LITMIR.BIZ

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gingerly relinquished her hold on her teacup and essayed a small smile. “Have a lovely journey. Will you be home in time for tea?”

      “No. The Peerless is leaving St. Katharine’s at noon, and I intend to be on it.”

      Not just the light was blinding. She raised her eyes to him, and his sincerity finally penetrated. “Oh, God. You really meant it. You’re leaving? But I thought—”

      She’d thought she had time for that silk night rail, folded carefully in paper.

      He shook his head. “Kate, we’ve been married three months. We both know that the only reason we wed was because people found us alone together and imagined more had happened. We married to stave off the scandal.”

      Put so baldly, her impractical hopes sounded even more foolish than she’d supposed.

      “The truth is,” he continued, “neither of us is ready to be married, not really.”

      Neither of them?

      He stood and pushed back his chair. “I’ve never had the chance to prove myself to anyone. And … “ He trailed off, his hand scrubbing through his hair. “And I want to.”

      He set his serviette atop his plate and turned around. The world swirled around Kate.

      He was walking away, as if this had been normal breakfast conversation on a regular day.

      “Ned!” Kate vaulted to her feet. The word seemed as like to hold back the breaking floodwaters of her marriage as the insubstantial silk gown waiting upstairs.

      His shoulders tensed, two sharp blades beneath the wool of his coat. He stopped in the doorway on the verge of escape.

      She didn’t have the words to capture the cold tremor that ran through her. She settled on “I wish you wouldn’t. I wish you would stay.”

      He tilted his head, just enough to see her over his shoulder. For just that one second, he looked at her the way she’d dreamed about: with a deep hunger, an almost open yearning, as if she were more to him than a name written under his on their marriage license. He exhaled and shook his head.

      “I wish,” he said quietly, “I could, too.“ And then he turned and left.

      She wanted to run after him, to say something, anything. But what rooted her in place was a realization. He was as restless as she’d once been.

      And she knew well enough that she couldn’t fill that up, not with any number of silken gowns.

      At least this way he could imagine her quiet and practical, not hurt in the slightest by his leaving. She’d kept the secret of her attraction all too well, wrapped up in paper.

      She’d kept all her secrets, and it was too late to explain.

       CHAPTER ONE

       Berkshire, three years later

      A SHOULDER-HIGH WALL hugged the dirt road that wound its way up the hill Kate was climbing. Last night, when she and the nursemaid had crept by on foot, the dark stones of the wall had seemed menacing, hunched things. She’d imagined Eustace Paxton, the Earl of Harcroft, crouching behind every rock, ready to spit vile curses at her.

      But through the diffuse morning fog, she could see little yellow-headed wildflowers growing between the rocks. Even this aging edifice had become friendly and bright. And Harcroft was thirty miles away, in London, unaware of her involvement in his latest misfortunes. She’d won a respite, and for the first time in two weeks, she breathed easily.

      As if to belie her certainty, the plod of horse hooves carried to her on a breeze. She turned, her heart accelerating. Despite the flush of heat that rose in her, Kate clutched her heavy cloak about her. She’d been discovered. He was here …

      There was nothing behind her but morning mist. She was imagining things, to think that Harcroft would have uncovered her secret so quickly. She let out a covert breath—and then gulped it back as the creak of wooden wheels sounded once more. This time, though, it was evident that the noise came from up the road. As she peered ahead of her, the dark form of a cart lumbering up the hill resolved in the mist.

      The sight was as calming as it was familiar. A blanket of fog had obscured the sound’s origin. The cart moved slowly, drawn by a single animal. As Kate trudged up the hill, her calves burning with the exertion, she made out more details. The conveyance was filled with heavy wooden kegs, marked with a sigil she could not make out from here. The animal that pulled this cargo seemed some nondescript color, unidentifiable in the mist. From this distance, its coat appeared to be both spotted and striped with light gray. It strained uphill, bone and muscle rippling underneath that oddly colored pelt.

      Kate sighed with relief. The man was a common laborer. Not Harcroft; therefore, not someone who posed a threat if he discovered the role she’d played last night. Still, Kate pulled her hood up to shield her face. The scratchy wool was the only disguise she had.

      As if in reminder of the nightmare that Louisa had escaped, a whip-crack sounded in front of her. Kate gritted her teeth and continued up the hill. Half a minute later, and a number of yards closer, the whip cracked again. She bit her tongue.

      She had to be practical. Lady Kathleen Carhart might have had sharp words for the man. But right now Kate was wrapped in an ill-fitting cloak, and the servant she was pretending to be would keep her eyes downcast. A servant would never speak up, not to a man with a horse and a whip. He would never believe her the lady of the manor, not dressed as she was.

      And besides, the last thing Kate needed if she intended to keep her secrets was for society to hear that she’d been skulking about, dressed as a servant. As she climbed the hill, the lash continued to fall. She gritted her teeth in fury as she drew abreast of the cart. Perhaps that was why, at first, she didn’t hear it.

      Above the complaining rumble of the cart wheels, the noise had been at first indiscernible. But the wind shifted, and with it brought the rhythmic sound of a gentle canter to her ears.

      Kate glanced behind her. A horseman was coming up the hill.

      A simple carter might once have caught a glimpse of Lady Kathleen at a harvest festival—a close enough look to boast, over a tankard of ale, perhaps, about seeing a duke’s daughter. He wouldn’t recognize her when she was swathed in a heavy cloak and a working woman’s bonnet.

      But a man on horseback could be a gentleman. He might, in fact, be the Earl of Harcroft, come looking for his missing wife. And if Harcroft came upon Kate dressed in this fashion—if he recognized her—he might guess the role she’d played in his wife’s disappearance.

      All he would have to do was trace her path back a few miles. That shepherd’s cottage wasn’t so very far away.

      Kate pulled the hood of her cloak farther over her eyes and slunk closer to the wall. Her hand brushed against grit on its uneven surface. Even though she huddled in her cloak, she set her chin. She was not about to surrender Louisa to her husband. No matter what he said or did.

      The man on horseback came into view through the mist just as Kate crested the hill. Shreds of fog splashed around his horse’s hooves, like gray, slow-moving seawater. The horse was a gentleman’s beast: a slim mare, gray as the wisps of vapor that clung to its legs. Not Harcroft’s chestnut stallion, then. Reassured, Kate studied the gentleman himself.

      He wore a tall hat and a long coat; the tails flapped behind him in rhythmic counterpoint to the fall of his mare’s hooves. Whoever he was, his shoulders were too broad to belong to Harcroft. Besides, this man’s face was covered by a sandy beard. Definitely not Harcroft, then. Not any man she recognized.

      That didn’t mean he wouldn’t recognize her, or that he wouldn’t carry stories.

      Slowly she let out her breath and turned to look forward. If she didn’t draw attention to herself, he wouldn’t notice her. She looked like a servant; she would be

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