Her foot shifted. She meant to step back again, to retreat even if it meant letting her skirts brush the flames. Cursing, Aidan grabbed roughly for her arm, meaning only to pull her away before she set herself afire.
She tried to twist away, but he held tight to her arm and yanked her clear of the danger, shifting her past him so he blocked the path to the fireplace. His heart thumped wildly with alarm; it took him a moment to realize she was struggling in his grasp.
“Stop it,” he growled.
“No!” Her voice was shrill as she wrenched her arm free and stumbled a few steps away. “Don’t touch me.”
An icy flush crept over his skin, crawled beneath his flesh, tunneled into his bones. “You said you were happy. You loved him.”
“That’s what you think?” She spat the words out as if they burned her mouth. “You think I was just a stupid, fickle girl who was denied one man and decided the next was just as good? Well, you’re right on one count. I was stupid. I was
stupid,
do you hear me?” One trembling hand rose to press against her throat.
She began to cry then. Aidan wanted to cover her mouth to stop the welling sound, to halt the words, but he couldn’t move.
“You think I just decided to make the best of it?”
“Kate—”
“I was not a horse to be broken to another rider.”
The meaning of her words was a searing pain in his chest. He’d thought it torturous to imagine her enjoying another man’s touch, but it was unbearable to think the alternative. “Oh, Kate.”
Her fury spilled out of her, deaf to his words. “How could you think I loved him? I loved you. I was
your
wife, not his. Despite that we’d never made it to the church, I was yours. I kept telling myself that, even when it seemed hopeless. Even when he held me down on his bed and took me. Even when I waited and waited and you never came. Even when I thought myself too used for you to love. I knew I was yours.
I was yours
.”
Horror and grief stretched his soul thin until it was as tight as the skin of a drum. Every word set off a vibration of pain in his chest. “Oh, Katie. You didn’t tell me.” The disgust in her eyes when she looked at him made him cringe.
“I didn’t want that pity I see on your face. I still don’t. And how could you possibly understand? You gave yourself to every woman with a friendly glance and a warm bed! How could you understand what I felt?”
Thoughts and fears wrestled, fighting inside his head. He wanted to scream, to rage, to injure. But he tamped that need down and tried to reach for her. She slid from his grasp and stumbled back to her bag as tears streamed down her face.
“Kate, what happened?” he rasped.
She stuffed things into the bag, giving up any semblance of order. “I was sent to the other side of the world. I was given to a man I’d never met. I was as dead as my parents named me. And you did not mourn me at all.”
“That’s not true!”
Kate paused, both hands clutching the edge of the bag. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It wasn’t that I thought you hadn’t had lovers. I understood that I wasn’t the only woman you’d—”
“No,” he barked. “No. You are not just one of them. I love you. I love you, Kate. I want to marry you. I want you to be my wife.”
She shook her head. “We can’t marry, Aidan. We have very separate lives. You have an important business here in London, a life—” Waving a hand, she gestured to indicate his family, his friends, his tawdry affairs. “I have the shop in Hull. And a husband.”
“No. I’ve already planned. I will move to Hull, work from there until a divorce can be arranged. Most of my business is correspondence anyway. I could travel to London every few weeks. . . .”
His frantic words faded into silence as she paced away from him to stare out the window.
“I don’t want to marry you,” she said softly to the glass. “I do not wish to become less than, again.”
“Less than what? I want to give you everything. Everything I have—”
“I can’t marry you.” The abrupt loudness of her words hung between them. She couldn’t hide her disgust, her utter hatred of him at that moment. It glowed from her skin.
“Kate, please,” he pleaded. “Please let me explain. Will you?”
She turned back to the window, but then she met his eyes in the reflection of the glass and nodded once, very slowly.
Aidan held her gaze for a long moment before he turned away to sit on the bed. He hung his head, staring at his shoes.
“You died. And I was lost. I didn’t know what to do with myself except drink, so that’s what I did. One night, a month or so later, an innkeeper’s daughter took pity on me and coaxed me upstairs. Afterward, I thought I would die of the guilt. . . .”
He glanced up, but her reflection only watched him in cool silence.
“The guilt was enough to keep me living like a priest for a few weeks—a drunken priest. But at some point . . . at some point, the liquor stopped doing its job. It ceased to banish your ghost, ceased to make life tolerable. I would dream of you, and that was the worst thing—waking up in the morning thinking you’d returned, then realizing it was a dream.
“I wanted another way to lose myself, and I found I was the object of a flood of feminine interest. I didn’t know why.”
“You’re handsome,” she said bitterly. “Charming.”
“That wasn’t it. It was you, actually. My mother spread the tale of our young love and its tragic end. She titillated the ladies of the ton. Apparently there is something unbearably attractive about male pain.” His laugh was a bitter shell of humor that grated from his throat.
