Married By Morning (The Hathaways #4)(87)

“May I have some water?” she asked hoarsely.

“William, give our guest some water.”

He complied clumsily, going to fill a glass, standing over Catherine. Holding the cup to her lips, he watched as she sipped carefully. The water was instantly absorbed into the parched tissue of her lips, inner cheeks, throat. It carried a dusty, brackish taint, or perhaps that was just the taste of her mouth.

William retreated, and Catherine waited while her aunt puffed thoughtfully on the hookah.

“Mother never forgave you,” Althea said, “for running away as you did. Lord Latimer hounded us for years, demanding the return of his money … or you. But you don’t care about what trouble you caused. You never gave a thought to what you owed.”

Catherine fought to keep her head steady, when it kept lolling to the side. “I didn’t owe you my body.”

“You thought you were too good for that. You wanted to avoid my downfall. You wanted a choice.” Althea paused, as if waiting for confirmation. When none was forthcoming, she continued with soft vehemence. “But why should you have one when I didn’t? My own mother came to my bedroom one night. She said she’d brought a nice gentleman to help tuck me in. But first he was going to show me some new games. After that night, there was no innocent part of me left. I was twelve.”

Another long inhalation through the hookah, another dizzying puff of smoke. There was no way for Catherine to avoid breathing in more. The room seemed to sway gently, as Catherine had imagined the deck of a ship would rock at sea. She floated on the waves, buoyant, listening to Althea’s seething. And she felt a stirring of sympathy, but like the rest of her emotions, it remained deep under the surface, drowning.

“I thought of running away,” Althea said. “I asked my brother—your father—to help me. He lived with us then, coming and going as he pleased. Using the whores for free any time he wanted, and they didn’t dare complain to Mother. ‘I need just a little money,’ I told him. ‘I’ll go far away to the country.’ But he went to Mother and told her what I’d asked. I wasn’t let out of the house for months afterward.”

From what little Catherine remembered of her father, a brusque and pitiless individual, this story was easy to believe. But she found herself asking distantly, “Why didn’t he help you?”

“My brother liked the situation as it was—he had the best of everything without lifting a finger. Mother gave him whatever he wanted. And the selfish pig didn’t mind sacrificing me to keep himself comfortable. He was a man, you see.” She paused. “So I became a whore. And for years I prayed for rescue. But God doesn’t hear the prayers of women. He cares only for those He made in His own image.”

Befuddled and squinting, Catherine labored to keep her thoughts in order. “Aunt,” she said carefully, “why did you bring me here? If that was done to you … why must it be done to me?”

“Why should you escape when I couldn’t? I want you to become me. Just as I became Mother.”

Yes … this was one of Catherine’s fears, the worst one. That if she were put in the wrong situation, the wickedness in her own nature would take over all the rest.

Except … it wouldn’t.

Catherine’s foggy brain seized on the idea and turned it over, examining it. The past was not the future. “I’m not like you,” she said slowly. “Won’t ever be. I grieve for what was done to you, Aunt. But I didn’t make the same choice.”

“I have a choice for you now.”

Despite Catherine’s opiated detachment, Althea’s caressing tone made her flesh creep.

“You will either make good on that long-ago arrangement with Lord Latimer,” Althea continued, “or you will service customers in the brothel, as I did. Which shall it be?”

Catherine refused to choose. “Doesn’t matter what you do,” she said, drugged but intractable. “Nothing will change who I am.”

“And who are you?” Althea’s voice dripped with contempt. “A decent woman? Too good for the likes of this place?”

Catherine’s head became too heavy for her to hold up any longer. She lowered herself to the settee, resting her head on the arm. “A woman who is loved.”

It was the worst, most hurtful answer she could have given Althea. And it was the truth.

Unable to open her eyes, Catherine was aware of a bustling movement nearby, of Althea’s tentaclelike grip on her face, of the leather hose from the hookah shoved between her lips. Her nose was pinched shut, and she breathed in helplessly. A flood of cool, pungent smoke entered her lungs. She coughed, and was forced to draw it in again, and then she wilted into a placid and near-insensible heap.

“Take her upstairs, William,” Althea said. “To her old bedroom. Later we’ll move her to the brothel.”

“Yes, ma’am.” William gathered Catherine up carefully. “Ma’am … may I undo her wrists?”

Althea shrugged. “She certainly won’t go anywhere under her own power.”

William carried Catherine upstairs, settled her on the small, musty bed of her old room, and untied her hands. He arranged her arms with her hands touching at her middle, in the position of a body in a casket. “Sorry, miss,” he murmured, looking into her half-open, unseeing eyes. “She’s all I ’ave. I ’as to do what she says.”