“It’s all right,” Burke said, in his usual brusque tones. “Miss Mayhew is all right.”
“Oh, Papa!” Isabel, still dressed in the rumpled gown in which she’d fallen asleep. “I was so worried! Are you sure—”
“Everyone can go back to bed now,” Burke said firmly. “Except you.” He gazed meaningfully at the hotel’s owner. “There’s a mess in the courtyard you’ll want to have someone clean up. And you’d best send someone for the magistrate in the morning.”
The innkeeper seemed to take this in stride, but his wife, who evidently was not aware of the nature of the mess in the courtyard, peered worriedly at Kate.
“Perhaps we ought to send for the surgeon right now, though, for the young lady—”
At Kate’s adamant head shake, Burke said, “Miss Mayhew doesn’t need a surgeon. If you could see to the Lady Isabel, however—”
This the woman appeared only too eager to do, though Isabel seemed markedly unimpressed by her kind attentions, and reluctant to leave Kate. She was finally compelled to go back to bed—in her own room, this time—when Kate assured her, in a hoarse whisper, that she was perfectly all right. The corridor emptied even further when Burke snapped, with typical authoritativeness, “Everyone go back to bed. Now.” Burke Traherne was not master of this house, and yet his orders were obeyed with an alacrity that would have made a general jealous. The hallway cleared, and Burke conveyed Kate into his room, a chamber furnished in rich masculine tones. The light from the fire in the hearth revealed a large four-poster, the bedclothes thrown back, as if in haste.
It was onto his own bed that he lowered her, and in its comforter that he wrapped her, until she felt quite stifled by the heat of both the bedclothes and the fire, upon which he heaped multiple logs in an attempt to warm her.
She tried to protest, but he would hear none of it. He had said he would see to her himself, and he had meant it. Her scrapes and bruises were bathed by his own hands, her throat eased by tea he offered her himself. He was as attentive as any lover, as caring as any husband, and yet ….
He had to know. He had to have figured it out. That it was all—all of it—her fault: Daniel’s seducing Isabel—well, more or less—and leading them on this mad, cross-country chase. It had all been her fault. If he had not hated her before—and God only knew, he had reason to, the way she’d treated him—he must surely hate her now.
She certainly deserved that hatred. And yet she couldn’t let him go away thinking she wasn’t sorry for what she’d done.
All she had to do, she realized, was say it. Just come out and say it.
She took a deep breath, and opened her mouth.
“I,” Kate began. This, she realized, was not going to be easy. It was extremely difficult to think rationally with that penetrating gaze on her.
“I,” she said again. “Am.”
Good. That was a good beginning. Her voice was stronger now, thanks to the tea.
Now, what came after that?
“Sorry.”
There. Perfect.
Except that Burke only sat there, looking at her expectantly. Perhaps it hadn’t been so perfect. Kate took another deep breath.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “about Daniel, Burke. What happened between him and Isabel was all my fault, you see.”
He cocked his head, as if he weren’t sure he’d heard her properly. “Your fault,” he repeated.
She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Daniel realized that I’d seen him—really seen him—the night of the fire, and I suppose he thought I’d tell someone, and so he decided he couldn’t let me live. Only he didn’t know where I was, of course, so he figured that if he eloped with Isabel, I’d—”
Burke interrupted. “But you did tell someone. You told a lot of people.”
“I—Well, of course I did. Seven years ago. Only no one believed me.”
“But Craven didn’t know that.”
Kate, considering this, knit her brow. “No, I suppose not. But the truth is … well, I wasn’t quite sure I believed it, either. I mean, I knew my father hadn’t started the fire. And I knew I’d seen Daniel there. But in a part of my mind, I suppose I always thought there was a chance Freddy was right—that I had only imagined seeing Daniel that night, because … well, that would have been better than admitting the truth. At least what everyone else thought was the truth.”
He studied her. The confusion was gone from his face. Now he wore no expression whatsoever.
“So you are vindicated,” he said softly.
“Vindicated?” She raised the eyebrows that had been knit together a split second before. “Me?”
“Certainly. All those people,” he said, “who turned against you when it first happened. You’ve proved them wrong. It was Daniel Craven, and not your father, who absconded with their money and started the fire, as you maintained all along.”
