Page 1 of Caught By the Ruthless Duke
Chapter One
“You dare call this clean?” her aunt scoffed.
Cressida’s fingers tightened around the brass candlestick she’d been polishing for the past hour. The metal bit into her palm, a sharp reminder that her life had been reduced to such indignities.
Aunt Agatha stood in the doorway of the drawing room, her thin lips pressed into a bloodless line. She swept across the floor with the practiced severity of a headmistress inspecting a particularly disappointing pupil, her black bombazine skirts whispering accusations with each step.
“I—” Cressida began.
“Silence.” Her aunt snatched the candlestick from her hands, holding it up to the weak afternoon light filtering through the windows. “Do you see? Here, and here. Tarnish remains. Twoyears under my roof, girl, and you’ve learned nothing of proper industry.”
Two years.
Twenty-four months of scrubbing floors and mending petticoats. Seven hundred and thirty days of being reminded that she had failed at the only task that mattered for a woman of her station: securing a husband.
“I shall do it again, Aunt Agatha.” Cressida kept her voice measured, though frustration burned in her chest. “If you would permit me?—”
“Permityou?” Her aunt’s laugh was brittle as winter ice. “You speak as though you have earned the right to make requests.” She set the candlestick down with a decisive click. “Your parents sent you here to learn humility, Cressida, and to understand the consequences of your willful nature. A bluestocking. A woman who corrects gentlemen at dinner. Is it any wonder you remained unwed Season after Season?”
The familiar shame tried to claw its way up Cressida’s throat, but she swallowed it down.
She had debated philosophy because she found it stimulating. She had read widely because her mind craved knowledge as surely as her body required food. And yes, perhaps she had been too forthright, too honest, too much herself, but she did not think she deserved to be disparaged for it.
“I was merely being truthful?—”
“Truthful, you say?” Her aunt’s eyes narrowed. “Pride, girl. That is what you suffer from. Sheer, selfish pride. And if you think me fool enough not to see it, I’ll have you think again.” Her expression changed, bright with the flat, indifferent light of a July afternoon. “You’ll have no kindling for your room tonight. Perhaps discomfort will teach you what words cannot.”
Cressida’s gaze flicked to the empty grate. The attic where she slept was already cold and close, the kind of damp that seeped into one’s bones regardless of the season, but she lifted her chin.
“As you wish, Aunt Agatha,” she replied.
She would not fold before this woman.
“And you’ll take your evening meal in the kitchen. With the other servants.” Her aunt said this with some modicum of relish.
Cressida barely managed to keep her expression civil. “I understand,” she said, even though she ached to fire off a retort.
She’d learned, in two years of living with her aunt, that the woman enjoyed a quarrel. While Cressida was not above standing up for herself, she did not quite fancy another row with the termagant.
Her aunt studied her for a long moment, no doubt searching for cracks in her composure. Finding none, she turned toward the door.
“Finish the silver before supper. All of it. And Cressida?” She paused, not bothering to look back. “Your parents were right to send you away. You were an embarrassment to them in London. Do not compound their shame by entertaining notions of returning.”
The door closed with a soft click that somehow felt more damning than a slam.
Cressida released a breath, but the tightness in her chest did not abate, no matter that the source of her agitation was no longer in her vicinity.
She supposed she’d gotten used to existing in this state of constant upset, even if it was certainly not a healthy way to exist. Her parents had sent her here to “learn propriety,” but they ought to be grateful for her stubborn nature. Otherwise, she would have been bundled off to a madhouse rather than back to them.
Her hands trembled slightly as she retrieved the candlestick, but she forced them steady. She would not weep. She had learned, if nothing else, that tears accomplished nothing in this house.
She worked methodically through the remaining silver, her thoughts drifting—as they so often did—to Harriet, her dearest friend. The only person in London who had truly understoodher, who had laughed at her wit rather than been scandalized by it.
They had made a pact once, curled up together in Harriet’s bedchamber after her first Season: they would remain friends regardless of what became of them, be it in marriage, spinsterhood, or scandal. Nothing would sever their bond.
How long had it been since she’d heard from Harriet? Months, certainly. Her aunt confiscated any correspondence that arrived, claiming it would only encourage her “unladylike tendencies.”
The ache of that isolation settled in her bones, colder than any lack of kindling.
