Page 82 of Go, Rogue

Truly. You have no idea how much.

“Do tell me the details, my dear. Uncle will want to know everything when he returns. Oh, and you must stay through Yule. We are hosting a Christmas Ball next week! It will be the event of the year here in Spanish Town, and you’ll have an opportunity to meet all of the prominent families. Perhaps one will hire you on and you will stay here with us in Jamaica!”

“A Christmas Ball!” Catherine says, trying to imbue her voice with as much enthusiasm as she can manage.

“Indeed. It’s a tradition. And I heard a rumor that the Duke of Barclay may be returning for it. Won’t that be something? The man hasn’t been back to the island in an age. And to think, he’ll return now just for our little party. What a coup that will be.”

The Duke of Barclay. Andrew’s brother. Andrew’s secret brother.

She leans forward, senses alert. Could it be only a coincidence that Barclay has returned here, now, to the island where McGann has been taken as a captive? That hardly seems possible.

“Tell me more about him,” she says, “the duke.”

Mrs. Masters flashes her a patronizing smile. “Now, don’t get your hopes up, dear. He is a duke, after all.”

Far out of bounds for a common governess is what she means. And at this moment, Catherine thinks, that’s truer than it’s ever been before in her life. A duke wouldn’t come within a nautical mile of the reputation that Lady Catherine West has left in her wake.

“And,” Mrs. Masters continues, “you were going to tell me all about your sea voyage.”

Catherine smiles. The less she speaks about the fictitious sea voyage, the better for everyone.

“Oh,” she says, shifting the conversation back to Barclay, “I’ve no hopes at all for the duke. Not romantically, of course. It is only my curiosity that made me ask. I’ve never met a duke before.”

“Well,” Mrs. Masters says, seeming either not to notice or not to mind that Catherine didn’t answer her question. “I’ve never met the man myself, either. I’ve only just arrived here. But I hear he’s quite ducal, if you know what I mean. A gentleman who knows what he’s about. We all hope he’ll return to live here one day, as his father did. Before—well—that’s old gossip. You wouldn’t want to hear it.”

Catherine demurely takes a sip of her tea. “Oh, but I would,” she says, wondering how thickly she should lay it on. A little more thickly, perhaps, if this woman is anything like the doyennes of the ton, for whom a dose of flattery is always the correct medicine. “Old gossip is quite the best kind, is it not? And I’m certain you tell a marvelous story. Do go on. Please.”

“Well,” Mrs. Masters says, “the former duke, may he rest in peace, came to Jamaica because he hoped the air would be helpful to his first wife. She was ill at the time, and the duke brought her here all the way from Scotland. With their young daughter, no less.”

Catherine nods her head as Mrs. Masters speaks. The young daughter, she knows, is Esmee, McGann’s half-sister. And her flattery seems to be working on Mrs. Masters quite well. The lessons learned on the marriage mart really are more applicable than she’s ever imagined.

“And then what happened?” she asks, making sure her eyes are as round and wide as she can make them.

“The rumor is,” and here the woman leans forward and lowers her voice, a look of obvious delight in her eyes, “that he took up with his wife’s nurse. Before the duchess was even properly laid in the ground.”

“You don’t say.” Catherine puts her hand to her chest in fake indignation. “With that poor daughter motherless?”

“Indeed. And then nature took its course, as it will. Apparently, the duke was quite virile, if you know what I mean, and soon enough, the nurse was increasing too.”

“My stars!” Catherine gasps, even though she doesn’t want to hear any more because she knows they’re leading up to Andrew and something like nausea has begun to work its way through her body.

She doesn’t want to gossip about him. She doesn’t like the light that’s glowing in Mrs. Masters’s eyes at the telling of this story, even though she knows full well she’s been the one to urge the woman on.

“Oh, dear.” Mrs. Masters’s pupils have grown wide. “That’s not even the worst of it. The worst of it is that the nurse was a Negro. And the duke took the child as his own and departed back for Scotland with him and the little girl both.”

“He acknowledged the boy?” she asks, while her mind is processing the thrill it seems to give her hostess to tell Andrew’s story.

The ton, she knows from her own experience, would be a hundred times more vicious in their telling. No wonder he keeps his relation to Barclay a secret. Otherwise, he’d be at the arse-end of these kinds of stories his entire life. He’d never be able to walk into a room without sidelong glances and sneers and too-loud whispers about him.

She closes her eyes and breathes in deeply. She wants to cast up her accounts and palm-strike the woman in the face at the same time, but she does neither. Of course she does neither.

“I don’t know what happened when Barclay returned to England,” Mrs. Masters goes on. “Most here were shocked he even took the child with him at all. The next duchess surely had words with him. And given that she produced the heir, well—” She shrugs, as if that says it all.

Everything for the heir, Catherine thinks. All for a title. Your father, your brother. My father, too. And neither of our mothers able to stop them.

She shakes her head at the absurdity of it all. And it seems all the more absurd, all the more vulgar, that her countrymen not only let that system rule their lives but that they’ve gone so far as to reproduce it here. An entire ocean away!

“And the current duke is here now,” she asks. “In Jamaica?”