“Shall we invite Leo?” Poppy asked. She and Harry both looked at Catherine.

She hitched her shoulders in an unconcerned shrug, although she suspected it didn’t deceive either of them.

“Would you have any objection?” Harry asked her.

“No, of course not. He is Poppy’s brother, and my former employer.”

“And possibly your fiancé,” Harry murmured.

Catherine looked at him quickly. “I haven’t accepted his proposal.”

“You are considering it, however … aren’t you?”

Her heart gave a few thick beats in her chest. “I’m not sure.”

“Cat, I don’t mean to harass you about this, but how long do you intend to wait before giving Ramsay an answer?”

“Not long.” Cat frowned into her tea. “If there’s any hope of retaining Ramsay House, Lord Ramsay will have to marry someone soon.”

A tap at the door heralded the entrance of Harry’s right-hand man, Jake Valentine. He brought Harry a stack of daily manager’s reports, as well as a handful of letters. One of these was addressed to Poppy, who received it with a warm smile.

“Thank you, Mr. Valentine.”

“Mrs. Rutledge,” he said with an answering smile, bowing before he left. He looked the tiniest bit smitten with Poppy, which Catherine couldn’t blame him for in the least.

Poppy broke the seal and read the letter, her fine brows inching higher and higher as she neared the conclusion. “My goodness, this is odd.”

Harry and Catherine both looked at her questioningly.

“It’s from Lady Fitzwalter, with whom I am acquainted through some charity work. She asks me in this letter, very earnestly, if I will prevail on my brother to call upon Miss Darvin and Countess Ramsay, who are in town. And she provides the address of the house they have let.”

“Not so very odd,” Catherine said pragmatically, although the news caused a stir of anxiety. “After all, a lady may never call on a man for any reason, and therefore it is certainly not unheard-of for one to prevail upon a mutual acquaintance to arrange the meeting.”

“Yes, but why does Miss Darvin wish to speak to Leo?”

“It might be about the copyhold clause,” Harry said, looking interested. “Perhaps she wishes to offer some manner of concession.”

“I’m sure she means to offer him something, ” Catherine said sullenly. She couldn’t help remembering how beautiful the dark-haired Miss Darvin was, and what a striking couple she and Leo had made as they had waltzed. “However, I doubt she intends to discuss legalities. It’s something personal. Otherwise she would allow the solicitors to deal with it.”

“Cam and Merripen were terrified by Miss Darvin,” Poppy told Harry with a grin. “Amelia wrote that her ballgown was trimmed with peacock feathers, which the Rom view as an omen of danger.”

“In some Hindu sects,” Harry said, “the peacock’s cries are associated with the rainy season, and therefore, fertility.”

“Danger or fertility?” Poppy asked dryly. “Well, it should be interesting to see which one Miss Darvin will evince.”

“I don’t want to,” Leo said immediately upon being informed of the necessity of calling on Miss Darvin.

“That doesn’t matter, you have no choice,” Poppy said, taking his coat as he entered the apartment.

Seeing Catherine seated in the parlor with Dodger in her lap, Leo came to her. “Good afternoon,” he said, reaching for Catherine’s hand and brushing a kiss on the backs of her fingers. The feel of his lips, so warm and soft against her skin, caused a quick indrawn breath.

“May I?” he asked, glancing at the place on the settee beside her.

“Yes, of course.”

After Poppy was seated in a chair by the hearth, Leo sat beside Catherine.

She smoothed Dodger’s fur repeatedly, but he didn’t move. A sleeping ferret was so limp and impossible to awaken that one might have reasonably assumed he was dead. One could pick him up, even shake him, and he would slumber on undisturbed.

Leo reached over to toy with the ferret’s tiny arms and legs, lifting them gently and letting them drop back into her lap. They both chuckled as Dodger remained unconscious.

Catherine detected an unusual fragrance about Leo, a scent of feed and hay and some pungent animal scent. She sniffed curiously. “You smell a bit like … horses … Did you go for a ride this morning?”

“It’s eau de zoo, ” Leo informed her, his eyes twinkling. “I went for a meeting with the secretary of the zoological society of London, and we toured the newest pavilion.”

“Whatever for?” Catherine asked.

