Page 117 of Better Love Next Time
“I—I left the plans for our Christmas party on my dressing table.”
“Fuck your courtesy, Katherine. If you leave now, leave for good.Stay away.”
Her hand struck his cheek with a resounding slap. “Do you know who you are when you speak so cruelly? When you told me I was the antithesis of pleasure? When you told me, how many times, you didn’t love me? When you said my pleas had no bearing on your decision? Yourfather, Julian. And I refuse to live with him.”
She climbed in the coach, and the groom secured the door. Julian twisted on his heel and walked into the house to begin his life without her. Again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Althea’s facewas a mask of regret in the dark coach as she apologized and asked to be dropped at the Carletons’ door. There was the Christmas pageant, she explained.
“You have been called home to visit your brother after your father’s passing,” Althea said. “And the Carletons will understand I cannot possibly stay alone with Mr. St. Clair.”
Kitty clasped Althea’s hand, shockingly warmer than her own. “You will come to Farendon? After the pageant?”
“Of course I will. I’ll be there in time for Christmas.” But Althea refused funds for the journey. And the forced lightness of Althea’s farewell and her robust embrace at the vicarage door felt like the prelude to a long, maybe permanent, goodbye.
Kitty settled back into the coach and wept, her insides vibrating with fear at Julian’s words. Exactly what the earl had said after ordering Cyril to kill her.Your pleas have no bearing on my decision.
She had been hurled back in time to the June afternoon. Pleading for her child’s life on the riverbank. She still was there as the coach departed Southampton. Julian had been theearl. The monster. Eyes narrowed, determination carved in the aristocratic lines of his cheek and jaw. Cruel and aloof.
Fuck his discourtesy, she thought, her face flaming at her obscene choice of words. She would never worry about facing the earl because she would never see the monster. She would find Father Dunlevy and spend the rest of her days as Madame Féline. The truth of Andrew would go to the grave now, with her.
The grave might claim her soon. The early winter had pitted the roads with holes that could swallow a man whole. Along the Great North Road, deep, jagged ruts grasped at the coach wheels careening them to and fro until one cracked in two. It delayed her journey by two days.
Sequestered in a small inn south of St. Neots, she ate little in her private parlor. She prayed. She paced her rooms. Outside the windows was the idyllic landscape, now cold and bitter, of her childhood. The skeleton trees of Eaton Socon Wood where she had first laid eyes on the beautiful boy, Julian St. Clair, sketching his dreams. At the icy edge of the river, swans flocked. Not far north was where Julian had proposed to her under the night sky. Farther north was a bank of reeds, marshy grass, and mud where Julian’s father had ordered her face shoved underwater.
She wrote Father Dunlevy of her hope to join him for the foreseeable future and posted a copy to each home on his circuit.
Five days from when she had left Southampton, Georgiana, the Marchioness of Eastwick for more than two years, welcomed Kitty at Farendon with open arms and a frock coat and breeches. Kitty’s longest, dearest friend brimmed with questions after their years apart, but she contained them only because her children would not allow her to part from them.
She had two beautiful boys. Stephen, the oldest, almost two years old, took after his father, dark-haired, quiet, observant. Daniel was a golden-haired, blue-eyed hellion who itched to walk at eight months with the scrapes to prove it.
Lord Eastwick, a doting father and towering man with a calming presence, was perfect for Georgiana. He had given Georgiana everything a wife could wish for, especially the freedom to be herself.
Kitty was relieved for those extra days spent alone in the inn. It made it much easier to embrace Georgiana’s happiness.
Before dinner, Georgiana handed Daniel to the nurse and dragged Kitty to the room where she would be staying. A plate of biscuits and Stephen came with, Georgiana’s son toddling about the room as Kitty and Georgiana settled in for a talk. Just like her childhood with the cozy scent of horses on Georgiana’s coat and the enveloping comfort of the feather bed.
Georgiana yanked off her boots and swung around to lie on her side. Kitty sat back on her hands, her stockinged feet tucked under her gown.
From the bedside, Stephen reached for a biscuit, and Georgiana pulled him up, sitting him at their feet. She fingered Kitty’s black skirt. “I never imagined you’d wear black for Sir Jeffrey.”
Kitty shrugged and brushed a stray lock of Georgiana’s long, auburn hair. The last she had seen her friend, it had been a cap of curls not reaching her shoulders. “Your hair is beautiful.”
“Thank you.” Georgiana smiled. A little nervous. “Your letters… they soothed me to know you were alive after your disappearance. But they were the veriest vague.”
While Georgiana spoke, she brushed back her son’s hair as he turned to his stomach, a soldier in one hand and a biscuit between his teeth. Kitty had seen her do it many times since her morning arrival, and it made her ache.
“I’m sorry,” Kitty said. “But I had to be careful.”
Georgiana’s sea-blue eyes widened. “And you could not trust me? Admit to me this fantastical secret. I long to be taken intoconfidence. Motherhood is an open book. Wonderful, mind, but without a scheme one.”
Kitty was to leave with Father Dunlevy when he arrived at Farendon. That is, she prayed he received one of her letters and would welcome her company. And Georgiana, who had always championed a match between her and Julian, could not know about her marriage.
But something close to the truth would do.
“The night I refused to marry Lord Staverton, Julian rescued me. He helped me escape from England.”
