Page 112 of Go, Rogue

Although… gloomy?

His mind rebels at the idea of Catherine as gloomy. She is giddiness and sunshine and joy.

But she had been gloomy at the Yule Ball. She’d been nothing but gloom that night, like a ghost instead of the flesh-and-blood woman he loves.

And the coincidence of another Catherine Hope being aboard is improbable.

“May I ask your room number, Mrs. Haverfield?”

“You certainly may not,” she says.”

“Number 413,” the captain says behind him. “Your Grace.”

“Are you decent, lass?” McGann calls through the closed door once he locates the cabin. He raps on it heavily several times and waits, but she doesn’t open it.

“Catherine?” he calls. “You are in there, are you not?”

No answer.

“Menace!” He knows he’s yelling, but he doesn’t care. “I will break the bloody thing down if I have to!”

Catherine swings the door open and glares at him. “What are you doing here?”

Bloody fucking hell in a handbasket, does this woman get under his skin.

She makes him lose his temper and yell in empty hallways and threaten to break down doors. But she also makes his heart swell at the sight of her face, breaking the vice that’s been clamping it down since the Yule Ball.

“Can I come inside?” he asks. “Or do you want to have this conversation here in the passageway?”

She steps back and lets him in the berth. “You’ll need to have a care,” she says. “Now that you’re the duke.”

“A care for what?” he asks as he limps his way in, leaning heavily on his cane.

“For your reputation, Your Grace.”

He snorts, though one look at her face tells him she means it. “Stuff that nonsense, Catherine.”

“It’s not nonsense. Andrew.”

That’s better than your grace, at least.

“It is, lass, and you know it. Please tell me that isn’t why you ran away from me. Hell, Menace, you didn’t even tell me where you were going!”

She opens her mouth, but he goes right on speaking.

“And do not even for a moment say to me that you didn’t think I’d miss you. Because that’s a damnable lie and we both know it.”

“I haven’t lied to you.”

He takes a halting step toward her. “Tell me why you ran.”

“Andrew,” she says and then shakes her head. “You’re not just Andrew. You can’t be and you must know that. You’re a duke now. You have responsibilities and a dream. You’ve a chance now to be who you were always meant to be and I will not be the thousand-pound anchor around your neck. Don’t ask it of me.”

He only scoffs. “You ran because of your reputation? Or Elphame help me, Menace, because of mine? I’m not a bloody debutante.”

“Do not mock me. And do not insult me. You must be nothing less than sterling now and you know it.”

“I don’t know a goddamned thing except that you made this decision without consulting me. Did you not think to ask what I might want?”