Page 43 of Corrupting his Duchess (A Duke’s Undoing #1)

“ A ri, darling, don’t pick at your nails,” Catherine chided gently. “They’ll bleed.”

Ariadne, seated at her vanity while her maid put the finishing touches on her coiffure, clenched her fists tight and glared at them like they’d betrayed her.

“Right,” she muttered offhandedly. “Sorry.”

“You needn’t be sorry,” Catherine said from where she perched on the armchair in Ari’s bedchamber.

Her one toilette was finished. She and Ari had brought a single maid to share between them—they might each have their own ladies’ maids at home, but Catherine had thought it excessive to drag two members of their own staff along on the trip.

Besides, her own maid, Gilda, had nieces and nephews that she was thrilled to see for an extended trip while Catherine was gone, while Ariadne’s young maid, Polly, was thrilled to get to see more of the countryside.

“I packed your salve, Lady Ariadne,” Polly said quietly, pinning one last lock before pulling a small tin of floral-scented hand salve out of a drawer and handing it to Ari. She returned to pinning curls in place while Ariadne took out a dollop of the cream and rubbed it sheepishly into her hands.

“It’s fine to be nervous,” Catherine told her sister, fidgeting the tiniest bit to get a more comfortable seat without mussing her gown.

“I’m not nervous,” Ariadne said reflexively, as Catherine had known she would. “But it’s just drinks and dinner tonight, right?”

Catherine hid her smile. Ariadne hated admitting to her nerves.

“Right,” she agreed. “It should be easy enough to get through. Nobody will want to extend the evening too much, not after a day of traveling.”

Ariadne looked reassured by this. But Catherine, as it turned out, was extremely incorrect about her prediction for the night.

It was not easy to get through.

And it felt endless .

Catherine started to feel restless before they even got to dinner, less than an hour into the round of socializing and sipping champagne on the large veranda that opened into a beautiful autumn evening.

The breeze was crisp and pleasant, the champagne was an excellent vintage, and the company was pleasant.

Or, well, most of the company was pleasant.

The Duke of Seaton didn’t say much. Indeed, he didn’t say anything directly to Catherine at all. But he made his presence known.

He stood in the corner and stared at her.

And stared.

And stared .

Catherine was no nervous debutante, new to the pressures of Society life.

Goodness, even when she’d been a debutante, she hadn’t been a nervous one!

Between the legend that had circulated around her grandfather Cornelius and the tragedy that had struck her family when she was thirteen years old—a fire that had all but eliminated her father’s generation—Catherine had been in the public eye nearly all her life.

But that stare was unyielding, and it made her want to twitch.

Lady Catherine Lightholder never twitched.

“Kitty,” Ariadne said at her elbow, drawing Catherine’s attention. She never should have taken her attention off Ari in the first place. She was here as her sister’s guide and chaperone, not to indulge whatever bizarre feuds existed in the minds of tall, intense dukes.

“Yes, dearest?”

“Lady Reid says she would like to introduce me to her youngest son when we return to London. I was vague about it because I wanted to ask—do you think I should encourage the association?”

Right, Catherine thought. This was why she was here: to guide her sister through potential social pitfalls.

“I think so,” she told Ariadne, ignoring the fact that she could still feel the duke’s eyes on her. “Alistair Reid hasn’t a title, but he’s known as a good man and a savvy investor. I also believe he has a remarkable aviary.”

“I think I would enjoy looking at the birds,” Ari mused. “Perhaps not touching them, though.”

“We shall be certain to negotiate no touching of birds in any marriage contract that is to come,” Catherine said with mock solemnity. This made Ariadne’s shoulders unclench slightly, though she still did not look at ease.

“It’s just very hard to know what I hope to find in a husband,” Ariadne confessed quietly. “I don’t know how you are supposed to know a person until you’ve spent time with them, and the only way to do that without risking my reputation is to marry them, and by that point, it’s too late!”

Catherine laid a reassuring hand on her sister’s shoulder. This was not the first time she and Ariadne had had this discussion, and she gathered that it would not be the last, either.

