Married By Morning (The Hathaways #4)(47)

“Thank you,” Catherine mumbled, mopping her sore eyes with the square of pressed cotton, wiping her nose. She stood with childlike indecision, the handkerchief balled in her fingers.

“Come here.” Leo sat in the large hearthside chair and drew her down with him.

“Oh, I can’t—” she began, but he hushed her and gathered her on his lap. The mounds of her skirts spilled heavily over them both. She rested her head on his shoulder, the agitated workings of her lungs gradually matching the measured rhythm of his. His hand played slowly in her hair. Once she would have shrunk away from a man’s touch, no matter how innocuous. But in this room, removed from the rest of the world, it seemed neither of them were quite themselves.

“You shouldn’t have followed me,” she finally brought herself to say.

“The entire family wanted to come,” Leo said. “It seems the Hathaways can’t do without your civilizing influence. So I’ve been charged with bringing you back.”

That nearly started her crying again. “I can’t go back.”

“Why not?”

“You already know. Lord Latimer must have told you about me.”

“He told me a little.” The backs of his fingers stroked the side of her neck. “Your grandmother was the madam, wasn’t she?” His tone was quiet and matter-of-fact, as if having a grandmother who owned a house of prostitution was a perfectly ordinary circumstance.

Catherine nodded, swallowing miserably. “I went to live with my grandmother and Aunt Althea when Mother took ill. At first I didn’t understand what the family business was, but after a while I realized what working for my grandmother meant. Althea had finally reached the age when she was no longer as popular among the customers. And then I turned fifteen, and it was supposed to be my turn. Althea said that I was lucky, because she’d had to start when she was twelve. I asked if I could be a teacher or a seamstress, something like that. But she and my grandmother said I’d never make enough money to repay what had been spent on me. Working for them was the only profitable thing I could do. I tried to think of somewhere to go, some way to survive by myself. But there was no position I could get without recommendations. Except for a factory job, which would have been dangerous and the wages would have been too low to pay for a room anywhere. I begged my grandmother to let me go to my father, because I knew he would never have left me there, had he known of their plans. But she said—” Catherine stopped, her hands fisting in his shirt.

Leo disentangled her fingers and meshed his own with them, until their hands were caught together like the clasp of a bracelet. “What did she say, love?”

“That he already knew, and approved, and he would receive a percentage of the money I earned. I didn’t want to believe it.” She let out a broken sigh. “But he had to have known, didn’t he?”

Leo was silent, his thumb softly rubbing into the cup of her palm. The question needed no answer.

Catherine set her jaw against a quiver of grief, and resumed. “Althea brought gentlemen to meet me one at a time, and she told me to be charming. She said that of all of them, Lord Latimer had made the highest offer.” She made a face against his shirt. “He was the one I liked least of all. He kept winking and telling me there were naughty surprises in store for me.”

Leo uttered a few choice words beneath his breath. At her uncertain pause, he ran his hand along her spine. “Go on.”

“But Althea told me what to expect, because she thought I would fare much better if I knew. And the acts she described, the things I was supposed to…”

His hand went still on her back. “Were you required to put any of it in practice?”

She shook her head. “No, but it all sounded dreadful.”

A note of sympathetic amusement warmed his voice. “Of course it did, to a fifteen-year-old girl.”

Lifting her head, Catherine looked into his face. He was too handsome for his own good, and for hers as well. Although she wasn’t wearing her spectacles, she could see every breathtaking detail of him … the dark grain of shaved whiskers, the laugh lines at the outer corners of his eyes, little pale whisks against the rosewood color of his skin. And most of all the variegated blue of his eyes, light and dark, sunlight and shadow.

Leo waited patiently, holding her as if there were nothing else in the world he would have preferred doing. “How did you get away?”

“I went to my grandmother’s desk one morning,” Catherine said, “when the household was still asleep. I was trying to find money. I planned to run away and find lodging and a decent position somewhere. There wasn’t a single shilling. But in one of the nooks in the desk, I found a letter, addressed to me. I’d never seen it before.”

“From Rutledge,” Leo said rather than asked.

Catherine nodded. “A brother I’d never known existed. Harry had written that if I were ever in need, I should send word to his address. I dashed off a letter to let him know the trouble I was in, and I gave it to William to deliver—”

“Who is William?”

“A little boy who worked there … he carried things up and down the stairs, cleaned shoes, went on errands, whatever he was told to do. I think he was the child of one of the prostitutes. A very sweet boy. He delivered the note to Harry. I hope Althea never found out. If she did, I fear for what happened to him.” She shook her head and sighed. “The next day I was sent to Lord Latimer’s house. But Harry came just in time.” She paused reflectively. “He frightened me only a little less than Lord Latimer. Harry was extremely angry. At the time I thought it was directed at me, but now I think it was the situation.”