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‘As it is, sir, my father is the one to suffer. And me, too, I expect.’ Immediately, she wished she had not allowed him to push her into a snappy retort, for now she would be asked to explain what she meant by that.
‘You, Miss Chester? How does the debt affect you?’
‘Oh, indirectly,’ she waffled. ‘Nothing that need be spoken of. Indeed, I should not have said as much. Please, forget it.’ She began to move away, but Sir Chase’s long stride took him ahead of her and she was stopped by his arm resting on the next golden ball. Frowning, she scowled at the perfect white folds of his neckcloth, aware that this time she had backed herself into a corner.
‘I am intrigued,’ he said, looking down at her with those half-closed eyes that held more challenge than persuasion. ‘What is it about this business, exactly, that affects you personally? Are we talking of dowries?’
Her eyes blazed darkly in the shadowy recess, a small movement of her body telling him how she chafed at being held to account, unable to avoid a confrontation as she had before. ‘That is something I cannot discuss with you, sir. Indeed, it is a subject that will never be discussed with you, thank heaven.’
‘Ah, so we are talking of dowries, and of yours being lessened quite considerably if your father decides to use it to pay me what he owes. Well, that’s too bad, Miss Chester. How he chooses to pay—’
‘He doesn’t have a choice!’ she snarled. ‘Now let me pass, if you please. This conversation is most indelicate.’
‘Come on, woman!’ he scoffed. ‘Don’t tell me your delicate sensibilities are more important than your father’s so-called distress. I’ll not believe you can be so missish, after what I’ve seen. Talk about the problem, for pity’s sake.’
‘I cannot, Sir Chase. You are a stranger to me.’
‘I am the one to whom the money is owed,’ he said, leaning his head towards her, ‘so if you can’t discuss it with me, who can you discuss it with? Do you have need of your dowry in the near future?’
‘No. Not in the near or the distant future,’ she whispered. ‘There, now, you have your answer. Let me pass.’
He did not pretend to misunderstand her, nor did he immediately respond, but stood looking at her while the soft sounds of munching and the jingle of chains passed them by without recognition. Then he broke the silence. ‘Why not?’ he said, quietly.
With a noticeable effort to keep her voice level, she replied. ‘If my father and stepmother find it difficult to understand my reasons, Sir Chase, I can hardly expect you to do any better.’
‘Do you understand them?’ he whispered.
The staggering intake of her breath told him that he had found the weakness in her defence, and that she had no ready answer except a sob that wavered behind one hand. ‘Oh!’ she gasped.
The barrier of his arm dropped as she bounded away, half-walking, half-running out of the stable yard and up the steps leading to the garden door. It closed with a bang behind her. In the stable, Sir Chase leaned against one of the posts, his hand smoothing the dapple-grey coat beside him. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that makes an interesting change from the usual run of things, my beauty. How long have we got? Five months, is it?’
Caterina stood with her back pressed against the door in the high wall until the beating of her heart slowed to a more comfortable pace and her breathing eased. Cursing herself for allowing the dreadful man to catch her off guard so soon, she listened to the sounds from the stable yard, a deep voice, the clatter of hooves and Joseph’s whistle as he went on with his polishing. Angrily, she had to admit that Sir Chase was more perceptive than a stranger had any business to be, for he had been right to ask if she understood her own reasons when they were so contradictory, so fatalistic and uncompromising.
She was not by nature as pessimistic as her father had become, nor was she anything like her two siblings, who cantered through life certain that the future would smooth itself out reasonably enough if they didn’t think too deeply about it. But Caterina did think deeply and with passion about what life was offering and whether she had the right to satisfy her own needs or put them aside in order to please her parents. In recent years, the two viewpoints had become more incompatible, the conflict over her future creating more of a barrier than any of them could have foreseen when her father married Hannah Elwick.
Caterina and Hannah had been on friendly terms well before her father first came down to Richmond from Derbyshire. With an age difference of only six years between the two women and only a few miles across the Great Park to separate them, Caterina had been pleased when the gentle Hannah had accepted Stephen Chester’s offer of marriage, seeing years of friendship ahead for herself and Sara. None of them, not even Hannah herself, had expected such an explosion of productiveness and the ensuing need to rearrange the town house on Paradise Road into nurseries and dayrooms, extra bedrooms and a study for the head of the family. No longer was there a music room or a work-room-cum-library or anywhere for a guest to sleep. No longer did she have a room of her own.
Caterina did not dislike the children. Far from it; she was happy that Hannah’s parenting skills had been employed so promptly and that Mr Chester had the companionship he had craved for years. What she had found increasingly hard to bear was the way that Hannah’s mothering had engulfed the smooth workings of the whole household from morning till night and beyond, for Hannah was not one to hand over her duties completely, as some did. Nurses dealt with the peripheral chores, but Hannah’s constant rota of breast-feeding seemed to take over their lives and, although she invited the interest of Caterina and Sara on the basis that it was excellent grounding for them, neither was ready for maternalism on that scale.
