“And you’ve always refused to believe me. Why is that?”
“Why is it important that I believe you, Rhys? Everyone else does. Nick has defended you from the beginning. Victorine has never given any credence to my memory of that night. Yvonne worshipped you. If you had given her any encouragement she would have fallen in love with you. Can it matter so much that I alone think of you in a different light?”
“It matters,” Rhys said. “Would any man like to stand accused of murder? Where is your proof, Kenna?”
“My dreams—”
“Damn those dreams! What can you remember from that night that has not come to you while you were in the throes of Morpheus?”
“Nothing,” she said softly and added, inadequately, “That is, it’s confused.”
“And yet you treat me as if I were guilty of causing your father’s death.”
“I cannot help it,” she said miserably.
“You can.”
“I cannot! What is,is!Do you think I don’t want to remember that night? Mayhap I would be free then, free of sleepless nights or ones that end abruptly because terror wakes me. Can you believe I enjoy living like this, afraid every night to close my eyes?”
“Kenna.” He reached across the table to take her hand.
Kenna withdrew it quickly and folded her hands in her lap, leaving Rhys with his arm outstretched. He looked at it for a helpless moment before he retracted it. “I don’t want anything from you, Rhys. Certainly not your comfort. You are the one constant in all my worst nightmares. Your presence is the one thing that remains, no matter how the dreams differ. I know you were with my father in the cave. The lead ball that killed him may not have come from your pistol, but you were the reason he was there that night.”
Rhys leaned back in his chair. He would have given almost anything to be able to deny her words. The fact that they were true kept him silent. If he spoke and she detected the lie she would never begin to question the faith she put in her dreams.
“Have you nothing to say?” she asked.
He shook his head. “It does not seem I can make you see things differently. There is nothing for it but to go on as we do.” You are determined to lie to her yet, Rhys told himself.
“That, at least, is something. If you’ll excuse me, there are things that require my attention.”
He stood as she rose from her chair. “By all means,” he said genially. “I’d like to accompany you this afternoon when you speak to Tom Allen.”
Kenna looked at him uncertainly. “I don’t think so,” she said at last. “It is all very well that we have achieved a truce of sorts, but I don’t think I can suffer you in my pockets.”
Rhys’s face showed none of his disappointment. “As you wish. Mayhap Victorine will go for a ride with me in the curricle.”
“I’m certain she will.” Kenna tried not to think of the painful knot forming in her middle as she left the room.
Kenna had not spun a complete tale to Rhys when she excused herself. Shedidhave some things that required her attention. There was the matter of this evening’s meal as well as the menu for the remainder of the week. Usually Kenna did not care for this task because it demanded a lengthy conversation with Dunnelly’s temperamental, but excellent, French chef. Today, however, she silently thanked Victorine for relinquishing the duty. Kenna also promised herself she would find Mrs. Parfitt and ask the seamstress to repair the uneven hem on her yellow muslin dress. Kenna had kept putting Parfitt off because she despised standing in one spot, turning by slow degrees, while the seamstress carried on an unintelligible monologue, mumbling her harangue around a mouthful of straight pins.
She decided the dress was the most distressing thing facing her and opted to be done with it first. She was on her way to her room when she met Victorine in the hallway.
“Good morning,” Kenna said, giving her stepmother a kiss on her proffered cheek.
“Good morning, darling. You seem exceptionally bright-eyed, though that shawl is perfectly dreadful with your hair.”
Kenna laughed. Victorine would never stop trying to change her. At a glance she saw that not so much as a hair was out of place on Victorine’s small head. She was wearing a pale blue empire dress with a white fichu and carrying a sapphire shawl in one hand. Kenna was quite content to have Nicholas and Victorine follow the dictates of fashion. For herself she did not recognize the need. “Janet said much the same to me when I chose it.”
“You should listen to her then,” Victorine chided. The gentle teasing expression faded from her face as she suddenly remembered something. The look she gave Kenna now was more thoughtful, even concerned. “Nick interrupted my breakfast this morning with some disturbing news.”
“Oh. You mean Rhys, of course. I left him in the breakfast room. He arrived quite early this morning.”
Victorine waved her shawl in a graceful gesture. “No. I don’t meant Rhys. Nicholas said you had an exceptionally bad nightmare last evening.”
“I wish he hadn’t. It was nothing.” Kenna wondered at her own words as she spoke them. Even though Victorine had figured largely in her dream Kenna was moved to protect her by making light of her sleepless night. There was something innocent, even vulnerable, about her stepmother that made Kenna loath to burden her.
Victorine’s beautiful face softened with a touch of sadness. “Mayhap one day you’ll share the whole with me, Kenna. I’ll not press you now.” She touched Kenna’s arm lightly in a reassuring gesture, then left her alone in the hallway.
