Page 14 of Kathryn

This time, the door closed without a sound.

Gerrit turned to Lady Kathryn. “A kissing game? And yet I do not remember agreeing to play, My Lady.”

The girl opened her mouth, but it was Chatham who spoke. “I think an evening to calm our frayed tempers and take stock would be beneficial at this point, Dulverton. If you will pay a visit—"

“I want some answers, Chatham, and I want them now.” Gerrit glowered at the other man who glowered right back.

The duchess set a staying hand on her husband’s arm and Chatham stood down.

Gerrit shifted his attention from the duke to his wife, who—with her rail-thin body, plain face, and bright orange hair—looked nothing at all like her sister. “Describe this game.”

Chatham again bristled but the duchess said, “My sister and her friends were playing a game that involved kissing men on a list.” Although her voice was emotionless, two spots of color appeared on her cheeks.

It was not the first time Gerrit had found himself the butt of other people’s jokes, but it had not happened in years. He did not like the feeling any more now than he had when he’d been a powerless boy at school.

“What list?”

The duchess’s mouth tightened as she turned to her sister. “You drew up the list?”

Lady Kathryn gave the duchess a look of pure misery. “Yes.”

“Each man was, I presume, worth some point value?” the duchess persisted.

“Good Lord, Hy!” Lady Kathryn burst out, her cheeks the color of ripe cherries. The two women engaged in a silent glaring match. Evidently the duchess won because Lady Kathryn’s shapely lips twisted unhappily, and she turned back to Gerrit. “Every man was worth a certain point value. The person who collected the most points won.”

“Won what?” Gerrit demanded. “A husband?”

Her green eyes rounded with shock. “No! That was not our plan, at all. Truly,” she added at his look of scathing disbelief. “I never imagined any of us would be—”

“What was the prize?” Gerrit persisted, as if that somehow mattered.

“There was no prize,” Lady Kathryn insisted, staring at her feet.

She had destroyed his carefully contrived plans for the future for nothing more than a lark? Why did that fact seem to make this asinine game all the more insulting?

Gerrit struggled with the fury that threatened to undo him. Only the memory of Fowler’s enraged, ill-mannered display kept his own temper in check.

Chatham cleared his throat. “There is no denying that Lady Kathryn’s behavior tonight has been… lacking.” He looked from his sister-in-law to Gerrit, his face hardening. “But Sutton assured me that—according to more than one witness—you were not an unwilling participant when it came to kissing.”

Gerrit’s face heated, and he would have given anything to be able to throw Chatham’s words back in his face. But the other man was right. Although Gerrit had been startled for a few seconds after she’d first locked her lips with his, he’d never made any attempt to step away from her. Instead, he’d quickly conquered his usual abhorrence of a stranger’s touch and had kissed her with more enthusiasm than he had done in years. Perhaps ever. It had stunned him how quickly kissing—something he had only done with one other woman two decades before—had come back to him.

And then there was the grinding and fondling. Not to mention that he’d lifted her gown up to her knees by the time his uncle had interrupted them. Gerrit could not deny that he would have fucked her right there on that garden bench if they’d not been caught.

His prick gave a happy pulse at the thought.

Realizing the room had gone quiet, he looked up to find three pairs of eyes on him.

“Yes, I am equally to blame,” he admitted gruffly.

Chatham was not appeased by Gerrit’s admission and pressed on. “By tomorrow there will not be a soul among the ton who does not know about this, Dulverton.”

Gerrit nodded, faintly nauseated at the thought of the shame even now attaching to his name. He had spent the last twenty years trying to scrub out the stain his first wife had left on his reputation, and all his efforts had apparently been for naught.

“I will present myself at Chatham House on the morrow,” he said after an unpleasant silence. Gerrit suddenly recalled the other meeting he had the next day—the one with his uncle and Lady Palmer—and the nausea that had been simmering in his belly swelled. Tomorrow would truly be a day from Hell. “I will come after noon,” he added.

“Your Grace?”

Gerrit looked up at Lady Kathryn’s voice and met her anxious green eyes. “Yes?”