“He shall be marrying a shrew, is that your meaning, then?” asked Elizabeth, archly.

“ ‘Twas you who said it and not I!”

She shook her head. “You sorely disappoint me, Tuck. I expected rather more from you. But then ‘tis I who am to blame for having expectations. Women who have expectations of men are often doomed to disappointment.”

“And did your clever friend Catherine say that, too?” asked Smythe.

“As a matter of fact, she did,” Elizabeth replied. “I disagreed with her in that, as well, and told her that you lived up to all my expectations. ‘You will see,’ was all she said. And so I have. Would that I had not. Good day to you, sir.”

She abruptly turned and walked away with a firm, purposeful stride.

Smythe was so taken aback, he simply stood there motionless, staring after her, caught in the grip of indecision and conflicting emotions. A part of him wanted to go after her, but he was not sure if it was to apologize or else continue the argument until he could make her see his side of it. Yet another part stubbornly resisted, telling him to let her go and let the devil take her. He felt very angry, but at the same time, he was filled with regret and self-reproach. And he did not understand what had just happened.

They had never argued like this before. Elizabeth had never behaved like that before. It was a side of her that he had never before seen. Granted, she was willful and possessed of strong opinions, but he had never known her to be so utterly unreasonable, so stubbornly obstinate, so… shrewish.

The corners of his mouth turned down in distaste as he thought of Catherine Middleton, a young woman whom he did not even know, but whom he already disliked intensely. She appeared to be trying to poison Elizabeth ’s mind against him. And apparently, she was succeeding.

“Oh, you were so right, Catherine!” Elizabeth said. “He behaved just as you predicted!”

“Well, that is because men are so utterly predictable,” Catherine Middleton said dryly, as the tailor and his apprentices busied themselves with the fitting of her wedding gown. “Ow! Have a care, you clumsy oaf. You stuck me again!”

“Forgive me, mistress,” said the young apprentice, around a mouthful of pins, as he draped cloth over her farthingale. “I shall try to be more careful.”

“That is what you said the last two times,” replied Catherine, noting that he did not sound especially contrite. “I am not here to be your pin cushion, you fumble-fingered rogue.” She turned to the tailor. “If you cannot find any male apprentices who are less ham-handed, then perhaps you should seek to employ women, so they can perform the job properly!” The cloth slipped from the farthingale as she turned, causing the apprentice to step back, throw up his hands and roll his eyes at his master in exasperation.

“The seamstresses who work for me do the job very properly, indeed, milady,” said the tailor, in a haughty tone, as he stood back with his arms folded, surveying the scene with a critical eye. “However, the fitting must perforce be done properly for them to do their job the way they should. And that requires a certain degree of cooperation from the wearer of the dress, you see.”

“The wearer of the dress shall not survive to wear it if she is bled to death by your incompetent apprentices,” Catherine replied, dryly. “Ow! Now you did that on purpose, you miserable cur!” She shoved the offending apprentice away and he lost his balance, falling hard on his rump, venom in his angry gaze.

“I must insist that you desist from abusing my apprentices, milady,” the tailor said.

“Then kindly instruct them to keep their oafish hands to themselves!” Catherine replied, jerking away from another young apprentice as he fumbled at her extremely low-cut bodice. “You think I do not know what they are about, the knaves?”

“Here, here, what’s all this row?” demanded Godfrey Middleton sternly as he entered the room. “Catherine, I could hear you railing clearly all the way from the bottom of the stairs!”

“Well then, Father, I am pleased that you shall hear more clearly still now that you are here,” Catherine replied.

Elizabeth had to bite down on her knuckle to keep from chuckling. She knew her own father thought that she was spoiled and willful, but she would never have had the courage to speak to him as Catherine did to her father. Not that Catherine was truly rude or disrespectful. She managed somehow to be defiant without openly appearing to defy. It was, however, a fine line that she walked, and Catherine sometimes seemed balanced quite precariously.

“I have heard clearly enough already,” Middleton said, with a sniff. “There is no excuse for this cantankerous behavior, Catherine. These men are merely trying to do their job.”

“Trying is truly what they are,” said Catherine. “They are trying my patience sorely with their pricking pins and groping fingers. I find this entire process vexing and outrageous beyond measure.”

“Milord, upon my oath, I can assure you that my apprentices and I have exercised the utmost care and taken absolutely no untoward liberties,” the tailor said, in a gravely offended tone. “Indeed, if any injury has been sustained here, it has been to young Gregory, yonder, who was just assaulted in a most unseemly manner by your daughter.”

“Aye, ‘twas most unseemly,” echoed Gregory, looking like a little dog that had been kicked.

“I’ll give you unseemly, you lying little guttersnipe!” said Catherine, raising her hand at him. Gregory cowered, as if in fear for his very life.

“That will be quite enough, Kate!” her father said.

“I hate it when you call me Kate,” she replied, through gritted teeth. “My name is Catherine!”

“I should think I ought to know your name, girl, I bloody well gave it to you.”

“Father!”

“Be silent! God’s Wounds, I shall be eternally grateful when at last you have become your husband’s baggage and not mine. These seventeen long years I have put up with your sharp tongue and it has exhausted all my patience.”

“Really, Father, it cannot have been that long, surely. For the first three or four of those seventeen years, I could scarcely even speak.”

“You learned soon enough and well enough to suit me,” Middleton replied, dryly.

“I have always sought to please you, Father,” Catherine said. “ Tis a source of great discomfort to me that I have always failed to do so. Would that I had been a son and not a daughter, then doubtless I would have found it much less of a hardship to find favor in your eyes.”

“Would indeed that you had been a son and not a daughter,” said her father. “Then I would not have had to pay nearly a king’s ransom to get you married off.”

Gregory, the young apprentice, chuckled at that, but Catherine ignored him. The only evidence she gave that she had heard him was a tightening of her upper lip. Elizabeth thought it was insufferable that her father should speak to her that way in front of Strangers. She felt awkward being in the same room with them herself.

“And yet you are paying merely in coin and a vested interest in your business,” Catherine said, “while I am paying with my body and my soul and all my worldly goods. If the shoe were on the other foot, and ‘twas I who paid the dowry to have you married off, then which of us, I wonder, would you think was paying the greater price?”

“The greatest price, I fear, shall be paid by poor Sir Percival, who shall be marrying naught but trouble and strife,” said Middle-ton. “My conscience is clear, however, for none can say that I made any misrepresentations at all in that regard. Indeed, I made a point of it to acquaint Sir Percival in full with the nature of your disputatious disposition, so that no claim could afterward be made that I was not forthright in all respects concerning this betrothal and this union, and so that no rancor ever could be borne.”