Cathy's father, Sir Thomas Aldley, ninth Earl of Badstoke and the Queen's Ambassador to Portugal, loved his only child dearly. Her keen intelligence and hot temper were known only to her nanny, who fervently exhorted her charge to keep that one fault hidden until she found herself a husband. In company, especially the company of eligible young men, her actions matched the sweetness of her face. Most important of all, she learned to hide her true nature from the men who swarmed around. She learned to smile entrancingly through her lashes, and to laugh, like a tinkling, silver bell, at the men who begged her for a kind word, or, more daringly, a kiss. She learned to walk with her toes turned slightly inward so that her flounced skirts swayed like a bell. Instead, she learned to dance, and her step was the lightest for miles around. Cathy was allowed to dispense with the tiresome business of being educated. When it was discovered that the only use she had made of her learning was to read racy novels, her long-suffering father gave up.
Although her various governesses had labored long and hard, trying to instill the rudiments of education into her saucy head, Cathy remained sublimely indifferent. She wanted to live life, not read about it! "The girl's plain ignorant!" her father snorted indignantly on one occasion, and it was perfectly true. She had no desire to learn anything that was contained between the covers of a book. Which, in Cathy's opinion, was just as well. Her explosions of rage had sent more than one governess running from the house in tears, vowing never to return. Cathy could assume the role of a gentle, well-bred young lady very well when it suited her, but when it did not, she was a termagant. In this last, the good ladies were only partially successful. Since her mother's death ten years before, she had been raised by a nanny and a succession of governesses whose duty in life had been to teach their young charge the things that were important for a lady to know in 1842: to play the harp and the pianoforte, to execute insipid watercolors, to speak the French tongue like a native, and to appear sweetly mindless and childlike at all times. She was only seventeen, and had been pampered and protected all her short life. The brisk sea air had whipped color into her cheeks, and her blue eyes sparkled.
She was very much aware of the picture she made as she stood bracing herself against the rail on the deck of the Anna Greer, a light wind ruffling her hair and the setting sun turning its red-gold splendor to a vivid flame.
Lady Catherine Aldley was beautiful, and she knew it.
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