Page 68

THE FOLLOWING DAY found Andrew discovering a new hatred for the bell that hung over the door of his shop. Word must’ve gotten out that he was supplying Mrs. Parkem’s, because for the past three days all manner of tailors and dressmakers had been visiting Colter’s Fine Notions. Having to pretend that he enjoyed long discussions about horn versus mother-of-pearl and the merits of the different concoctions that could be used to shine brass buttons was beginning to grate on him. It didn’t help that Gillie seemed to enjoy sitting back and watching him fumble his way through the barrage of questions flung at him each day.

However, a job was a job, even if it was a false one, and he was going to do it well.

He put on the same pleasant smile he’d seen Lavinia use and turned to face his customer. Except it wasn’t a customer at all. It was Caleb Malcolm.

“You,” he said.

“It’s been a long time. I wondered if you would recognize me at all,” said Caleb.

Oh, Andrew recognized him. Although the man had grown into his features, he looked essentially the same as he had when he was fifteen, save for a puffiness around his eyes, some bruising, and a slight hunch to his once-proud carriage.

“How could I mistake my childhood best friend for anyone else?” asked Andrew.

Caleb snorted. “Livy always had that title and we both know it.”

There was something about the way that Caleb said Lavinia’s nickname that made Andrew wary. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

“I don’t suppose you’d stay away from my sister if I asked you to,” Caleb said.

So that was what this was about. Caleb was here to warn him off.

“No,” Andrew said.

“And if I assure you that you are not nearly good enough for her no matter how much you were able to scrape together after all your years at sea?”

This, Andrew thought, was the problem with childhood friends. They knew all of your most closely held vulnerabilities and could prod them at will, except Caleb had this one wrong.

It had taken him years to accept that while most people would say he wasn’t good enough for Lavinia, he had done more than enough to prove himself. He’d sailed the world and acquitted himself bravely. He’d been nearly drowned, shot at, stabbed, slashed, and almost poisoned. He’d served Her Majesty, even if sometimes begrudgingly, and he knew his worth as a man.

Being good enough for Lavinia no longer scared him, but the idea of trusting her once again did. He might have grown into the man he was destined to become, but that didn’t change the fact that she’d scarred him deeply. Intellectually he could understand why she’d married Parkem. He could sympathize with her, knowing now the pressure her family had put her under. Still, the lingering thought niggled at his brain, asking him if it was all true.

Yet it hadn’t stopped him when they’d been alone in his office. He’d been intoxicated first by the anger at seeing her wounded brow and then by the relief of understanding she’d left Wark’s house unmolested. He might’ve been able to control himself and set her aside if she’d been cold and rigid in his arms, but instead she’d returned his kiss with every ounce of passion he’d remembered her to possess. That was when he’d lost his damn mind, taken her back to his rooms, and found solace in her.

That was why he was doing his best to try to stay away, checking the tug of invisible forces that kept tempting him to sprint over to her shop, order her staff out of the building, and lock the two of them away in her bedroom for a fortnight.

“What do you want, Caleb?” he asked.

His old friend shot him a rueful smile. “You two always did whatever it was you wanted, damn everyone else.”

“We were in love.”

There. He said it and he hadn’t even choked on his words. It had been a full day since he’d bid her good-bye at the door of his rooms and that had been roiling around in his mind the entire time. Saying it out loud to himself had been something of a test. He’d known that his heart had hardened if not healed when it no longer hurt to say “I loved Lavinia. I no longer love Lavinia.” But the previous night, the words had no longer had the detached quality he’d come to rely on. Now they were imbued with something entirely new that he knew it was best not to grow too comfortable with.

“I was sitting in her kitchen when she came home,” said Caleb.

“She’s a grown woman. She can do as she pleases,” said Andrew.

“You might think that, but no one else does. She brought down her own station in the world, and I’d like to be sure that she doesn’t fall any farther,” said Caleb.

Andrew stared at the man he was quickly beginning to think of as his former friend. “You don’t actually believe that.”

“It’s a fact, and an indisputable one at that. Lavinia was a merchant’s wife, and now she’s a dressmaker,” said Caleb.

“She married a merchant who left her with nothing but debts and she had the fortitude to pull herself out of that situation and strike out on her own. She deserves your admiration, not your disdain,” Andrew gritted out.

Lavinia’s brother blanched at that. “You don’t know a thing about my admiration for my sister. You haven’t spoken to me in more than a decade. Not one letter. Not one note to tell me that you’d survived. My sister wasn’t the only one who cared what happened to you.”

Andrew shoved a hand through his hair, trying to calm the mixture of anger and shame warring in him. Caleb was right. He hadn’t even bothered to write to his old friend to tell him he was alive. Seeing what he’d thought was Lavinia’s betrayal laid out so clearly for himself that day had wiped all desire to retain any aspect of his old life. He’d stayed away from Eyemouth for years, returning only briefly when his father had fallen ill, and refusing to go into town. He’d cut that part of his life out as though it had meant nothing to him because that had been the easiest thing to do. Not once had he given thought to his old friends. To the people who might care.