“An old acquaintance of mine, with whom I apprenticed for Rowland Temple, has been commissioned at the Queen’s behest to design a gorilla enclosure at the zoo. They keep them in small cages, which is nothing short of cruelty. When my friend complained to me about the difficulty of designing a sufficiently large and safe enclosure without costing a fortune, I suggested that he dig a moat.”

“A moat?” Poppy echoed.

Leo smiled. “Gorillas won’t cross deep water.”

“How did you know that, my lord?” Catherine asked in amusement. “Beatrix?”

“Naturally.” He looked rueful. “And now after my suggestion, it seems I’ve been recruited as a consultant.”

“At least if your new clients complain,” Catherine told him, “you won’t understand what they’re saying.”

Leo smothered a laugh. “Obviously you haven’t seen what gorillas fling when they’re displeased.” His mouth twisted. “All the same, I’d rather spend my time with primates than pay a call to Miss Darvin and her mother.”

The play that evening was mawkish but highly entertaining. The story was about a handsome Russian peasant who was striving for an education, but on his wedding day to his true love, the poor girl was assaulted by the prince of the domain, and while she swooned, was fatally stung by an asp. Before death overtook her, she reached her home and told her fiancé what had happened, whereupon the handsome peasant swore revenge against the prince. These efforts led him to impersonate another nobleman in the royal court, where he happened to meet a woman who looked exactly like his dead love. As it turned out, the woman was an identical twin of the murdered peasant girl, and to further complicate matters, she was in love with the evil prince’s honorable young son.

Then it was intermission.

Unfortunately Catherine’s and Poppy’s enjoyment of the drama was hampered by low-voiced comments from both Harry and Leo, who insisted on pointing out that in her death throes, the asp-stung woman was clutching the wrong side of her body, and furthermore, a person dying of poison probably wouldn’t cross the state back and forth while uttering poetic declarations of love.

“You have no romance in your soul,” Poppy told Harry at intermission.

“Not in my soul, no,” he replied gravely. “However, I have a great deal of it in other locations.”

She laughed, reaching up to smooth an imaginary crease in his crisp white cravat. “Darling, would you please have someone bring champagne to our box? Catherine and I are thirsty.”

“I’ll send for it,” Leo said, standing and buttoning his coat. “I need to stretch my legs after an hour and a half in that absurdly small chair.” He looked down at Catherine. “Would you care for a promenade?”

She shook her head, feeling much safer in the confines of the theater box than out walking in the crowd. “Thank you, but I am comfortable here.”

As Leo pushed aside the curtains at the back of their box, it was evident that the hallways were exceedingly crowded. A pair of gentlemen and a lady came through the curtains and greeted the Rutledges warmly. Catherine tensed as Harry introduced her to Lord and Lady Despencer and Lady Despencer’s sister, Mrs. Lisle. She anticipated a cool reception from them, perhaps a dismissive remark, but instead they were polite and affable. Perhaps, she thought wryly, she should stop expecting the worst of people.

Poppy asked Lady Despencer about one of her children, who had been ill recently, and the woman listed all the medications and precautions it had taken for their ailing son to get well. Another cluster of people entered the box, waiting for a turn to speak to Harry, and Catherine moved to make room for them. She stood at the back of the box beside the curtain panels, waiting with forced patience as conversation flowed in currents in the hallway, in the box, large swells of noise rising from the audience below. The relentless clamor and movement irritated her. It was stuffy in the theater, the air warm from the mass of human bodies crowding everywhere. She hoped that intermission would conclude soon.

As she stood with her hands behind her back, she felt a hand reach through the box curtains and close around her wrist. A masculine body pressed behind hers. A smile touched her lips as she wondered what game Leo was playing.

But the voice that slithered into her ear wasn’t Leo’s. It was a voice from her nightmares.

“How pretty you look in your fine feathers, my pigeon.”

Chapter Twenty-five

Catherine stiffened, her hand clenching into a fist, but she couldn’t jerk her arm away from Lord Latimer’s grasp. He twisted her gloved wrist, forced it an inch or two higher, and continued to speak in a soft undertone.

