"Well?"
"I fetched eggs from Farmer Smith," he said in a faraway voice, as if remembering was difficult. "Instead of taking the shortcut across the meadow, I decided to take the road back to pick some apples from the apple trees by the road." He rubbed his hands over his thighs. "I was hoping you'd make me some sweet apple pies."
Kit had a sweet tooth, and sometimes the apple part in half a pasty wasn't enough for him. He preferred to have the whole pasty filled with the spicy apple filling.
"Then?" Mira prompted.
"Then … a carriage stopped. There were some gentlemen in it. They … desperately needed a blacksmith to help with some horses they'd left by the wayside. I decided to help them. One of them in particular was pleased with my work and immediately offered me a job, only it would be away from Cornwall. I refused. He insisted. Eventually he made me an offer I couldn't resist. The condition was that I go with them on the spot. When we stopped at the next inn, I had a message sent to you. It appears you never received it."
He didn't meet her eyes.
She stared at him in disbelief. "What farrago of nonsense are you trying to dish me up? I wasn't born behind the moon." She stood and shook her head. "Who offers a random blacksmith on the road employment? Aren't there enough other blacksmiths in the country they could have asked?"
He did not meet her eyes when he said, "Ultimately, their offer turned out to be irresistible."
Mira kept shaking her head. "How entirely out of character for you to do such a thing. The Kit I knew would never, willy-nilly, have gone out on the road with complete strangers who happened to offer him work in return for leaving his whole life behind. The Kit I knew could have been offered all the riches of the world, and he would have thrown them back with a scornful laugh before he'd do such a thing to those he loved."
She glowered at his bowed head.
Then he lifted his head. "The Kit you knew, Mirabel, was a foolish, naive boy who knew nothing of the ways of the world."
"Foolish, perhaps, but never naive, and you certainly knew the ways of this world, with your difficult childhood and how you struggled and fought to provide for your poor mother. If there was one thing that defined Kit, it was loyalty. There is no person more loyal in this world." This belief in him, deep in her heart, was what had kept her going all those years.
He looked haunted.
Mira drew in a shuddering breath as the truth began to crystallise in her mind, sharp and unforgiving. "But I suppose you are right. People do change. I thought I knew you better than anyone, but I may have underestimated the discontent that must have eaten away at you over time. I always knew you wanted more. When your grand lord offered you a position here on the estate, it must have been irresistible. You took it because you saw a chance to get out of the daily grind you must have felt you were in. You felt trapped and you saw a way out. Because in the end, it wasn't quite good enough for you. The village, your job with Master Williams, the cottage." Her mouth tightened into a bitter line before she added, "Me."
His head shot up. "Mira. No. Never that." He grabbed her hands. "You cannot, must not, believe that." He said it with such savage fierceness that she almost believed him.
A great weariness overtook her.
"What else is there left to believe but that you abandoned me?" she whispered, her voice quivering with a mixture of disbelief and heartache.
His face was ashen. "No. Never. Is that what you have been thinking all this time?"
She stared at him blindly. "Why not? It happens to women all the time. I simply never thought it'd happen to me."
He pulled his hand through his hair in agony. "No. I never abandoned you. Not for one minute. Not for one second. You must not believe that. It's not as it seems. Sometimes things happen in life that are so inexplicable to the point of being absurd, it's beyond anything conceivably possible. Sometimes it's circumstances beyond our control. Sometimes things are simply not what they seem."
"Then what else should I believe, Kit? Tell me, what else is there left to believe? What else?"
He knelt in front of her and flung his arms around her and crushed her to him.
She clung to him helplessly. After a moment, she attempted to squirm out of his embrace.
"Please let me go." Her voice broke.
"Never. Now that I have finally found you, I'll never let you go." His voice was muffled.
His entire body shook.
For a moment she smelled the familiar smell of Kit.
Without thinking, she lifted her hands and cradled his face. His cheeks were wet. His face was more angular, harder, gaunt than before. Gone were the boyish, carefree laughter lines. There were new lines. A hardness about the jaw. Around his mouth, a line of suffering. Or was it bitterness? She traced it with a finger.
He turned his head and pressed his lips into her palm.
She flinched, drew her hand away, lowered her head. Her eyes fell on his hand.
