She allowed Cate a hollow smile, and then pointedly diverted her attention to a woman opposite. Cate continued to sip her tea, wishing it were something stronger.
Conversation droned. Roger the intransigent sphinx at her side, Cate sat transfixed on the corner of a rug several feet away. A floral, its green leaves recalled the churned ground where Nathan had fallen, its red flowers his blood. Hatred surged. Unwittingly or not, every person in that room was a pawn in Harte’s insidious game, including Lady Bart.
At one point, Roger was drawn away—Lady Bart, with some household detail—and Cate heard a polite clearing of a throat from Devaynes’ direction.
“Tell me dear, if you don’t mind—?”
Cate stirred, startled at being addressed. “Excuse me? I beg pardon?”
Mildly flustered, Devaynes hesitated, and then leaned over the table to say under the conversation, “I pray you don’t think me forward, if I were to inquire…?”
Cate nodded, cautious of where on earth this line of questioning might lead.
“Well, I was wondering…? Can you tell me, my dear, what was it like…to be with that pirate…you know, when he…?”
Thinking surely she had misconstrued, Cate leant nearer. “When he…what?”
“Well, all night…” Devaynes said, dismayed at being obliged to expand. “All that time, for that matter. What was he like? I saw him once, you know, in Port Royal. He looked so deliciously barbaric. Was he…different? Did he, well…you know…?”
Cate gaped. The woman looked like a cat being offered a dead mouse.
“I don’t believe it’s a matter which bears discussion,” Cate said coldly. The woman’s boldness deserved the embarrassment of a blunt denial.
Devaynes stiffened, the bird in her hair impudently peering down. “Oh, come, come, my dear—”
“Harper. My name is Catherine Harper.” Her voice rose as her patience faded.
“Yes, of course…Mrs. Harper. It will be just between us.” A wrinkling of the nose was given in affirmation. “Just tell me if—?”
Cate looked to Mrs. Green-Dress-Now-Wearing-Yellow-With-the-Ridiculous-Child’s-Voice—Killingsworth—and another woman, heads canted in avid interest. It was too ironic, and not a little repugnant: they thought she should have killed herself, but since she hadn’t, the vicarious vultures wished to be entertained, brutal rape to become parlor chat.
“I hate to disappoint, but he didn’t do anything,” Cate insisted.
Mrs. Killingsworth sniffed, her disapproval mitigated by her childish tenor. “Oh, come now. Everyone knows the pirate character.”
“What would you like to know?” Cate demanded, now of a volume to end all other conversation. “Would you care to hear how I was bound spread-eagle and he screwed me, again and again, until I begged for more? Or would you be more interested in the size of his cock, or his prodigious appetite that required feeding, over and over…”
Cate’s voice quavered as she began to recite: “…a maypole of so enormous a standard, that had proportions been observ’d, it must have belong’d to a young giant.”
There was no shame in having read Cleland’s outlawed novel. Judging by the scandalized gasps, several present had read it, as well, to the point of recognizing the passage.
“Its prodigious size made me shrink again; yet I could not, without pleasure, behold, and even ventur’d to feel, such a length, such a breadth of animated ivory…”
Somewhere to Cate’s left there was a intake of air, Lady Bart on the verge of fainting. Looking from face to face, she saw everything from Roger’s shocked rigidity to round-eyed horror, pity, and finally bemusement. Amid nervous throat-clearing, two or three women sat eager for more. Now on her feet, but not sure how she had come to be there, Cate glared.
“I hate to disappoint any of you, but nothing happened, not last night, or last week—not ever!”
She gripped the folds of her skirt lest they see her hands shake. “You can think anything you want. But just for the record: I was treated with more civility by a gang of pirates than the likes of you.”
Cate raced out, determined none would have the satisfaction of seeing her cry. Once in the hall, she leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. She felt being stared at and looked over her shoulder into a blue-eyed cherub on the wallpaper.
“Well, after all, I did mean to be excused.”
The painted gaze grew more accusing.
She thumped the wall with her fist. “I don’t know what I’m to do next”
Overcome by the need for fresh air, she ran down the hall and out the garden doors. She followed the path, until she came upon an arbor. Bracing against its post, she deeply inhaled the night air, heavy with the smell