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“I left home when I was hardly more than a child to work so that I could provide for you one day. Every single time I signed on to a ship was for you.”

“No, it wasn’t,” she said. “You had your reasons—some of them were even good ones—but don’t pretend they were selfless.”

“Then why don’t you tell me what it was that motivated my own decisions?”

“You were trying to prove something to yourself and everyone else in the world. Something I still don’t think you’re satisfied with.”

“What is that?” he asked.

“That you can outrun the circumstances of your birth. You blame your father and mother for not being more. I never met your mother, but your father was a good man. He didn’t deserve that. Neither do you.”

A shadow passed over his face and she knew she’d gone too far, but that didn’t make any of what she’d said untrue. Andrew had loved his father, but it had been plain from the day he was old enough to understand class that he was ashamed of his father’s lowly status. She could remember him peering around the parish church while her father was preaching, taking in with keen eyes the wealthiest families in the town who sat in the first pews. He’d spin tales for her of the things they would do with their large house stuffed full of treasures from his travels. And she’d indulged him in all of this because somehow, even in the ignorance of youth, she’d realized that it mattered to him.

But now they were older. Their lives had changed so much, he’d come up in the world, and yet he was still trying to frame the world as hers and his. As though they were staring across two cliffs at each other, unable to breach the chasm between them.

“All I ever wanted to do was provide a life for you,” he said, his voice suddenly tired.

“I never asked that of you,” she said.

“But you would’ve. You would’ve wanted to know why you couldn’t have the dresses you wanted or the sweets you like or new slippers to go dancing at the town hall.”

Her anger broke like a dam breached. “Is that how little you think of me, that I would’ve let dresses and sweets govern my happiness?” She was shouting again, a lifetime of unspoken words and resentment coursing through her. “You’re all I ever wanted. I would’ve taken you however you would’ve come to me—rich or poor—but you never asked me what truly mattered to me.

“I didn’t need some heroic sailor who won bounties and made himself rich enough to build me a castle on a hill. I needed the man I loved to be there. I needed you to come home to every night, knowing that my husband was safe, but you died. You died, and I had to keep going in a world where the one thing I truly wanted was gone.”

“You married again. You built your life,” he said.

“And when you found out, you turned your back on me, never once asking what had happened. You didn’t think for a second that I had done anything but gone to Alistair of my own free will. It wasn’t enough that you broke my heart—you couldn’t even bring yourself to look at me. It took nothing for you to doubt me, and I’ve had to live with that for twelve years.”

Hot tears streaked down her reddened face. Her hands clutched at her chest, trying to hold in her heart that felt as though it were trying to burst out. “You aren’t protecting me. You’re pushing me away. Tell me that removing me from the operation is just because of Wark. Tell me honestly that you’re not terrified of what you feel for me, because we both know there’s still something here.”

He swallowed, and for a moment she thought he might break, but then he said, “This was a dalliance. Nothing more.”

“Don’t you dare cheapen what we have, Andrew. Don’t you dare.” It was as though he were determined to take her last ounce of hope and grind it into dust under his heel.

This time, when she balled up her fist to pound on the ceiling, he didn’t stop her. The carriage shuddered to a halt.

“I’ll see to it that Gillie pays you for your efforts,” he said. “Two thousand pounds, as agreed.”

So this was how it would end. With a cold transaction thrown in her face. She didn’t know why she’d thought it would be any different. He’d disappeared from her life once before and he was going to do it again.

The carriage door opened, sending sunlight spilling into the darkened space. Without another word, she took the driver’s hand and alighted to the street, two blocks from her shop.

She barely made it home before the tears began to fall anew.

Chapter Nineteen

ANDREW DIDN’T OFTEN long to drink to excess, but Christ did he want to drown himself in a bucket of gin now. Instead, he was standing in the middle of his office, tugging at the ends of his tailcoat, trying not to think about the mess that was the operation Home had forced him into.

The last few days had been their own special brand of hell, with the prince’s arrival. He and Gillie had done what they could to try to keep the prince safe, but with no access to the future monarch because that bastard Sir Reginald Palmer-Smythe refused to budge, it was mostly futile. At least they’d managed to make it through the first of the most high-profile royal appearances without an assassination attempt. After the parade, he and Gillie had come back to the shop, opened a bottle of whiskey, and toasted one another in weary silence.

At least the insanity of the last few days had kept Lavinia from his mind. A little. The memory of her crying in the carriage, all of her anger and frustration rushing out of her as she shouted at him, haunted him every time silence stretched around him. Each of the words she’d hurled at him was like a slap, and they stung all the more because they were true.

Only Lavinia had the ability to cut through everything and force him to confront the ugliness within him.

She was right. He hadn’t needed to go off to sea. He could’ve stayed in Eyemouth and taken over the business as his father had hoped he would. But he’d gone off, filled with the cocky determination of a child who needed to prove himself and with no mind for the girl he left behind. He’d always assumed she’d be at home, waiting for him, loving and loyal as she’d always been. When he’d found that wasn’t the case, he’d blamed her for shattering the illusions that had kept him fighting, first for position and then for survival. In an instant, he’d become jealous. Twisted. Hateful. A version of himself he’d hardly recognized some days until one disturbing morning he realized that it had become normal. His default.

He’d had no right to blame her, he could see that now, yet it had taken him pushing her until she broke for him to understand that. And now . . . now his jealousy might have ruined any chance of holding on to her.