“You do what you are doing,” she reminded her younger sister. “You ask those who know. You spend time together with a chaperone. You trust your instincts.”

“My instincts are telling me to go home.”

“Fine, then you trust my instincts,” Catherine amended with a smile. It was a good sign that Ari felt comfortable enough to argue. “Have I ever led you wrong?”

Ariadne bumped her shoulder against Catherine’s. It wasn’t the most ladylike gesture, but Catherine would allow it, for the sake of her sister’s ease. “No, you haven’t.”

“Quite right. I will not let someone who does not deserve you get close, my darling girl,” she said, tucking an errant curl back up into its pin.

It was moments like these where Catherine was certain that the feelings she felt for her younger siblings were not all that different from those a mother felt for her children.

And that was a blessing, wasn’t it? Because her chances of ever being a mother herself were vanishingly small—and growing smaller with every passing year.

“I know, Kitty.” Ariadne was finally starting to look relaxed. Then, she glanced over Catherine’s shoulder and, in an instant, grew as rigid as she’d ever been. “That gentleman is staring at us.”

Catherine didn’t have to turn around to know which gentleman her sister meant, but she did anyway, to provide cover for her irritation.

It was easy enough to hide her emotions from acquaintances, but Ariadne—indeed, all of the Lightholder siblings—knew her too well to be fooled.

Normally, Catherine liked that they were close enough to read one another so well, but right now, she didn’t want Ari to see her discomfiture.

It would only make her sister’s anxiety spiral all the higher.

Indeed, it was the Duke of Seaton, who was looking at her like she was committing some sort of unspeakable depravity instead of having a quiet conversation with her own sister.

“Ah,” she said to Ariadne, forcing lightness into her tone. “That’s the Duke of Seaton. He is in Parliament with Xander. Perhaps I ought to go say my greetings. Why don’t you go chat more with Lady Reid? Even if you don’t make a match with her son, she’s kind and knows just about everyone.”

And , Catherine thought privately as Ariadne mumbled an agreement, she is harmless. Which meant that Ariadne would be safely ensconced in conversation while Catherine went to handle this… man . It was the only non-offensive term she could think of for him.

She would think all the more accurate terms later, when she wasn’t worried that they would show through on her expression.

For now, however, it was time to put an end to…whatever this was with the Duke of Seaton.

His expression grew even more sour—a marvel, truly; who would have thought it possible?—as she approached.

She gave him an exactingly correct smile, one that said she was being polite but was going no further.

“Good evening, Your Grace,” she said lightly. “Are you enjoying the party?”

His face pinched, like he’d bitten into a fruit and gotten a lemon instead of a fig.

“Not particularly, no,” he said, a beat too late to be polite. As if she hadn’t gotten the message that he wanted to be rude.

Truly, she wasn’t an idiot . He didn’t need to be so heavy-handed about it. Just because she thought he was being insufferable about his delivery didn’t mean she didn’t understand what he meant.

He despised her for some reason that was, frankly, not all that interesting to her.

It had to be some political spat with her brother.

And, frankly, Catherine thought Xander’s political stances were solid.

If this other duke had a problem with them, well.

She didn’t have a seat in Parliament. Best to take those complaints elsewhere.

So she just gave him a commiserating (and slightly pitying) look.

“As I said before, these parties can be overwhelming, particularly if you do not circulate much in Society. You’ll have to forgive me for my ignorance—do you spend much time in London?”

Somehow, this comment caused the duke to look even more irate. A naturalist really ought to do a study on him, Catherine thought. He was possibly surpassing what was previously considered the maximum human limit for ire.

“No, I cannot say that I do,” he said icily. “I find that…London Society is, on the whole, made up of shallow creatures who look at the wrong things when seeking to account a person’s worth. I cannot imagine why I would wish to spend more time with such a crowd than necessary.”

She arched an eyebrow. She was determined not to lose her temper, and, indeed, she’d faced a thousand veiled insults from the various and sundry members of the ton , too many of whom felt that the best way to build their own reputations was to tear down someone else’s.

