“And you aren’t mother,” Catherine said over her shoulder, and she moved down the hall towards the staircase. Rebecca didn’t bother following.
Outside, the air was growing chill, and Catherine mentally cursed herself for not thinking to grab a shawl to wrap around her mostly bare arms. There was a horse and carriage outside the front door, as father always liked from sun up to sun down, just in case anyone needed to get somewhere in a hurry. The driver was an older man named Samuel with a limp in his right arm.
“Evening, Lady Catherine,” the old man said, sweeping his hat from his head and bowing.
“Samuel,” Catherine replied.
“Need me?”
“Not this evening, it is just a short walk I am after,” Catherine replied, and she couldn’t help but notice the look of relief which swept over Samuel’s face. It was so close to evening, and she knew the old man was tired and his leg was aching from a day of mostly standing, and then being cramped up in his driver’s box as he chauffeured the family around town. It was so close to nightfall, and he would be pulling the carriage around to the back of the house, and handing the horse off to the stable boys there, and then going to his own home, a small one-room home of sorts built of wood that lay situated at the very back of her father’s land.
Catherine left the grounds and turned right, towards town, but, of course, they lived some distance away from the hustle and bustle of the city. Here there were long stretches of land, and a curving river of cool and clear water, which cut through the fields and the small spattering of wooded area that grew up here and there.
It was the river she was after, or at least a small dock situated upon it, not even a quarter of a mile up the road from her home. The river was called the King’s River, and it was just wide and deep enough for a smaller sized ferry, and her father and some of their neighbors had supplies floated to them from town, instead of making trips in.
She had first met Dominick there, in the small shed, which housed boating supplies and stretched out over the river on waterlogged wooden struts green with algae. They had been eight then, both of them born in the same month, September, of the same year. He had been rough and dirty, his pants dirty, his knees scraped. She had been a Lady then as well, of course, and took it upon herself to stay away from mud and dirt, and things that may scrape her knees. But she couldn’t resist such passions when she was around Dominick, and when she had returned home the evening of that first day, she had been dirty, her dress had been ripped, and her father had swatted her bottom with a leather switch. She had cried and cried, her backside had been red and painful, but she mostly cried because she had wanted to be still with Dominick.
Even years later, over a decade, that same feeling had not dissipated. She wanted to spend time with Dom, as she had grown to call him, and if the days stretched on and she still did not see him, she grew sad. Everyone knew about their friendship, and when they were younger, everyone had often joked about what it would be like when they got married.
But that was nothing but jests, and everyone had known that as well, all except for Catherine, it had seemed. She wouldn’t be marrying Dom. She would be marrying Duke Andrew Rotham. He was older, almost thirty. He was a handsome man, that was true enough, but he wasn’t the man Catherine loved. Sadly, she had no choice in the matter.
Dominick was already waiting for her when she arrived, dressed in his best suit and standing at the edge of the covered dock, looking down at the water. Her footsteps caught his ear, and he turned to see her. She smiled, as she always did when she saw him, but he did not.
“What is it Dominick?” she asked, going to him. He reached out and took her hands in his. His hands were large, rough and masculine in a way that Catherine doubted Duke Rotham’s were. Dominick stood some inches over Catherine, and she looked up into his eyes. She could sense something was wrong; she had been able to tell when he hadn’t returned her smile.
“I leave tomorrow,” Dominick said softly.
“Leave?”
“My whole regiment,” the young man explained. Dominick was a soldier though his father was in good enough standing in the community, and rich enough, that he had never been far from home.
“To war?” Catherine asked. She hadn’t heard a word of any battles raging, but the skirmishes these men could cook up, they were apt to spring up overnight.
Dom laughed and shook his head. “Thank the Heavens,” he said, “no.”
“Then, where?”
“I do not know exactly, but I’m led to believe that it will be some sort of training, perhaps to bring my regiment closer together. You know how they love to call us brothers in arms.”