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“After London, I’ll have to return home or my mother will never forgive me.”
Kate slipped her fingers into his hair, remembering again how soft it was. “There’s no question you must go. Don’t say it as if you must apologize.”
“I want you to come to the party.”
“Aidan! Don’t be mad. That’s impossible.”
“Why?”
Kate shook her head and rolled to her back, feeling the edge of the mattress and the space that loomed beyond it. “Why even ask such a thing? My husband, my shop, my family . . .”
“Then what about London? Would you come to London? Just for a few days. I’ll leave the knocker off the door. No one will even know we’re there.”
“I can’t! Not right now. I’m still cultivating this business. I’m supporting myself.”
“I know,” he sighed, pulling her back to rest against him. “But I wish . . .”
She stroked his hair again, but at his next words, her hand froze.
“Perhaps . . . perhaps we could look into divorce.”
“Pardon?” she rasped, her heart shuddering beneath her breast.
“Your husband could be accused of desertion. He is never coming.”
She knew that better than he, but she couldn’t allow Aidan to even consider the insane idea of divorce. If he even mentioned it to someone, everything would become exposed. Her name. David’s death. This false life she’d built for herself. And whatever disaster Gerard had created. So she swallowed hard and dug deeper into her lie. “We no longer live as man and wife, but that hardly means he deserves to be shamed. He’s still worthy of respect and honor.”
“Ah.” His whole body changed in that moment. His warm flesh cooled and hardened into stone. “Unlike me?”
“Aidan.”
“You’d take me as your lover, but—”
“Yes, as my lover. And everything that means.”
“Well, what does it mean?” he snapped.
“Aidan, I’ve no experience with this. But I’m given to understand that in London . . . in London . . .”
She saw his head turn slowly toward her, his eyes glinting in the faint light. “What have you heard?”
His voice had gone so hard that she lost her nerve and could only shake her head. “Never mind.”
Aidan sat up and swung from the bed to pace to the other side of the room. “What have you heard about London?”
“I only heard that married women there take lovers as a matter of course. Is that not true?”
Aidan stared silently at her, his shadow a blank space in the room.
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
He’d frightened her with his reaction, and now her fear turned to anger. “Why are you stomping about the room as if I’ve insulted you? You cast it as dishonor to be asked to my bed? Is that what you think I’ve done? Dishonored myself?”
“I . . . No. No, of course not.”
“As if it’s an insult that I want you!”