It was a mistake every time. Not necessarily just because she was Catherine Lightholder, although that, too, but because it was a play that was destined to fail.

It was a desperate ploy of a neophyte, not the skilled maneuvering of someone who knew how to avoid each and every one of Society’s manifold teeth.

Besides, it was obvious that the duke wanted her to lose her temper. And she might be the prim and proper Lightholder, but she was still a Lightholder.

Stubbornness ran in her veins.

“Well. Perhaps you will meet people more to your liking at this party.” She gave him the same look that she gave her cousin Hugh’s triplet nieces when they knew they were misbehaving, she knew that they were misbehaving, and she wanted them to know that she knew they were misbehaving but that she was—the picture of benevolence—giving them a chance to make it right.

“I doubt it,” the duke bit out.

She shouldn’t bait him, she really shouldn’t.

But it was so hard to resist temptation when faced with a man this self-important and buttoned-up.

She could only assume that he hadn’t been dragged to this party at rifle point.

He had only himself to blame for being here.

It was unconscionable for him to not take responsibility and at least try to behave the way decent folk ought.

“At least you have the right attitude about it,” she said, simperingly sweet. “I have always found that putting on a good face helps things immeasurably.”

A muscle in his face twitched as she let out the retort, as mild as it had been.

“You would think that,” he returned. “As I understand it, you Lightholders always have put appearances above all.”

Her muscles tightened with the effort it took not to react to his blatant insult.

Catherine followed the rules of Society to the letter, but she would not necessarily consider herself an ardent supporter of those rules.

Many of them, in truth, she found irksome, bordering on ridiculous.

Ariadne’s complaint that women got no real chance to know the men they planned to wed—and then no real recourse if the men turned out to be other than they’d presented themselves after the vows were spoken?

That was an objection that Catherine found measured and reasonable.

A better world, she thought, would be one where men were expected to behave properly in private conversation with a lady so that such a conversation did not ruin the woman’s reputation.

But they didn’t live in that better world. And forsaking the rules entirely just meant that everyone was stumbling around blindly in the dark, bumping into one another as they tried to find their way, and generally causing more harm than good.

So, yes. She’d met self-important, puffed-up, snide gentlemen who disparaged women as a whole or her in particular, for some reason or other.

She’d borne insults, had remained silent through sniffed observations that it was such a pity when a woman let herself be relegated to the shelf, had held her counsel when sidelong glances were cast her way.

That was just Society. It meant very little, not compared to the things she truly valued, like her family.

But this man, this rude, obvious man who didn’t follow any of the rules, hadn’t just insulted Catherine.

He’d insulted her family.

You Lightholders .

And yes, she ought to ignore that, too. Theirs was an ancient, powerful, wealthy family. People often cozied up to them, seeking favor, or spat their disdain when that favor was not granted.

But for some reason, this time, it got under her skin.

“I understand,” she said tightly, “that perhaps you have butted heads with my brother in the past. But surely you can see that that has nothing to do with me or my sister.”

Perhaps the man was a strict conservative who thought that any reform bills, like the ones that Xander had been increasingly backing after his wife had made the struggles of Northern laborers more personal to him, were an affront against the aristocracy.

Catherine didn’t much care. She only needed to know a man’s political affiliations if she intended to match him with her sister.

And she would not be seeking to match the Duke of Seaton with her dear little sister. Not if he were the very last man on earth.

“And I would hope,” she went on, “that we can put that animosity aside for the sake of this party. We are, for better or for worse, all here together for the next several days. It will be far more pleasant if we can all find a way to coexist, don’t you think?”

His look was incredulous. “You really don’t know who I am, do you?”

She barely kept back her huff of impatience. God, men would do whatever it took to make themselves feel important, wouldn’t they?

“Of course,” she said sweetly. “You’re the Duke of Seaton. You’re someone with whom I shall become the dearest of friends by the end of this party.”

As the group was called in to dinner, she turned on her heel, leaving him behind her. Perhaps it was rude, but she couldn’t help it. She’d built a reputation on being good, always.

But Lord help her if the Duke of Seaton didn’t make her want to be the very worst she could be.