Catherine heard her father coming up the stairs, and she locked eyes with the imprisoned Elizabeth. Lizzy stuck out her tongue. “Now you’re in for it.”
And that was all it took. Catherine ran to the door, jammed the block of wood under it, and then advanced on her sister, hands raised, fingers curled in tickling position. “That’s what you think.”
QUINT HEARD THE SCREAMS even before he’d reached the house. They were horrible, bloodcurdling screams that surely meant someone was being murdered.
He jumped off his horse, didn’t even bother to tie the gelding to the post, and ran to the Fullbrights’ front door. He pounded away, all the while her screams—and he was now convinced they were Elizabeth’s—echoed around him.
Someone inside the house must have heard him pounding because a young man opened the door. He was wearing his hat and holding his walking stick, apparently intent on departure, but Quint didn’t pause to ask questions. He took the steps two at a time and found two other men in the drawing room. They were standing, holding hats and gloves and looking pale with discomfort.
“Where is she?” Quint asked first one man, then the other.
They shook their heads, but one of the two men, a gent who had to have been at least sixty, said, “They’re in her bedroom. Her father’s gone—”
Quint turned to race up the next set of steps, but the sound of thundering cattle on the staircase gave him pause. Not that he had ever heard thundering cattle, but he imagined they sounded like the god-awful racket coming toward the drawing room.
“Help! Help! She’s killing me!”
Quint and the other two men jumped out of the way just as Elizabeth and her sister Charity—no, that couldn’t be right—barreled into the room. Elizabeth’s foot caught on the hem of her dress, and both of the girls went sprawling. When they stopped tumbling over one another, Elizabeth began howling again. Was her older sister beating her or—
Wait. She was tickling Elizabeth. Tickling her unmercifully, true, but tickling the girl so that her screams were actually high-pitched giggles.
The girls’ parents burst into the room next, the father laying rough hands on the elder and pulling her off her younger sister, who looked about, saw the men and Quint, in particular, and began to bawl. Quint took a step back from the force behind the tears. The girl had a healthy pair of lungs.
Meanwhile, her older sister was flailing about, her black hair flopping in her face, while her father attempted to hold her still. “Settle down, Catherine.”
Quint smiled. Ah, that’s right. Her name was Catherine.
“Let. Me. Go.” And then she sank her teeth into her father’s arm.
Quint saw it coming and winced. Her father, in the meantime, barked and threw his rabid daughter off him. She went sprawling, landing on her bottom. But unlike her sobbing sister, now ensconced in her mother’s arms, Catherine did not so much as gasp. She picked herself up off the floor, lifted the torn and dusty hem of her brown dress, and strode regally toward the armchair, whereupon she took a seat. She straightened her irreparable dress, shoved a heap of black hair from her face, and blinked at the two men standing beside Quint.
“My father says you want to see me,” she said, tone low and dangerous.
“Not I,” said the first man, a chap in a black suit, holding a balled apron in one hand. “I must be going.”
“I’ll join you,” the older man said, and the two practically flung themselves down the stairs.
“But wait. She’s really a good girl. Very obedient,” Edmund Fullbright called, going after them.
Mrs. Fullbright looked at Quint. “Lord Valentine, please do sit down. You mustn’t leave. This is all just a”—she glared at her elder daughter— “misunderstanding. If you’ll give us just one moment to collect ourselves.”
She put an arm about Elizabeth, helped her up, and the two limped, arms wound tightly around each other toward the stairs to the family’s private chambers. Catherine made to follow, but her mother saw her and hissed, “Get away, you ungrateful devil. I ought to beat you myself for this.”
So the elder sister made her way back to the chair in the drawing room while mother and younger daughter disappeared up the steps. Quint felt a twinge of pity for Catherine, but it didn’t last long. The chit had been behaving abominably. She deserved to be scolded, though if he’d had a daughter, he doubted he would ever have used such words on her.
Catherine took her seat again, and the look she gave him dried all words of sympathy from his tongue. She didn’t want his pity. And so instead, Quint made her a bow. “Wonderful show, Miss Fullbright. When is the next performance?”
She scowled at him, but he could see she was relieved that he hadn’t tried sympathy.
“You think me entertaining, sir?” A lock of hair had fallen forward, and she brushed it back again.
“Immensely.” He gestured to the chair opposite her. “May I?”
“I don’t care what you do,” she answered, looking away.
“You were only too full of advice when we met at the Beaufort ball last week,” Quint reminded her. He looked about the room, taking in the dilapidated furnishings, the cheap knickknacks, and the general gloomy atmosphere. If he’d wondered why the Fullbrights had put their seventeen-year-old daughter on the marriage mart so quickly or why they’d jumped at his proposal, the answer was patently clear.
The Fullbrights needed money. Obviously, Edmund Fullbright decided what was good for one daughter was equally good for the other.