Sara would rather have been visiting friends and learning her dance steps, and Caterina would rather have been practising her singing. Now she practised at Sheen Court in Aunt Amelie’s music room where she and her teacher could work in an atmosphere of understanding. Aunt Amelie herself had given birth to three delightful children, but Sheen Court was substantially larger than Number 18 Paradise Road, and there Caterina could escape the stifling environment she had grown to dislike.
She had not tried to dissuade Harry from spending his month’s holiday in London, and she saw now that, as the eldest, she was partly responsible for what had happened. She had been thinking more of her own and her sister’s comfort instead of encouraging him to sample the delights of Richmond. The truth remained, however, that Hannah’s brand of domesticity had not sent Caterina hurtling into the arms of the first man to offer for her. If anything, it had the opposite effect by creating a scene of such discomfort, Hannah looking ill, distressed and tired, her father short of sleep and temper, that might well be Caterina’s lot within a year or two.
The Earl of Loddon had made it clear, after their engagement had been announced, that his future wife would live in Cornwall with his aged mother while he spent his time in the city. Viscount Hadstoke had also damned himself after his first attempt at a kiss, for the idea of spending her nights in bed with that was worse than life in her incommodious home. Title or not, she could not do it.
It had been of little use to explain to her parents about needing to feel love when they both insisted that such emotions grew after marriage, not before. Caterina knew otherwise, though unfortunately the examples she quoted were the exception rather than the rule and therefore carried little weight. Aunt Amelie and her husband, Lord Nicholas Elyot, had been lovers before their marriage, and Nick’s brother Seton, Lord Rayne, had been the object of Caterina’s infatuation six years ago. She had recovered, after a fashion, but six years was barely long enough for her to forget the elation and the anguish of that time, the wanting and the madness. And the foolishness. She had discovered what she thought were the depths of her ability to love, and she wanted it again. Anything else would be second-best, a compromise, and that would be far worse than no marriage at all.
Nevertheless, as she leaned against the garden door, she wondered why her heart was beating to an old familiar rhythm, and why that man’s image was impressing itself so forcefully upon her mind. She saw his thickly waving black hair, his wicked roving eyes, the impressively wide shoulders and narrow hips. No detail had escaped her, though she had not wanted to be seen observing. How ironic that a man of his repute, a man so dangerous to know, should have been the only man to ask her about her reasons for not wanting to marry. After such a brief acquaintance, what could it possibly matter to him?
Stephen Chester, Caterina’s father, was not entirely without a conscience, though it might have appeared that way during the wager with his daughter’s future that morning. But it was rarely that a man was brought bad news and a way of righting it in the same visit, and Stephen had wrestled with the problem of his eldest daughter for years now, falling deeper into despondency. Surely he could be forgiven for snatching at this solution with so little soul-searching and so few qualms. And at no cost, either.
It was true he had aimed high, at first perhaps too high. Dukes, earls, viscounts and lords had all shown an interest, to Caterina’s amusement and very little cooperation. They had retired, licking their wounds, and he had begun to wonder whether it was her bright sparkling beauty they wanted or her dowry which, if not exactly prodigious, might have lured some of the more threadbare titles. But this man, Sir Chase Boston, had been less interested in the dowry than the idea of a challenge. It was strange, Stephen thought, that there were men who did not mind losing twenty thousand guineas.
Conscience did smite Mr Chester, but not very hard and not where it hurt. He knew Sir Chase to be a notorious roué, a womaniser, a gambler, a hard-living hardplaying gallant: one could hardly ignore any of that. But he also had a title, of sorts, and wealth, and had offered to care for Caterina correctly, hitting the nail on the head when he’d suggested that a conventional husband might not be to her taste.
It was hard to know, these days, what would be to her taste, but since she could not bring herself to marry an upright run-of-the-mill duke, then perhaps she might be won over by an extrovert baronet.
Fingering the pattern on the crystal decanter, he sighed deeply. As for not putting any pressure on his wilful daughter to do her duty, well, Caterina knew all about the debt, and if she could be made to regard her future with Sir Chase as a duty to her family, then she might be persuaded to enter into the spirit of the affair with more seriousness than she had previously shown. Compared to an unhealthy IOU hanging over one’s head, what was a little fatherly pressure?
Holding up the decanter by its neck, he tilted it this way and that against the light, wishing that Hannah had not, for once, watered his brandy down. No wonder Sir Chase had not been impressed. Nevertheless, he poured himself another tumblerful and carried it over to his magnificent burr-walnut desk, bought only recently at great expense.
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