Wed at Leisure by Sabrina Darby Page B

should care.
    She stepped out into the hall. Walked its length, then down the stairs. She half-expected to see Peter and Reggie there, to relive the experience the way she still felt the pain in her chest.
    She paused at the bottom of the stairs. Why go to the morning room? Why pretend? Why not go back to bed?
    “There you are, Kate. Your guests have been asking about you.”
    Kate blinked at Bianca, who had appeared as if from nowhere, spouting off nonsense as if nothing untoward had occurred the night before.
    “You were with them?”
    “Why shouldn’t I be? They wished me well on my engagement.”
    Kate stared at her in amazement. She had never known a time that she hadn’t had to be careful with everything she said and did. First, her mother had criticized all of her actions and then society had scrutinized. Every mistake Kate had ever made had been one she had had to work to overcome. Not so her sister. “You’re completely shameless.”
    “You should be happy for me,” Bianca said, “I’m marrying an earl. You don’t need to be embarrassed. And beyond that, I’m in love. You should be happy for me but you’re not. All you care about is yourself. And despite your attempts to ruin my life, I’m living one anyway. Without benefit of a Season. It must just eat at you inside, doesn’t it? Something you couldn’t dictate.”
    There were two Kates listening to this speech. One, the hurt child, the one who needed approbation, who loved her sister, who wanted everything to be perfect. And the other, the woman who would never let anyone see weakness or hurt her. So nothing Bianca said mattered. The words flowed off Kate’s skin like water. She didn’t need to hear this.
    But as she walked away, she did hear it. Over and over again. The same way she had stared at herself in the mirror. The way she had determined never again to be the woman who would choose a ball over a brother.
    She heard everything.
    I t was like watching a stone wall crumble, a fortress crack. As Kate walked away, he could see the softening of her shoulders, the hesitation in her gait. He glanced back at Bianca.
    She, too, bore the wounds of the exchange. She might have achieved her goal but she looked harder in some ineffable way.
    “You want to say something, say it.” At Bianca’s tired words, Peter stepped forward from the shadows. Embarrassment at having been caught listening was not as great as his anger, as his sense of injustice.
    “She doesn’t deserve that. Your sister loves you.”
    “What do you know of it, Your Grace? You think because you’ve spent a handful of days with her that you know the real Catherine Mansfield? I’ve seen her now, in action. She has her society face and then there is the one beneath.”
    “And the one beneath that. There are depths to Kate that you have never imagined. She may have her flaws, her jealousy, her need for admiration, for being . . . in control of everything around her.”
    “Perhaps you do know her better than I thought if you are not completely blinded,” Bianca muttered.
    “Do you know how your mother was to your sister? The way she found fault in everything she did? I can see you didn’t. Because she treated you very differently. It was much the same in my home. If you ask me to describe my brother to you, you would not recognize Lord Reginald. The way a sibling sees another . . . it is not the way the world sees him. Or her.”
    “And that is the most unfair of all.”
    For the first time since he had returned to Watersham, Bianca Mansfield had said something with which he had to agree.

 

C HAPTER F OURTEEN
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    S o Peter was right. It had all been about attention. About needing someone to love her. To want her to see her. And it always had been. Kate remembered the first day that she started treating her sister differently. She has been seven years old and she started to realize what the words her mother said meant. That she was ugly. Unlovable, would always be bad.