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“No. I’m sorry, Kate. It’s only jealousy. Of him and his name and his hold over you. That he would come between us . . .”
Kate slumped back into the bed, all her nervous outrage stolen away. She understood, because David did still sit between them, though in ways that Aidan couldn’t comprehend.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated.
“I want this thing for us, Aidan. Not for the ceremony or title of it. I don’t need your name. Do I?”
He moved closer and sat wearily on the mattress. “No. You’re right. This is enough. It’s everything. But what if there’s a babe? Surely that is more than enough motive to consider divorce now, before it becomes necessary?”
“I have been married a long while, and there has never been a child.” That was true enough, though David had come to her bed rarely, and never after the first few years. And every month she had said a small prayer of thanks.
His hand splayed against her belly.
“We cannot simply go back to where we ended,” she said quietly. “There’s no going back for us.”
“I know,” he said, and she could tell by the terrible weight of his words that he did.
“But we can have this, can’t we? Does it have to be a disappointment?”
She waited, feeling the lovely heat of his hand against her stomach. She wanted desperately for it to be enough for him, because what if it wasn’t? She couldn’t give him more. She couldn’t be more. And if Aidan left now, she’d spend her lifetime remembering what she might have had.
Aidan sighed. “Of course it is not a disappointment, Kate. Never think that. It’s more than I dreamed possible.”
“Then come back to bed.”
He hesitated for only one heartbeat before sliding back beneath the bedclothes.
“I’ll leave before dawn,” he promised, but it felt so far away that Kate didn’t care. This was enough for her, because it must be.
Chapter 18
He was gone the next day, and Kate’s world returned to normal. She swept and filled orders and brewed samples. She interacted with her neighbors as if nothing had changed, answering the occasional question about India and her husband. No one looked at her strangely. No one commented on her transformation from wraith to woman. It was as if he’d never been there.
Yet there were the places on her body that felt different. The raw places where his roughened jaw had scraped her. The space between her legs that his cock had stretched. Her mouth felt full and sensitive. Her hands weak from clutching him to her. And her heart . . . that was altogether changed, her blood replaced by something brighter and quicker.
But no one noticed, and the secret only made it all the more delicious.
She had a lover, and it felt even sweeter than it had when she was a girl. That sweetness buoyed her courage, and she was restless to face what she’d once run from.
She hadn’t meant to hurt Gerard. Not that night, nor any time before. But she’d known from the start that his feelings for her had been nothing like what a son should feel for his father’s wife. She could understand that. They’d lived in the jungle, isolated from the world, and Kate and Gerard had been nearly the same age. “You should’ve been my wife,” he’d once whispered. He’d still been young then, and Kate had only stammered and blushed until he’d left her room. But he’d grown more persistent after David’s decline in health.
Still, she’d never expected his jealousy to drive him to such madness.
When midday arrived and the shop grew quiet, Kate locked the door and walked out into the bright day. The sun was high, but all its warmth was lost somewhere in the heavens. As she hurried through the busy streets toward the dockmaster’s house, the air stuck to her skin like ice. By the time she knocked on Lucy’s front door, she was shivering. She’d finally left the heat of Ceylon behind.
A maid let her in, but only a half second passed before she heard her name called. “Kate!” Lucy trilled, skipping down the stairs. “I was just coming to see you!”
“The dinner was lovely last night.” Her last word was smothered by Lucy’s hug.
“Oh, it was, wasn’t it?” She stole a look around the entryway. “Come. Let’s go for a walk.”
“It’s freezing outside, Lucy.”
“Oh, I don’t care! I feel like I’m going to burst.”
Kate raised her eyebrows and retrieved her cloak from the maid. “Well, then. We’d best walk.” Or Kate would die of curiosity.
Before they’d even reached the sidewalk, Lucy bubbled over. “He is so kind, Kate. So genteel.”