“The interest took its natural course and I found, to my extreme relief, that I could set your memory aside, could forget the sad state of my life, if only for a few minutes, a few hours, at a time.”
He looked up at her and saw that she’d finally turned toward him.
“I was entertainment for them,” he said. “And they were a distraction for me. I offered nothing except the use of my body for a short time. I never seduced, never promised. But, of course, my reputation precedes me.” His mouth twisted around the words. “I am a purebred stud. Unbroken. Spirited. Highly recommended for my gait if not my temperament.”
Kate sucked in a hiss of breath at his words. Her fingers curled in, forming fists.
“I made myself into this.” He let her see all the unflinching shame in his eyes. “I debased myself for a peace that I never even found.”
A dozen heartbeats passed. She said nothing. Why would she say nothing?
“I would change it if I could.” Looking away from her again, he stared down at his clasped hands. “I’d take it all back if I could, but I can’t. I can’t. I thought you’d never find out. I didn’t want you to find out.”
“I can understand that, at least,” she said. “I didn’t want you to know either, but the difference . . . The difference is that I was ashamed of something done to me. Your shame . . . it’s something you embraced.”
“I never wanted it. And I never want it again.”
Minutes ticked by. She stared at him, measured him, and apparently found him wanting. “I can’t do this, Aidan. I can’t.”
“Fine,” he made his mouth say. “But stay. I’ll leave you be. Only stay.”
She shook her head, and in that moment he hated her. He snarled, “You act so self-righteous, as if you’ve done nothing wrong. But you let them do this to you. They did not bind your hands and legs and ship you in a crate, did they?” Her face blanched to a sick white, and Aidan was horrified by his own words, but could not stop them. “You let yourself be put on a boat and shipped East like some prized mare.”
“You did not want me anymore!” she shouted. “And they were my parents. Who could gainsay them?”
“Christ, did you really think I wouldn’t help? Or were you still holding on to your stubborn anger? Either way you were a fool, Kate. If you’d run, if you’d come to me, I’d never have let them take you away.”
Her jaw trembled and her eyes filled with tears.
“We’ve both been fools for different reasons. But we both deserve this chance. We do. Please.”
The trembling in her jaw stopped and turned to steel. “No. We both wanted to go back, but neither of us is the same. Don’t find me again. We are not worth it.” She looped her fingers in the handle of the satchel and picked it up, and then she walked past him. Out the bedroom door. Down the stairs. Through the entry, and then she was gone.
Aidan stood staring at the open door, his heart dead cold in his chest.
“Mr. York?” Penrose’s voice asked weakly from the corridor. “Is something wrong?”
“Follow her,” Aidan said dully. “All the way to Hull. Just make sure she stays safe until she gets home.”
“Yes, sir.” To his credit, Penrose asked no more questions. He didn’t even protest that he’d only just arrived in town and needed a bath or new change of clothes. Penrose only shot Aidan a wide-eyed question with his eyes, and then he hurried out the door and disappeared in the same direction Kate had.
He’d have duties in Hull regardless. Aidan would no longer need a home there or an office. In fact, he’d never set foot there again.
Kate sat very still in the train station, her ankles crossed and tucked beneath the bench. The next train to Hull didn’t leave for four hours and darkness was already falling. Still, she didn’t feel frightened. She felt cocooned. Sheltered by a gray pall that hung over her person. It would keep her invisible—she knew that from experience. People could walk past her without seeing her. They could look straight at her and feel nothing.
It was safe, and yet she didn’t want it. Not again. She didn’t want to spend years living with no feelings and hardly any thoughts. It had been a relief in Ceylon, but it was no relief here. She wasn’t a seventeen-year-old girl without options. And if someone tried to put her on a ship to Ceylon, she’d fight tooth and nail to stay.
Aidan had been right about that. She’d let herself be sent away out of weakness and resentment. She’d done what they’d told her to, and then they’d named her dead. Her father had gotten his secret dowry. Her husband had gotten a new governor of Ceylon. And Aidan had received the generous sympathy of a hundred stroking hands.
All she’d gotten was a false grave and the knowledge of how stupid she’d been.
That was what she could not bear now. That she’d been a fool again, thinking Aidan broken and lonely without her. He hadn’t curled up into a ball and wished himself dead. He’d built a fortune and filled his life with beautiful women.
He’d touched them, filled them, kissed them, just as he had with Kate.
She touched one gloved finger to her lips, remembering their last kiss. She could hardly fathom that she’d tasted his mouth only hours before. That mouth—beautiful, sensual. How many women had it kissed, licked, sucked, worshipped? How many women had craved that mouth, dreamt of it endlessly, awake or asleep, just as she had?
And Aidan had craved them right back, far more powerfully than he’d ever wanted her.
