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“You asked for my hand? You truly tried to persuade him?”
Aidan shook his head, and water slid off his hat like teardrops. “What are you talking about? You know I asked him. It was the entire reason we argued.”
“I know.” She nodded, only a faint movement, but she couldn’t seem to stop it. “Yes, of course.”
“Kate.” He lost some of his tension, and he reached for her. His gloved fingers curved under her chin to still her movement. “What do you mean?”
“It’s silly, but . . . He told me you didn’t.”
He tilted his head in puzzlement.
Kate tried to smile. “I never believed him. Not at first. But then . . . you didn’t come for me.”
“Who told you what? You’re not making any sense.”
“My father. He denied that you asked for my hand.”
“My God, Kate! That’s ridiculous. Why would he say that?”
“Because,” she whispered, tilting her chin out of the grasp of his fingers. “Because I told him I couldn’t marry anyone else. I told him I’d already given myself to you.”
“Oh, Kate,” he sighed.
“He said I was a fool. That you’d used me like a . . . like a rag and then tossed me away.”
“No . . .” His face went white. “That’s not true. I asked for permission to marry you. I begged for it on my knees. I swear to you, I did everything but kiss his boots.”
She nodded again, but stopped herself before she got lost in the motion. She couldn’t speak, and the pressure in her throat was one big mass of relief. Despite her initial, violent rejection of her father’s words, at some point they’d rooted in her mind. He’d kicked at one of those stones that held her up, and eventually the seed he’d planted had worked into the cracks like a weed, splitting her certainty wide open. And when that stone had tumbled out, she’d known that Aidan had taken her virginity without any intention of marriage. She’d thought herself in love with a falsehood.
But Kate slid a new stone back into place. Aidan had loved her, and she hadn’t been a fool.
“I did come for you,” he said.
For a moment, she picture him in Ceylon, searching the harbor towns for any sign of her. Her heart clenched in pained hope. “You did?”
“I came to Bannington Hall. Over and over. They said you wouldn’t receive me.”
Her heart fell. “I was with my mother’s family,” she whispered.
He’d never known. He’d said it before, but somehow it hit her now. She’d waited and waited for him to come to Ceylon to rescue her. She’d been so patient. So true.
But slowly, as the weeks had crawled painfully by, she’d realized that he was never coming for her. He didn’t want her. Why else would she still have been on that godforsaken island? Why else would she still have been that strange man’s wife?
Her heart had shriveled up, condensing to a hard, tight knot in her chest, and she’d realized with a quiet kind of horror that Ceylon was her life from then on. Her life. That isolated, foreign place her home; that cold man her husband. No one was ever coming to take her away. And so much of her had crumbled then. There might never be enough stones to fix that.
Remembering that first year in Ceylon, Kate clenched her hands tight. Snow bit at her face and she tried to breathe. “I sent letters,” she whispered. “But of course you never got them. Even then, I didn’t think you did.”
His hand touched her again, smoothing over her cheek. “Don’t cry, Kate. Please.”
Was she crying?
“I came for you,” he whispered urgently. His arms curved around her. He pulled her into his arms and moved them toward the shadows of an alley. “I came for you. I swear I did.”
She nodded again, her cheek scraping over his wool greatcoat, but she was crying hard now, gasping for air. He couldn’t truly understand because she’d never tell him.
“How could you believe that about me?” His breath rushed over her forehead, turning to ice where her skin was wet.
I don’t know, she meant to say, but the words wouldn’t come. I didn’t, truly. A few minutes later, her sobs finally subsided.
