Page 44 of Corrupting his Duchess (A Duke’s Undoing #1)

D amn every last Lightholder in England, Percy thought as he watched Lady Catherine charm her way through supper. He didn’t understand why the rest of them couldn’t see that her cheerful smiles and little laughs were just a gilded veneer. Who knew what lay beneath? She was too good at hiding it.

But of course she was. She was a Lightholder. And they were the masters of using good breeding and money to cover up the cesspit of snobbery and insularity that lurked at their core.

He speared a wedge of roast potato as Lady Catherine laughed at something that Miss Susannah Reid was saying. He watched as Miss Reid clearly blossomed under Lady Catherine’s bright, focused attention.

It’s all a lie , he wanted to warn the girl. Miss Reid’s father might be titled, but he was a lord only, one who was titled within the last two generations or so.

Not the kind of person a Lightholder would consider their equal.

No doubt Lady Catherine would laugh about the poor chit’s plebeian origins later.

“Can you please stop staring? You’re going to put the women off their suppers,” David hissed from where he sat nearby.

David Nightingale was Percy’s best friend. And some days—like today—he wanted to murder him .

“You made me come to this party,” he reminded his friend.

“‘Made’ is a very strong word,” David drawled.

Drawling was David’s most favored method of speaking.

It would be annoying, except Percy knew all too well that it was when David got serious that you truly needed to worry.

“Might I remind you that you are a duke? It is, as it happens, nearly impossible to make a duke do anything.”

“Please,” Percy scoffed. “There are hierarchies of power, as you well?—”

“Save it,” David ordered flatly. “I’m already bored. Just please behave like a normal person, all right? Is that too much to ask?”

It really wasn’t very much to ask, but Percy still felt disinclined to obey the command.

“Why didn’t you tell me she was going to be here?” he demanded. “You know how I feel about them.”

“By ‘she,’ I assume you mean Lady Catherine Lightholder, and by ‘them’ I assume you mean her family. To which I reply: I did not tell you about her coming because your rivalry with her family is stupid. And because it is my party and I can invite whomever I please. Besides,” he waved a hand.

“The little sister is on the marriage market, I gather. Perhaps she’ll make her match at the event.

I fancy myself a bit of an Eros, recently.

I shall give a toast at the wedding and become dearest friends with the groom, whereupon I shall replace you for your crime of being terribly irksome. ”

Percy was unimpressed by this threat. If David was going to replace him, he would have done so ages ago.

“I wish you and your new friend many happy returns,” he deadpanned.

David huffed air out through his nose in a highly expressive manner, but he let Percy be through the remainder of the meal.

In return, Percy tried to glare at Lady Catherine slightly less.

It was a true challenge, however. She was just so…

perfect. It wasn’t just that she was pretty, though she was, what with that slim frame with its gently sloping curves.

And her light brown hair should have been unremarkable, but it flattered her coloring well, highlighting the blue eyes that all those Lightholders seemed to possess.

But the worst part of it was that, as far as social mores went, she never seemed to make a mistake—that infinitesimally small show of temper when he’d goaded her aside.

And it wasn’t the stiff, polished kind of propriety, either.

She seemed genuinely attentive to those around her.

She smiled and nodded and asked the right kind of questions.

She brought others out of their shells. And none of them seemed to realize that, in doing so, Lady Catherine revealed nothing about herself.

Absolutely typical. He wouldn’t put it past the Lightholders to train their women as spies, sent out into Society to learn the secrets of other aristocrats that the men could then use to crush them like gnats.

Not that he was obsessed or anything like that—no matter what David accused him of being.

His efforts to not stare at Lady Catherine were evidently in vain, however, for as the group retired from the dinner table, the ladies destined for the parlor while the men headed for the study for port and cheroots, a small, slender hand snagged at his sleeve.

“A word, Your Grace, if you will.”

Lady Catherine’s tone was polite enough, but it was very clearly not a request.

Percy did not think of himself as being particularly perverse.

He was, by his own reckoning, a normal sort of man with the occasional, normal sort of vices.

He was rather particular about his brandy to the point that people (by which he meant David) had called him absurd.

