A Stranger at Castonbury(45)

Jamie nodded as if he could read her thoughts. ‘I thought I was doing my duty, that I was doing what needed to be done for the security of all Europe. But in the end I left my family, my first duty, in dire straits while I worked to help re-establish a vengeful madman to the throne. There are times I can’t even look at myself in the mirror knowing what has happened. Especially...’

‘Especially what?’ Catalina whispered.

‘Especially when I thought I had lost you and I couldn’t say these things to you. That you were right. That I am sorry. Sorry for so many things.’

Catalina shook her head. She closed her eyes tightly against the tears that prickled at her eyes. It was all too, too late. Everything. ‘We have both paid for our mistakes now. We’ve done what we had to do and now we must go forward. You are here with your family now, and they seem so happy to have you back.’

‘And you, Catalina?’

She laughed. ‘I am glad you are here, too. When I thought you were dead...’ Her heart had been torn out. But she had somehow gone on living. She could surely do that again.

‘That was one of the reasons I was able to accept my task,’ Jamie said quietly. ‘When you were gone it hardly mattered to me what happened.’

A tiny spark of hope bloomed in Catalina’s heart, but she knew it was futile. That had been a long time ago, and so much had changed. But knowing that he had missed her—it was something she could cling to. One certain thing in the midst of so much that was confusing.

‘I meant what I said earlier, Jamie,’ she said. ‘You must consider yourself free of me. You have to do what your family needs now.’ Catalina despaired of knowing how she could let him go—divorce was too public, and a scandal was the last thing his family needed. But she had to do what was best for him.

‘Do I?’ Jamie shook his head, that unreadable little half-smile touching his lips. He looked towards the darkened house, and Catalina glanced over to see that a golden light glowed in one of the upstairs windows. Soon other people would be awake, and she needed to be safely in her chamber before they were.

She stood up and tightened her shawl around her shoulders as she turned away from Jamie. ‘You know you do. And now I must go.’

She wanted to leave quickly, to get away from the folly without looking at him again. He was too good at reading people; he would see her confusion and pain right away, and her attempt to do what was right would be painfully prolonged.

He didn’t say anything, he didn’t try to hold her back, but his hand brushed over hers as she swept past him.

‘Sleep well, Catalina,’ he called softly as she slipped out into the garden. ‘But remember—this isn’t over yet.’

Catalina ran back to the house, not stopping until her chamber door was safely shut behind her. She feared that he was too right—it wasn’t over, at least not in her heart. And it never would be.





Chapter Twelve

Buxton was crowded and noisy as Jamie eased his curricle past a large, lumbering landau and turned down a side lane. Shop doors were thrown open for the customers who hurried in and out laden with packages, calling out to friends, finishing the morning’s errands. It was a warm day despite the heavy grey skies that threatened rain later and the damp air, and everyone wanted to be home before the storm came.

No one paid him any attention as he made his way through the town. He wore a plain grey coat and a broad-brimmed hat drawn low over his brow, and no one seemed to recognise the carriage. He liked those few moments of solitude, where there was only the horse and the road, and no one in his family there to watch him with ill-concealed concern in their eyes.

They never asked him questions, but he could tell they wanted to know what had really happened. One day he would have to tell them, but not yet. Not while he still had no words for the guilt that twisted at him when he thought of how he had left them, of the pain he had caused.

Not when the issue of Catalina was still unresolved. His wife.

She said she considered him free of her, that he had to do his duty to his family now. Yet what of his duty to her? He had to do what was right, but how could he when she would not let him? If she would not let him be her husband, he still had to take care of her.

And he had to start doing right by her and his family by settling old scores. As he had worked on the estate in the past few days after the assembly, he had thought about it all a great deal.

Jamie drew up at a small house set on a quiet street not far from the Assembly Rooms and climbed down from the high carriage seat. There was no one else passing by this row of small but respectable dwellings; it was far from the shops and the more fashionable neighbourhoods. The houses were plain and well-kept, quite unexceptional in every way. There were only a few shops across the street that catered mostly to the comfortably off merchants, widows and lawyers who lived in the houses.