“It was as if we were married.”
“As if.” Lydia laughed shortly, without humor. “Weweren’tmarried.”
“No,” he said. “We weren’t. Not then.”
Lydia hugged herself tighter. “God, that I could be so foolish.”
Nathan pushed away from the door and took a step toward her. “Lydia.”
She shook her head furiously, withdrawing into herself to keep him at bay. “No, don’t touch me. I don’t think I could bear it if you touched me.” Her eyes felt gritty and her mouth was dry. “I wanted to believe, I suppose. It could only have happened because I wanted to believe in it so much. There were moments when I thought I was remembering something, moments when I was only a hairsbreadth from awareness, and I beat them down. I know that now. In some small dark corner of my mind I must have been afraid the truth would look like this.” Lydia’s smile was self-deprecating. “Thank you for never saying that you loved me,” she said. “That would have been the worst lie of all.”
She turned away then and went to the window. There were sheep grazing in the meadow and a stockman was currying a horse outside the stable. Lydia fingered the curtains with a hand that trembled. “I want to go home, Nathan. Please say that you’ll help me go home.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
“All right,” he said heavily. “I won’t do that. Have you thought what it would mean? There’d be an inquiry into Brig’s shooting and possibly a trial. Do you want to face that?”
Lydia blanched, but her voice remained composed. “It happened in your hotel room, Nathan. I was there at your behest. The note, remember? You wanted to see me about Ginny Flynn’s murder. I went there hoping to get back more of my yellow ballgown than the scrap you enclosed in the note.” She glanced over her shoulder at Nathan. There was a line between his brows and his eyes were remote, thoughtful. “No one saw me come and I’m willing to bet no one saw you take me out of there. You’re a far more likely suspect in Brig’s shooting than I’ll ever be.”
“Except for one thing,” Nathan said. “I didn’t do it, Lydia, and you won’t let anyone believe that I did. That’s not your way. You’d never let anyone take responsibility for something you’d done.”
He was right about her, she thought miserably. She had always thought honesty was a virtue and it hurt to have it wielded against her in this mean, backhanded fashion. She remembered the night Brigham had confronted her with such startling clarity that it seemed impossible now to have forgotten it. She could see the events unfold as though she were a spectator and not a participant, and hear her own voice begging Nathan to help her, swearing that she would do anything—even marry him—if only she would not be named a murderer. Had he heard her through his drugged sleep? Had she somehow forced his response?
“It was self-defense,” she said.
Nathan nodded. “I know. I told Irish the same.” When he had mounted the stairs earlier on his way to face Lydia, Nathan vowed that she would only hear the truth from him. She deserved at least that much. Now, faced with the prospect of her leaving, Nathan was sorely tempted to break his vow and beg no one’s forgiveness for it. He had no idea whether Brigham Moore was alive or dead, but he knew what Lydia thought and he could have used it. He didn’t. “I don’t think you killed him, Lydia.”
“I tried to reason with Brig,” she went on, lost in her own thoughts. “He didn’t want to hear anything I had to say.”
Nathan crossed the room and came to stand at Lydia’s back. She had nowhere to go, trapped by his body and the window in front of her. His hands hovered near her shoulders for a moment before they fell back to his sides. “Did you hear what I said?” he asked. “I don’t think you killed him.”
Lydia turned suddenly. She stared at Nathan, her eyes wide. “What? How can that be? His pulse…I couldn’t feel a pulse…and there was so much blood.”
“But he was alive when I took you out. And I sent Doc Franklin to see him, gave him instructions to take Brig to your home when he was well enough to travel.” His tone became dry. “Your mother, I believe, will care for him.”
Lydia’s lips parted slightly on a tiny sound of pain. “He was having an affair with my mother, wasn’t he?”
“Yes.”
Her stare was frank. “Were you?”
“God, no.”
She believed him. “That’s something, at least,” she said with bitter sarcasm. “So, the last you know of Brigham Moore is that he is settled on Nob Hill making a cuckold of my father.”
“I don’t know that at all. I told Doc Franklin to take him there. I don’t know if he made it.”
Lydia sidestepped Nathan and sat down on the edge of the bed, drawing her knees up to her chest. Her bare toes peeked out from beneath the hem of her shift. “You could have let me think I murdered him.”
“You may have.”
“I know. And I’ll find out when I write to my father. But you could have let me think it now, when quite the opposite may be true. Why didn’t you?”
“I didn’t want you to stay here for the wrong reasons,” he said finally. He nudged one of the trunk lids closed with his knee and sat on it. “You shouldn’t be afraid to go back. Even if you killed Brig, even if there is a trial, no jury’s going to convict you. And if heisalive, you shouldn’t have to live one day thinking differently.”
Lydia’s eyes held Nathan’s for several long moments. She was the first to look away. “I’d like to be alone now, if you don’t mind.”
