AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She shook her head and started walking, rushing as if she could escape him. Heads turned in her direction, but she didn’t care. Gerard’s footsteps stayed close behind her, though he didn’t try to touch her again.
There was no point in rushing to her shop as if it would offer sanctuary, but she simply could not maintain this ruse for more than a few moments. Gerard made her skin crawl and her belly draw up. She could not stroll down the lane as if he were a beloved husband.
When she reached the shop door, she hit her knuckles far too hard against the bright and cheerful wood. The pain rang up to her elbow and slithered to her shoulder. The keys dropped to the ground.
“Here, darling. Let me.”
“Mr. Hamilton!” a voice called. Kate glanced back to see Gulliver Wilson standing in the doorway of his tobacco store. His eyes were bright with hostile pleasure. “I see you found your wife!”
“I did. Thank you for your assistance, sir.”
Kate heard the keys clink and then the gasp of the door opening. She closed her eyes against Gulliver Wilson’s grin and let herself be led inside.
Chapter 30
“How could you have done that to me?” he growled, slamming the door behind him, plunging them into the dark.
Kate backed up, arms stretched out behind her, trying to find the archway that led to the back rooms. But his hand snaked out and grabbed her shoulder. His other hand curved around the nape of her neck, fingers tightening like a vise.
“After what you did to my father!”
“Stop it! I didn’t do anything.”
“Don’t lie to me. I was trying to help you—”
She tried to shake her head, but his grasp was too tight. She latched her hands around his wrist. “You’re hurting me.”
“As you have hurt me!” But he let her go, pushing her aside with a curse.
Her eyes had adjusted, and she could see now, but so could Gerard. When she edged toward the back, his gaze slid to the alley door.
“Let me make this clear, Katherine. If you run off, I’ll tell everyone who’ll listen that you killed my father. I’m done chasing you.”
“I didn’t kill him!”
“Don’t treat me like a fool! Am I to think he died naturally, with blue lips and white fingers? With the smell of poison on his mouth? I saw you go into that room, damn it. And I saw his body afterward.”
Kate pressed her hand to her mouth and shook her head. She knew exactly what David had looked like. It had haunted her dreams for weeks afterward.
“I’m trying to help you.”
“By tormenting me?” she shot back.
“Would you rather go to prison?”
“I didn’t do it! I would never have hurt him. Never!”
“Good Christ, Katherine, you were
the one who hurt him in the first place!”
“Oh,” she breathed, shocked at having it said aloud. Yes, she’d wanted to blame herself for David’s accident at first, but David had brushed aside her apologies. It had been her first hint that he was a human being and not the monster she’d considered him. “It was an accident,” she said.
“I can understand your feelings, Katherine,” Gerard said, as he paced across the room to idly open one of the bins. “You were forced to marry a man you didn’t want, then even made to live in the same house as his mistress. He refused you his affections, gave you no children. How could you not hate him?”
“I didn’t hate him.”
“You told me you did.”