Kate, surprised, sat up slowly. “Yes. I suppose you’re right.” Then she shook her head. “Only I haven’t any proof of it, of course.”
Burke, seated on the edge of the bed beside her, said with a shrug, “I heard him admit it.”
“Did you?” Kate turned her stunned gaze toward him. “Did you really?”
“Of course I did. I’ll tell the magistrate so, in my statement in the morning. Won’t that make for some interesting reading in the London papers? By week’s end, your father’s name should be every bit as untarnished as the Queen’s.”
Kate shook her head, hardly daring to breathe in the face of such a reversal of fortune—not, of course, that she was any less penniless than she’d been before. No, she was still poor as a churchmouse. But having her father’s reputation—his good name—restored meant more to her than, any fortune in African diamonds.
“Not, of course,” Burke went on, “that it will make any difference to you.”
Kate threw him a startled glance. “What? What won’t make any difference?”
Burke shrugged his broad shoulders again. “Well, what people say, of course.”
“Are you mad?” Kate asked. “Of course it makes a difference. It makes all the difference in the world!”
“But I thought you didn’t want anything to do with my set.” Burke’s tone was even, his face still expressionless. “At least, that’s what you said this morning, is it not? I believe your exact words were that you couldn’t go back. That you’d prefer to raise our child on your own, in disgrace, than amongst the people who believed your father guilty before he ever stood trial, and then allowed his killer to go free.”
Kate felt her face heat up, and realized, with a start, that she was blushing. It seemed incredible to her that she could still blush after all she’d been through with this man, but apparently, there were still a few things which could make her feel shy.
It was, she supposed, no more than she deserved.
“Burke,” Kate said uneasily. “I know that’s what I said this morning. But I realized—even before Daniel came around—that it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that—”
But he interrupted again.
“It must be gratifying,” he said, “to have proved so many people wrong. It’s something that at one time in my life, I should have liked to have done.”
She blinked up at him, what she’d been intending to say forgotten. “You?”
“Certainly.” He looked down at his hands, resting on his thighs. “You can’t have been so busy refuting what they were saying about your father that you never heard what they say about me, Kate.”
Kate immediately dropped her gaze. “I’ve heard some things,” she said, keeping her gaze on the counterpane. “But I don’t believe in gossip. Which is why I want you to know that—”
“But it can be quite useful, you know,” he said. “Gossip, I mean. In my case, especially.”
She risked a glance at his face. He was looking down at her with an expression of mingled bitterness and compassion. She looked away again, confused.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said quickly. “Burke, I—”
“Of course you do. I’m sure your friend Freddy told you all about me. The heartless Marquis of Wingate, who threw his wife’s lover from a window, then did everything within his power to keep the woman from seeing her infant daughter again. Isn’t that how it goes?”
Kate said faintly, “Well, I suppose I did hear something along those lines ….”
“Of course you did. I wanted you to, you see. Because sometimes, Kate, rumors are … well, kinder than the truth.”
He must have noticed her bewildered expression, since he continued, with a sigh, “I never kept Isabel’s mother from seeing her, Kate. I did throw her lover out the window. That much I’ll admit. But as for the rest …. If Elisabeth had ever expressed the slightest interest in seeing her daughter, I would have arranged it for her, even if it meant my bringing Isabel all the way to Italy. But she didn’t. Elisabeth didn’t care about Isabel at all. During the court proceedings—the divorce—the only thing she worried about was money. How much was I going to settle on her. That was all. Not a word, not a breath, about Isabel.
“That’s why, after a while, I welcomed the rumors. I wanted Isabel to hear them, believe them,” Burke went on. “That’s why I never disputed them. The rumors were better than the truth. I’d rather people whispered that I was an ogre, keeping a mother from her child, than have them saying the truth, which was that Isabel’s own mother didn’t love her enough to make even the slightest attempt to see her.”
“Oh,” Kate said. Her throat felt as if it had closed up again. But this time, it wasn’t because someone had been trying to choke the life from her. “I … I see.”
He looked down at her, but there was something dispassionate about his gaze. It was almost as if he weren’t quite seeing her.
