She grabbed for his arm. “Seger, wait!”
He paused and looked back, but she didn’t know what to say.
He didn’t either, apparently.
She let go of him, and he left her behind.
Seger had to force himself to put one foot in front of the other as he walked toward Daphne.Daphne!His heart was ramming against his ribcage, and his head was spinning with a dizzying mixture of shock and anger.
How could she be alive? How could she have let him think she was dead all these years?
He stopped a fair distance away, feeling suddenly paralyzed as their eyes met.
Standing in the shade beneath the arch, she looked the same. Older, yes, but still lovely. She no longer looked like a merchant’s daughter, however. She wore a deep purple silk gown of the highest fashion, and a matching plumed hat with black netting over her face.
Seger swallowed hard and forced his feet to carry him the rest of the way. When he reached her, he let his eyes roam over her face and saw the years that spanned between them. Tiny wrinkles framed the outside of her eyes. Within them, he saw the experience of a life apart from his. She was not the innocent, buoyant girl she had been when he’d first met her, all smiles and exuberant expressions. She seemed confident. Mature.
He had so many questions.
She took her time studying his face, too.
Slowly the shock of seeing her again abated. Seger took a deep breath and found the will to speak. “I thought you were dead.”
She lowered her gaze to the ground. “I know.”
Her voice hadn’t changed at all. Something deep within him trembled at the sound.
“Why didn’t you contact me?” he asked harshly. “Didn’t you know how deeply I would suffer?”
She moistened her lips and stared apologetically into his eyes. “I thought it was best. I thought it was the only way to get you to forget about me and move on.”
Seger clenched his jaw to try and stifle his anger—anger that stemmed from being lied to for all these years. By Daphne of all people. He needed to understand.
“Explain this to me, please. You were not on the ship that went down? What happened?”
“I was on another ship that left two days later. Your father was afraid that if you knew what ship I had boarded you would trace me to my destination in America.”
Seger let that sink in, then his mind groped for other questions. There were so many of them, questions that had haunted him and gnawed at him for eight painful years.
“Why didn’t you at least tell me you were leaving, and say goodbye?”
“Because you wouldn’t have let me go.”
“Damn right I wouldn’t have.”
She shook her head and met his eyes again. “I couldn’t let you defy your father, Seger. You would have been disinherited. You would have had no family. I didn’t want to drag you down.”
“Youwould have been my family.”
“But we would have been social outcasts. Penniless.”
His eyebrows drew together in dismay. “You knew that didn’t matter to me. I never cared about society’s approval. I ended up a social outcast anyway. By choice.”
She nodded.
He realized by her response that from a distance, she had been following his path through life. The knowledge gave him a chill. “You knew that?”
“Yes. It was one of my conditions when I accepted your father’s petition to see me leave England. I made Quintina promise to keep me abreast of your news.”