Insatiable,
that beautiful woman had called him. Relentless. But not with Kate. With Kate, a few simple moments had been enough, as if he were touching a comforting memory before falling asleep. But Kate wanted to be more than a memory to him. She wanted him to need the woman she’d become. She’d already spent half a lifetime married to a man who didn’t want her. She wouldn’t be that again.
A train hissed and chugged from somewhere out of sight. Metal screamed against metal as it drew nearer. It wasn’t the train to Hull, but Kate watched intently as it slid toward the platform in a crazed cloud of steam. It would pull away again in thirty minutes and chug toward someplace very different from Hull. A place so far removed that Kate could hardly imagine it, and yet it had once been her whole world. This train would stop in Derby, at a station only two bare miles from her family’s home.
It was a coincidence, surely, but Kate couldn’t stop staring at the black beast flaunting itself in front of her. It would take her to the place where it had all begun. To the family that had sent her to Ceylon. To the people who’d rather she be dead than bothersome.
Kate was filled with the overwhelming urge to tell them that she’d survived.
What could they do to her, anyway? If they exposed her, they’d have to explain to the world how she’d managed to return from her watery grave. And it no longer mattered, regardless. Gerard had found her.
As soon as she’d left Aidan’s home, she’d hailed a hack and driven straight for that solicitor’s office. He’d refused to see her. What kind of planter’s agent would refuse to see a coffee seller? She’d waited for hours, standing on the street outside, willing the solicitor to come out. He had never emerged, but someone else had, and all her suspicions had been confirmed. The white-haired dray driver who’d worked for Mr. Fost. He hadn’t seen her as he’d shut the door behind him and descended the stairs. He’d looked like a man without a care in the world. As if spying on her had meant nothing. As if ruining her life was just another coin in his pocket.
And so it was. He’d taken a job with Mr. Fost, solely for the purpose of reporting back to this solicitor, and Kate had no doubt now, none at all. This life she’d built was about to end. Gerard had found her. She had to leave. So what did it matter if she made one small detour? Another day, a few hours. It could make no difference when the whole world was running through her fingers like sand.
Kate rose, purchased a ticket, and she boarded the train for home.
Everything was so familiar. Even the coming and going of the light as she walked down the drive. The even spacing of the chestnut trees broke the road into sun and shade, sun and shade. She must have walked up this drive a thousand times. Five thousand times. On Sunday mornings, after church. On Tuesday evenings after their weekly dinner with her widowed aunt. On every bright, sunny afternoon after visiting friends or exploring the woods. And always the light was sorted by these trees.
For a moment, Kate forgot the past and felt so free she nearly floated. She was home, at last. And it felt so right that she almost didn’t care what they’d done to her.
Kate had missed her mother. She was a soft woman, and that quality had made her both comforting and weak. The weakness hadn’t mattered to Kate until those last months. Before that, her mother had been a warm and pleasant presence in Kate’s life.
Her brother had been less accessible. He’d always been away at school or off in London. Then he’d developed a passion for Italy. As a matter of fact, he was likely there now. He’d loved to spend his winters in Italy, and their father had only admonished him not to bring home one of those “dark-blooded women” as a wife.
The thought that she might find her mother alone sped Kate’s footsteps until she reached the expanse of green lawn that stretched to the front steps. She flew across the lawn, racing all the way up the stairs. But then her eagerness deserted her.
Something about standing at the front door cut through her fantasy of a happy return. After all, when had she ever stood here, begging entry? She’d tripped in and out the side doors or been ushered up these stairs by footmen, but she’d never stood on the lonely stone as if she were a stranger.
Kate turned the handle of the door and slipped inside.
The entry hall was dark and quiet. The curtains were open, but the windows caught no sun at this time of day. Somewhere deep within the house, Kate could hear the murmur of servants talking, lending a comfortable hint of life to the otherwise silent building.
Kate turned in a circle, but it was a restless spin. She was done with introspection now. Instead of looking over her old home and marking the changes, Kate moved quietly to the staircase and headed for her mother’s upstairs parlor. Even before she reached the door, she could picture her mother, small and plump and curled up on her chaise with her needlepoint or tatting.
And there she was. Smaller now, and older. So much older than Kate had expected. Her hair had been the same dark brown as Kate’s, but now it was liberally streaked with dull gray, and she squinted down at her needlework through tiny glasses.
Emotion swelled in Kate’s chest, expanding until she couldn’t breathe. Her mother stitched on, unaware.
Kate watched until she couldn’t bear it anymore. “Mother,” she croaked.
Her mother’s frown intensified, then her gaze rose. For a moment, she didn’t recognize her own daughter, and Kate could only hope her eyesight was to blame. Finally, shock overcame her, and the creases in her face relaxed as her eyes widened. “Katie?” she breathed, her work falling to her lap.