“So there you have it,” he said. “My whole bitter little history. Well, what’s suitable for your ears, anyway. It’s interesting, isn’t it? The difference between us two, I mean. You abhor London society for its rumor-mongering hypocrisy, while I quite selfishly embraced it for my own purposes.”
Suddenly, he stood up. The mattress, relieved of his weight, lurched before settling again.
“Well, not that any of this makes a difference now,” he said. “You’ve made your decision. Still, it’s a pity we couldn’t come to any sort of understanding; you and I. For I think that together, we might have managed to pitch the whole self-deluded lot of them on their ears. But, as you said, it’s better this way. And now I think we’ve had enough high emotion for one night. I had better let you sleep.”
And he actually began striding toward the door.
Kate threw off the bedclothes that covered her, and scrambled from the bed.
“Wait,” she called.
He had nearly reached the door. He turned, and looked back at her, his expression inscrutable. “Kate,” he said. “You’ve had a shock. You need rest. Get back in bed.”
Kate stayed where she was, twisting her fingers together anxiously. “No,” she said. “I’ve got to talk to you.” She nodded toward the bed. “Won’t you sit down, just for a minute more?”
He looked as if he wanted to say something—probably another protestation—but gave up. He retraced his steps, moving past her to lower himself onto the bed she’d just vacated.
“So,” he said. Seated on the bed, his face was only slightly lower than hers while she was standing. “What is it?”
Kate found it exceptionally difficult to meet his gaze. In the first place, it was a bit disturbing, standing this close to him. While they weren’t touching anywhere at all, she nevertheless felt enveloped by him. Her senses were being assaulted on all sides. There was the heat she felt coming off his thighs, and from the vee his robe formed, over his naked chest. And there was the clean scent of him. And certainly, there was the way he looked, so tantalizingly masculine, so strong … and yet, at the same time, so vulnerable.
“I,” Kate said, unable to meet his gaze. There was something so knowing, so expectant, in his eyes that she couldn’t look at them, and instead tried to keep her own trained on the floor. Only she kept being distracted by the place where his dressing gown came open again, just beyond the knot in its sash. She could see nothing there but the dark shadow that existed beneath the satin, but she felt the heat—oh, yes, she felt the warmth emanating from there—on her thighs, right through the flimsy material of her negligee.
“I … I want to apologize,” she managed to stammer out, at last.
“Didn’t you do that already?”
She looked him in the eye, and for once didn’t regret doing so. The knowingness was still there, true. But there was something else there, too. Something indefinable. Once, long ago, Kate’s father had given her a ring for her birthday, a ring with an emerald in it that had been very much the same color as Burke’s eyes. In the center of the emerald, she’d noticed, after hours of examination, was a flaw. A tiny crack. That’s what she thought she saw in Burke’s eyes just then. A tiny crack, through which, she was certain, if she just looked hard enough, she’d be able to see his soul.
“Not about Daniel,” Kate said. She lifted a hand, and placed it on one of his broad shoulders. “I mean, I am more sorry than I can ever say about Daniel, about what he did to Isabel. But I’m also sorry about … about what I said this morning.” Lord, had it only been that morning she’d sat there and said all of those horrid things to him?
“Well, I’m sorry about it, too,” Burke said reasonably. “But being sorry doesn’t change things, does it?”
“I suppose not,” Kate murmured.
Crushed. He had crushed her, as easily as if she’d been an ant.
Still, she went on.
“But I might have been a bit … hasty,” she said.
“Hasty,” he repeated, his green eyes fixed very steadily upon her.
“Yes. About my refusing to …”
One of his ink-dark eyebrows slanted upward. “To what?”
He was going to be difficult about it. He knew perfectly well what she was talking about, but he seemed to want to torture her a little before admitting it.
Well. She deserved a little torture, she supposed. “Burke.” Kate moved her hand, lightly running her fingertips along the silky material of his dressing gown’s lapels. “I want to go back to London with you and Isabel tomorrow.”
Up went the other eyebrow. “Do you? This is an interesting turn of events. Though I suppose it’s only natural for you to want to enjoy the apologies of all those people who were once so abominably rude to you.”