

To be brought low, to be humbled by a woman…

And yet I still adored her.

“You must go after her.”

“She does not want to be found,” I said heavily to Georgiana’s suggestion. “She made that perfectly clear.”

Had made it clear when she had sent for her things. A coachman and a maid. Nothing more. No note, no appearance of the lady herself…and she had not taken any of the new gowns or fripperies, the sketchbook or the clay I had bought her.

Anything purchased with Kineallen coin, it appeared, was not something she wanted.

My heart skipped a beat. To think that a part of me had hoped I could tempt her back with money.

“Is that all you can think about? The value of things?”

“I'm so disappointed in you, Kineallen,” said Georgiana quietly .

I groaned as I looked to my right. “I don’t need your disappointment, Georgiana.”

“Well, you have it,” my friend said with a raised eyebrow. “I mean, how hard is it to treat a woman right?”

“Clearly harder than you might think,” Fynn said darkly.

I threw a cushion at my friend, but missed. God, I was falling apart.

“Right, let’s get back to basics,” Fynn said, grabbing at the whiskey by my feet and not even bothering to pour himself a glass. He just necked it from the bottle. “Y’see, Kineallen, when we start bedding a woman, we tend not to tell her she’s?—”

“Fynn!”

“Well the man needs to know!” gestured my host at his clearly scandalized wife.

“I know what I did wrong, damnit!” I exploded, standing up, unable to remain sitting down. I started to pace around Georgiana’s drawing room, trying to ignore the delicate vase she’d recently invested in. Pottery that reminded me of Catherine.

“You do?”

“Just about everything,” I muttered, pulling a hand through my hair distractedly. “I should never have started this all in the first place. I should never have paid her to?—”

“Excuse me,” came the icy tones of my sister-in-law.

I froze. Ah.

“Do you mean to tell me,” said Georgiana darkly, narrowing her eyes as I forced myself to meet her gaze, “that the woman you have been parading about our lives, the woman you have introduced to us and to our members—and to the Earl of Tuxford!—as the woman you are courting…is nothing more than a wanton woman? ”

It was just about possible to suppress a smile. “Not quite.”

“Oh dear,” muttered Fynn as his wife snapped, “What do you mean, not quite?”

“It wasn’t like that—she is a perfectly respectable woman!” I said defensively, trying not to think about all the most unrespectable things that I had enjoyed with Catherine over the last week. “She is the great niece to the Dowager Countess of Ormkirk!”

That, at least, appeared to mollify my friend. “Oh. Well then,” said Georgiana with a sniff. “I suppose in that case I can be assured that you have done nothing untoward to the young lady.”

My hesitation was all that needed to be said.

“Alfred Kineallen!” breathed Georgiana in horror as her husband started to chuckle. “You have ruined that young lady!”

“Well—”

“You simply have to marry her!”

“Now then, you didn’t demand matrimony when I ruined you,” Fynn pointed out, quite fairly even as his wife’s cheeks pinked.

“Yes but—but—you know that was different,” spluttered one of my oldest friends.

Georgiana’s husband’s grin had not faded. “And why is that?”

“Because,” said Georgiana sharply, “I was a widow. I could take a lover, and Society would hardly blink an eye. But Miss Shenton…”

Oh hell. She was right.

Miss Shenton had none of the societal protections that widowhood could afford. Her innocence had been taken, I had made damned sure of that…and there was no possibility that I could give it back to her, even if I had wanted to.

No, Miss Catherine Shenton was mine…except she was not. I had ruined, completely, all hopes and expectations of joyful matrimony with the woman I loved.

I grabbed the whiskey bottle from my host and lifted it to my lips, the liquid burning the truth into my soul.

I wanted to marry the woman I loved. Matrimony, the estate I had feared and reviled for so many years…it was enticing now, now that I could see myself entering it with the right person.

A person that I wished to spend the rest of my life with.

I groaned. “I’ve made so many mistakes, Georgiana—I’ve got it so wrong?—”

“Great, you know what you did wrong,” Georgiana said smartly, her cheeks still a little flushed. “The question is, how do you want to make it right?”