“Yes.”
“Katie?” she repeated. “Is it really you?”
Kate nodded. “It’s me.” Her throat tightened, cutting off a chance to say more. When her mother smiled and opened her arms, Kate rushed forward to hug her.
She smelled the same. Of roses and starch, and it seemed so impossible that so much could be the same after ten long years.
“Oh, I’ve missed you, my sweet Katie. I thought I’d never see you again!” Her mother pulled back and frowned. “But whatever are you doing here in England?”
Kate ignored the question. “I can’t stay long, Mother. I’m only passing through.”
“But to where?”
“I . . .” She shook her head. “I wanted to see you and tell you I was well. Are you well?”
“Of course! Very well.”
Kate nodded and made herself continue. “And I wanted to find out . . .”
Her mother watched her with clear, guiltless eyes.
“After I was sent away, Father told everyone I had died.” Her mother’s only response was a slow blink. “Is that true?”
“Well, yes, I’m afraid it is. I can’t pretend I liked it. It was all so incredibly awkward. But . . . your father thought it best.” Ah, yes. This was always her mother’s response. How many times had Kate heard that as her things had been packed for Ceylon? As she’d begged her mother to intervene? Kate tried to bite back that old rage.
“I just want to know
why
. Why would he say I’d died? And why would you let him?”
“He did what he thought best—”
“You always say that!” she fumed. “Always!”
“He was the head of this family, Katie. He knew what was best.”
“Do you honestly believe that? That it was best to send me to the ends of the earth to live with a
stranger?
”
“Well, he did not know, did he? He thought Mr. Gallow was a gentleman. He came with the highest recommendations. By the time your father heard about his troubles—”
“Troubles?”
“He was quite distressed that Mr. Gallow had presented himself as a respected member of the English community of Ceylon when in reality, he was . . . less than . . .”
“He’d gone native, Mother. That’s what they call it when a white man takes up with a native woman. He did not want me. He only wanted the illusion of a white wife because the governor had threatened him with arrest!”
Her mother’s cheeks turned bright red. “If your father had known—”
“Oh, certainly! There is nothing at all wrong with sending your only daughter across the sea to marry a stranger! Nothing at all! So long as he is a
respectable
stranger.”
“Katie, please don’t speak of your father in such a—”
“He told everyone I was dead!”
Her mother shook her head so hard that her cheeks quivered. “He thought it was best, Katie.”
“Best?”
Kate screamed. “Are you mad? Can you even hear yourself?”
“Once your father realized that the circumstances were . . . less than respectable . . . Well, it was too late to stop the marriage. You’d sailed two weeks earlier, and he was only afraid that it would appear mercenary. . . .”
Kate was so overwhelmed with confusion that she collapsed weakly into a chair. “Mercenary?”
“To have it known that he’d betrothed you to a man of such low moral fiber. The title, the family name . . . He was quite upset with Mr. Gallow for his dishonesty. He wrote and told him that he wasn’t to use your name. He wasn’t to advertise the family connection. It appeared . . . sordid.”
“It
was
sordid, Mother.”
“Yes,” she finally conceded, her gaze falling to the floor. “I’m sure it was, my sweet girl.”
Sweet,
Kate thought with a sneer, feeling anything but sweet. “So he dusted off his hands as if he’d taken me out to the rubbish pile. He had his money—”
“Katie!” her mother gasped, still horrified by the mention of something so base.
“He had his money! Thirty-thousand pounds and another five for every year of the marriage, wasn’t that it? A suspiciously high price for a bit of used goods like me.”
Another gasp. Shock for the sake of propriety, but none for Kate herself, it seemed.
“And when Father realized just how mercenary it would appear, to have sold his daughter to a man so far outside polite society that even his friends had shunned him . . . when he realized how that would appear, he demanded it be kept quiet. But he did not ask for me back.”
“What could he do?” her mother whispered. “It was done already.”
“Yes,” Kate said softly. “It was done. But I would still have liked to come home.”
“I’m sorry, Katie,” she said. The words were sincere, but still helpless, as if she could not fathom why Kate couldn’t understand the issue. “But Mr. Gallow would never have sent you back.”
Kate nodded, a ghost of an agreement. Even with the new governor in place, David had needed her as a shield. An excuse for people to pretend they saw nothing. “I should go,” she breathed.
“But you’ve only returned! And you haven’t told me what happened!”
“What do you mean?”
Her mother looked sideways, as nervous as if they were in a roomful of people who might overhear. Then she leaned forward, eyes wide and secret. “We received a letter from your husband’s son. And a visit from his solicitor.”
Kate’s skin turned to brittle ice. It was nothing more than what she’d suspected, but it still stunned her. “Whatever he’s told you is a lie.”