He had his dalliances with the odd merry widow, though he was careful to be discreet.

In short, you could not throw a stone in London without hitting a gentleman with worse habits than Percy.

But Lord, did it fill him with the most dreadful sort of satisfaction to see the narrowed glare and irritated blush on Lady Catherine Lightholder. Oh, it satisfied him to no end.

It was enough that, for the very first time, he smiled at her.

“I cannot see that we have anything to discuss, my lady,” he said politely. Inside, he was as gleeful as a child with a sweet. It really was not at all flattering to his character, but he was enjoying himself too much to care.

“Respectfully, I must disagree.”

The cracks were showing in her perfect facade. She hadn’t raised her voice, and her posture was still as sanguine as ever. To an outsider, she would look perfectly poised. But there was a brittleness to her smile that said it threatened to break.

“Perhaps another time, my lady,” he said grandly.

And then she grabbed him .

She reached right out and grabbed his wrist and used her hold on him to yank him into an offshoot of the main corridor of the house, a quiet little nook where nobody would interrupt them. He was so surprised by the gesture that he let her tug him along.

Well, it was a combination of his surprise and curiosity. What would this perfect little princess of a lady do when pushed?

He couldn’t help but note that she maintained some propriety even at her apparent breaking point. The small enclave was not so small that they had to stand inappropriately close to one another, nor was it so private that they could be accused of hiding away if someone encountered them.

This tempered his delight in prodding at her composure. Evidently, he hadn’t poked hard enough, not if she could still be so aware of matters of propriety.

He hadn’t been entirely ineffective, however, for Lady Catherine pinned him with a glare.

“What is wrong with you?” she demanded.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you?—”

“Save it,” she advised him. Apparently, the little kitten had let her claws come out to play, then. How delightful. “You’ve been staring at me all evening like I’ve insulted your mother, your sister, your entire family line.”

“My mother passed when I was a child and I don’t have a sister,” he offered her.

As for his family line…

Her face undertook the most fascinating journey as her anger warred with her good breeding.

What would it look like, he wondered, if that anger won out?

What would it look like if she let herself truly feel the emotions that were clearly roiling beneath the surface—without stifling them?

He could only imagine her features in the most spectacular set of expressions.

Some small, perverse part of him desperately wanted to be the one to inspire those emotions. What would it feel like to be the man who could make the esteemed Lady Catherine Lightholder crack?

“I am sorry for your loss. I didn’t mean—it was just an expression.

You know what I meant.” It was an accusation lobbed at him with deadly accuracy.

“You’ve been glaring. And yes, everyone knows that, for whatever inane reason, the Duke of Seaton hates the Lightholders.

” She shook her head, visibly disgusted.

“Which is really rather absurd, if you think about it, since we haven’t done a single thing to you. Not one thing.”

Oh, well, that was rich.

Percy bared his teeth at her, more rictus grin than anything resembling a true smile.

“If you think that is true, Lady Catherine,” he said, his voice low and near trembling with rage, “then you know nothing about your family.”

Catherine had never in her life intentionally struck someone.

Even as a child, she had never been the kind to get into the kind of physical spats that were common among siblings.

Once, when she’d been six and Xander thirteen, she’d kicked him in the head while he tried to help her down from an ill-advised climb into a too-tall tree.

Xander had been completely fine. Catherine had been horrified and had wept until he’d done a handstand to show her that he was unaffected.

Staring at Percy Egelton, she wondered if now was the time to turn to a life of violence.

How dare he say he didn’t know her family?

If Catherine knew anything in this life, anything at all, it was her family. Catherine’s family was her life.

“And you do?” she snapped back. “You know about families? Because I seem to recall you very pointedly informing me that you didn’t have one of your own. So perhaps you ought to stick to matters that you understand, hm?”

The moment it left her lips, she knew she had gone rather too far. The man had told her his mother had died , after all. When he was a child .

But instead of looking as though he were offended—or worse, genuinely hurt—the Duke of Seaton lit up with a sort of fervor. Angry fervor, certainly, but fervor, nonetheless.

“Ah, so the truth comes out, does it, Lady Catherine? You pretend to be so prim and proper but you are just like the rest of them.”