Trial by Desire (Carhart #2)(24)
Kate sighed, her practical side taking over. If she ever brought her husband to his knees, she would likely feel as confused as she was now. She wouldn’t know what to do with him.
Rage had a place and a purpose, but even anger left her vulnerable. What had her furious imaginings been but hope in another form? Already she’d reverted to girlish dreams, involving declarations of love, delivered on one knee. But she didn’t need revenge. She had no use for petty scorn. She just didn’t want to be hurt.
She shut her eyes and breathed deeply. No hope. No longing. No desire. If she could just excise her wants, he could never cause her pain again.
KATE REMOVED THE EGGS, one by one, from her pockets and set them on the rickety table in front of her. Motes of dust tangled in the pale morning sunshine, filtering through the thick glass windows of the little shepherd’s shack.
“I cannot say when I’ll be back,” she said, pulling the last egg from her cloak pocket. “I had thought I might come out here with greater regularity, but there have been complications.”
Louisa sat in her chair, her arms folded about her swaddled infant. She looked as ladylike as ever, even though the serviceable green wool she wore was no match for the delicate silks and sprigged muslins that had made up her wardrobe in London. Her face grew long at these words, and she pulled her child closer to her chest.
“Complications,” she said quietly. “I detest complications.”
Kate began heaping provisions from her basket onto the table. Her shoulders ached, having carted the load five miles here. “There’s a cured ham and some carrots and a bunch of greens. You know there are already potatoes and turnips in the shelter. But I’ve brought some scallions from the garden, such as they are. I might not return for a week. The fare will likely be monotonous.”
She trailed off, feeling useless. Louisa shook her head.
“What sort of complications could keep you away for a week?”
Kate glanced away and pulled another cloth napkin from the basket.
The cottage where Louisa was hidden lay five miles to the west of Berkswift. It had once been little better than a shepherd’s shelter, four walls and a makeshift fireplace. But over the decades, it had grown into a tiny three-room affair—an open room for cooking and eating, furnished with a rough-hewn table and trestles, a sleeping room and a storage shed.
Louisa and the Yorkshire nursemaid Kate had hired fit compactly in the space, packed together like common passengers shoved into a stagecoach.
Kate reached into the basket one last time. Her hands closed on metal, cold and deadly. “I brought you—”
“News, Kate. I want news.”
“This.” Kate set the silver-tooled pistol next to the ham.
The clink it made as she laid the weapon on wood seemed somehow too soft, to demure, to have been made by a gun. She’d found it that morning in a cabinet. It had been a grim sort of serendipity. Under the circumstances, bringing it had seemeed like a good idea.
“Do you know how to shoot?” Kate asked.
Louisa’s face shuttered. “Not really. One—one simply points and squeezes, I suppose?”
“Harcroft is staying at Berkswift.” Kate spoke quickly, as if saying the words faster would make them less painful. “He caught wind of a rumor about a woman looking like you disembarking from a cart. He flew out here in a rage.”
“He knows.” Louisa’s face froze. Her hand curled around her sleeping baby in quiet protectiveness. Her eyes pinched to narrowness. But by the slump in her spine, that show of strength was little more than bravado.
“He doesn’t, not yet. But I’d like to keep it that way. He’s furious. And—unfortunately—he is staying in my house.”
“I see.” Louisa let out a breath and then smiled. It was a brave expression, somewhat belied by the nervous dart of her eyes. “Well, at least worry will keep me from boredom. I never thought I would miss those dreadful meetings that the Ladies’ Beneficial Tea Society insisted on holding, but right now I would give anything for a heated argument about the merits of embroidering handkerchiefs versus the knitting of socks and scarves.” She smiled lazily. “Right now I have nothing to do but watch over Jeremy. And he sleeps a shocking amount of the time.”
Over the course of Kate’s less-than-ladylike secret career, spent stealing women away from husbands who didn’t deserve them, she’d seen many different responses. One woman had escaped her husband—but after two days she’d begged to return, insisting that the man could not survive without her, that he loved her. That he wouldn’t hit her again. Another had cowered for three weeks in this cottage, unable to lift her head. Yet another had grabbed hold of the chance and scampered for freedom as soon as it was offered. Louisa had landed somewhere in between those extremes.
She had argued her duty as wife for months, when Kate had first found out what was happening to her. Then Louisa had given birth to her first child, and whatever she felt her dry duty as wife had been, her duty as mother had overwhelmed her with a ferocious passion. There were not many women in Louisa’s situation who would joke about boredom, with their husbands off raging in the distance.
“He’ll stay a few days,” Kate predicted. “He’ll uncover no trail, no clues—just that rumor of an auburn-haired lady who paid a merchant for a ride in his cart, and then disappeared. In a week, he’ll have moved on.” Louisa nodded.