Page 22 of Kathryn

“I’d hoped the stunt you pulled at Christmas five years ago was enough to cure you of your irresponsible behavior.”

Katie bristled. “I know locking Andrew and Stacia up in the priest hole for a few days at Wych House was reckless, but you have to admit their happy marriage is worth it.”

“The fortunate outcome does not justify you playing with people’s lives, Katie. The fact is that you took away their choices.”

Katie gritted her teeth. How could a person argue with that logic?

“You’ve had five Seasons and every year you have become less content and more unpleasant to be around.”

Katie gasped and then her lungs seemed to freeze. Hy thought she was unpleasant?

Don’t you think you are unpleasant?

Mortification rolled over her, as heavy and crushing as the wheel of a mailcoach. “If—if you think I am so unpleasant then why did you not send me away?” Katie immediately wished she could rescind the angry retort.

“Send you where? You think I am the only one who thinks you have become unmanageable? The others do not want to take you.”

Pain and shock robbed Katie of speech.

“You have become the sort of petulant, self-indulgent person you would have ridiculed and avoided when we lived at Queen’s Bower. You do not need to work and pinch pennies. You do not need to worry about losing the roof over your head. And you do not need to marry a wealthy stranger to save your family. You are breathtakingly beautiful, generously dowered, and have the world at your feet and yet you choose to fritter away your time by engaging in cruel, reckless pranks.”

Katie could hear her own breathing—more like wheezing—as a tear slid down her cheek. She dashed it away with the back of her hand, but more followed, until her face was streaked with them.

Hy leaned across the desk, a folded white square of linen resting on her palm, the corner embroidered with Hy’s initials woven into a duchess’s coronet. The handkerchiefs had been gifts from Katie the first year her sister was married.

Back before you were too bitter and miserable to pick up a needle.

Katie took the handkerchief with shaking fingers and dried her cheeks, unable to contrive a response to Hy’s damning indictment because what could she say?

But her sister was not finished.

“The Duke of Dulverton has been humiliated and shamed for no reason other than your selfish whim. He has shied away from society for decades, and now—the first time he’s made an appearance at a ton event in years—you have made him a figure of ridicule and an object for scandalmongers. You have robbed him of his dignity and privacy. And you have taken away his choices.”

Katie’s tears fell faster, and it was all she could do not to run from the room to escape her sister’s quiet words, which fell like the lash of a whip. “Everyone at that ball—everyone in London—knows he was merely a victim. Dulverton does not need to offer for me.”

“You know that is not true. The game might have been your idea, but he will be equally—if not more—to blame.”

Katie wanted to argue, but she knew that was the truth.

“You are my sister and I love you, Katie. But I do not respect you and that pains me. There is still time to correct your self-destructive course, but whether you do so is entirely up to you.”

“You are talking about me marrying Dulverton,” she said dully.

“Neither Chatham nor I will force you to accept Dulverton’s offer.”

“But that is what you think I should do, isn’t it?” Katie insisted, the blasted tears still falling. “You think I should pay penance for my—admittedly—cruel action for the rest of my life by marrying the man. And what about him, Hy? Should he be forced to suffer by marrying me?”

“I will not tell you what to do or say; you must find that answer within yourself. But I will say that it is time you thought not just about what you want, but what those around you deserve.” And then her quiet sister—who’d spoken more in the last ten minutes than the prior ten years—rose from her chair and strode from library, looking every inch the duchess she was, regardless of her plain morning gown.

Katie stared unseeingly at the elegant room around her, the chilling heaviness in her chest spreading until she was suffused with bleakness. Everything Hy said was true; Katie was unpleasant. She did not even like herself; why had she been so shocked to discover that her family no longer wanted to be around her?

But that didn’t make the knowledge any less painful. She felt as if her sister had driven a knife into her chest, but the gaping wound poured anguish rather than blood.

Katie had wanted to give Hy an answer—something that might explain why she had been so rootless, miserable, and detached for so long—but the thought of where that conversation would lead was even more painful than her sister’s condemnation.

Besides, it didn’t matter why she’d thought up that stupid game. It only mattered that she had acted on her impulse and—yes—had taken the choices from three other people. Angus and Letty would have to marry if either of them wanted to show their face again.

And so would Dulverton.