Stunned and frozen, Catherine could hear nothing at first but the frantic velocity of her heartbeat. Time seemed to flicker, falter, and resume at a crawl. “…so many questions about you…” he was saying, his voice saturated with contempt. “Everyone wants to know more about Rutledge’s enigmatic sister … is she fair or ill-favored? Accomplished or vulgar? Endowed or destitute? Perhaps I should supply the answers. ‘She’s a beauty,’ I’ll tell my curious friends, ‘trained by an infamous procuress. She’s a fraud. And most of all she’s a whore.—”

Catherine was quiet, breathing through flared nostrils. She couldn’t make a scene during her first public outing as Harry’s sister. Any conflict with Lord Latimer would expose their past connection, and bring about her social ruin that much faster.

“Why don’t you further explain,” she whispered, “that you’re a filthy lecher who tried to rape a fifteen-year-old girl?”

“Tsk, tsk … You should know better, Catherine. People never blame a man for his passions, no matter how perverse. People blame the woman for arousing them. You won’t get far, asking for sympathy. The public despises victimized women, especially attractive ones.”

“Lord Ramsay will—”

“Ramsay will use you and discard you, which is what he does with all women. Surely you’re not so vain or stupid as to think you’re different from the others.”

“What do you want?” she asked through gritted teeth.

“I want what I paid for,” he whispered, “all those years ago. And I’ll have it. There’s no other future for you, my dear. You were never meant for a respectable life. By the time you’ve been run through the rumor mills, you’ll never have a chance of being received anywhere.”

The manacling fingers fell away, and her tormentor disappeared.

Stricken, Catherine stumbled forward to her chair and sat heavily, trying to compose herself. She stared straight ahead, seeing nothing, while the clamor of the theater pressed around her from all sides. She tried to examine her fear objectively, to put a barrier around it. It wasn’t that she actually feared Latimer. She loathed him, but he was certainly not the threat to her now that he once had been. She now had sufficient wealth to live as she pleased. She had Harry and Poppy, and the Hathaways.

But Latimer had identified her legitimate worries with cruel accuracy. One could fight a man, but not a rumor. One could lie about the past, but the truth would eventually surface. One could promise fidelity and commitment, but such promises were often broken.

She felt overwhelmed with melancholy. She felt … stained.

Poppy sat next to her, smiling. “Nearly time for the second act,” she said. “Do you think the peasant will gain revenge against the prince?”

“Oh, undoubtedly,” Catherine replied, trying to sound light, but her voice was forced.

Poppy’s smile faded, and she looked at her closely. “Do you feel well, dear? You look pale. Did something happen?”

Before Catherine replied, Leo shouldered his way back into the box, accompanied by a steward bearing a tray of champagne. A little bell rang from the orchestra box, signaling that the intermission would soon conclude. To Catherine’s relief, the visitors began to drift out of the box, and the throng in the hallway receded.

“Here we are,” Leo said, handing champagne to Poppy and Catherine. “You may want to drink it quickly.”

“Why?” Catherine asked, forcing a smile.

“The champagne goes flat much faster in these coupe glasses.”

Catherine drained her champagne with unladylike haste, closing her eyes and swallowing against the sparkling burn in her throat.

“I didn’t mean that quickly,” Leo said, viewing her with a faint, concerned smile.

The lights began to dim, and the audience settled.

Catherine glanced at the silver stand where the bottle of chilled champagne had been placed, a white napkin tied neatly at its neck. “May I have another?” she whispered.

“No, you’ll get tipsy if you have it so soon.” Leo took the empty glass from her, set it aside, and took her gloved hand in his. “Tell me,” he said gently. “What are you thinking about?”

“Later,” she whispered back, easing her hand from his. “Please.” She didn’t want the evening to be ruined for everyone, nor did she want to take the chance that Leo might seek out Latimer in the theater and confront him. There was nothing to be gained by saying anything at the moment.

The theater darkened and the play resumed, although the story’s melodramatic charms couldn’t pull Catherine out of her frozen misery. She watched the stage with a fixed gaze, hearing the actors’ dialogue as if it were a foreign language. And all the while her mind kept trying to find a solution to her internal dilemma.

It didn’t seem to matter that she already knew the answers. It had never been her fault, the situation she had once been put in. The blame was Latimer’s, and Althea’s, and her grandmother’s. Catherine could reassure herself of that for the rest of her life, and yet the feelings of guilt, pain, confusion, were still there. How could she rid herself of them? What could possibly free her?