“That is over three miles.”
“Yes.”
“In this.”
“Yes, Amelia, in this.”
She was still half in his arms, her legs unsteady, her head ringing with the aftershock of the fit that had almost taken her. His grip on her had not loosened. She could feel his heartbeat through the soaked fabric of his shirt, violent and fast, and she realized he was shaking. Not from the cold. From something worse.
She pulled back enough to see his face properly. The blood at his temple. The bruise already darkening along his jaw. The wild, wrecked look in his eyes that she had never seen before, not even the night he had found her running from De Rees.
He was terrified.
Of losing her.
“You came,” she said, and her voice broke on it.
“Did you think I would not?”
“I waited over an hour. I thought—”
“I know what you thought.” His voice was raw. “You thought I had failed you again. You were putting on your cloak. You were leaving.”
She said nothing, because it was true.
“I have lied to you,” he said. “About my name, about Coventry, about London. I have earned every ounce of your distrust—”
“You are bleeding on my floor,” she cut in, pulling free of him. Upon closing the door, she crossed to the fire, snatched the cloth from the counter, and returned to press it against his temple. He winced but did not pull away. “Sit down before you fall down.”
Bemusement cloaked his expression. “I will not sit down. I will say what I came to say.”
“Nicholas, you are hurt. Please sit. I am not going anywhere with you like this.”
With a hand on his elbow, she guided him to a seat near the hearth, fussing around the wound on his temple.
“You should not have refused to see me,” he grumbled, crossing his arms.
“At the time, it did not seem possible to me that I could hurt you,” she said, guiltily.
“Why?” The word trembled, rain dripping from his hair into his face. “Because I am but a man, Amelia. And regardless of what you think of me, regardless of what I have done, I deserve to be treated as a human being with my own capacity for hurt. That you could cast me off so quickly for a misunderstanding after I have done right by you all this time is unfair.”
“It was notall this time…You lied to me. You lied to me about your trip,” she protested weakly, looking straight into his face. When had they gotten so close? “You speak about mortification, but you have embarrassed me far more than I ever embarrassed you. I know that you did not go anywhere near Coventry. You went south to London.”
“I… did lie about that,” he confessed. “But that was my only mistake in all of this.”
“You did not seeSin London?”
Understanding flashed in his face.
“Well,did you?” she repeated.
He nodded mutely. She tried to rise, and he grabbed her softly by the arm.
“But it was not for the reasons you think,” he pressed. “I did not seek her out for any reason other than to set our lives into order. She is the wife of the man who attempted to duel me. I spoke with her only to sever the last thread binding us, to ensure that she would not poison the rest of our lives. It was duty that compelled me to go and to lie to you.”
“Then it was duty that led you astray.” Amelia shook her head, her eyebrows creased in sorrow. She clutched her stomach. “You were with her. Yousawher. Do you expect me to believe nothing happened between you?”
“Yes. Because meeting with her only confirmed what I already knew to be true, though I only now realize I needed no confirmation…”
