Blackmoore(86)

“I never meant to hurt you.” I choked on my words. “I never meant to hurt you with the bargain. I never thought it could hurt you.”

He rubbed a hand over his face, took a deep breath and then another.

He looked so lost and so desperate that I knew I was close to winning this battle. So I delivered another blow.

“How would we even live, Henry?” I asked, my voice dull with hope-lessness. “You would be giving up your living if you gave up Blackmoore.

What would you do?”

“I am not averse to work! I am quite brilliant, you know. Or maybe you don’t know, since I don’t like to boast, but I am.” I heard the hope in his voice, and I saw the flash of his smile, and it all felt much too cruel.

“I’m not afraid of hard work. Just—”

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J u l i a n n e D o n a l D s o n I held up a hand, warding off his words, choking back the sobs. “No.

No, Henry. No and no and no.”

He stared at me for a long moment. Tears streamed down my cheeks but I did not waver. And finally, all the hope left his face, and in its place was bleak despair. “You will not change your mind.”

“No. Never.” And even though I trembled in every part of me, my voice was strong with resolve. “I made this decision a year and a half ago, and I have made it again tonight. And I would make this exact same decision again and again and again as long as our circumstances are the same.

I will not change my mind, Henry.”

He looked away. I saw him press the heels of his hands to his eyes.

I walked to the window and looked out at the moonlit sea. And after another long stretch of time, I heard him move behind me. I glanced to my left and saw him standing before the open bird cage. He was so still.

“The bird . . .” He looked at me, a question in his face.

“It died.” The words were too blunt, too harsh. Henry flinched and looked back at the cage. When he lifted his eyes to me again there was a new expression in them—a kind of horror that chilled me.

“It doesn’t mean anything, Henry. It’s not a foretelling of my future.

I know that’s what you’re thinking. But it’s just a bird. I will be safe. I will go to my aunt in London, and we’ll travel to India together, and I will be safe. I promise.”

“Miss Worthington?”

It was Alice, at the door, holding a lantern. Then I knew it was time.

It was time to be done with torturing ourselves like this. “I have to go,” I whispered.

“Wait.” Henry grabbed my wrist as I walked past him and pulled me into his arms. “Wait,” he whispered, bending his head to speak softly in my ear. “I still have one last question.”

My heart could not tolerate one last question. My heart was hammer-ing at me, insisting that I was making the greatest mistake of my life. But 262



I could not deny him one final question. So I buried my face in his warm neck and let him hold me one last time. “Go ahead. Ask it.”

“If you loved me—” His voice caught, and he cleared his throat and tried again. “If we could be together, which would you choose—me or India?” His breath touched my neck; his lips grazed my ear. I was melting.

My resolve was crumbling.

“You,” I whispered. His arms tightened around me. And even though I had no right to ask such a thing, I whispered, “If we could be together, which would you choose—me or Miss St. Claire?”

“Oh, Kate.” His hand cradled my cheek, and he pulled back enough to look into my eyes. “It was and is and always will be you.”

I wrapped my fingers around his wrist, keeping him for just a moment longer, all the while knowing that it was such foolishness in me to do this—it was such a weakness to give in to the unthinking demands of my heart.

And then, finally, I found the strength to let go of him, and I stepped back, and he let me go. His hands fell away from me, and he did not try to pull me back. He would not stop me from leaving my cage, and I loved him all the more for it.

Wiping the tears from my eyes, I walked across the bird room to the door, where escape waited for me. I told myself not to look back. But just as I was passing over the threshold I felt a great tug at my heart—as if Henry were calling it back to him. I could not help myself then. I had to look back. I glanced over my shoulder, to see him one last time, and wished immediately that I could undo it. For there he stood, with his arms folded across his chest, looking exactly as he had the day his father died.

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Chapter 38


Alice smuggled me out of Blackmoore and onto the moors, where her brother waited with a pony. He handed me a white sheet and directed me to wrap it around myself. “You will be Linger’s Ghost tonight, miss.” Alice smiled mischievously and admitted that Linger’s Ghost was something the smugglers used to keep people off the moors at night.

“You will not forget the letters?” I asked, full of nerves now that I was actually doing this. “The one to Mrs. Delafield, especially.”

I could not leave without warning Mrs. Delafield of my mother’s plan to entrap Henry using Maria. She was capable of anything, and she was especially motivated when it came to tormenting her one-time friend.

“Don’t worry, miss. I’ll deliver it to her first thing tomorrow morning.