She let out a small, broken sound.
Tears slipped down her cheeks now, unbidden and hot. She wiped them away with the back of her hand, furious at Norman for giving them that satisfaction. For letting Cynthia ruin their engagement.
Marina would never write such a thing. And if she had, Kitty would know why. There was something deeper at play. Some plan that had coiled itself around both her and Norman, and she would not let it end here.
She stood, shakily but with purpose, and looked toward the main house, now bustling with guests departing and servants gathering trunks.
Kitty squared her shoulders.
If Norman would not fight for her, she would fight for herself. She knew the truth.
And if she uncovered the truth to him, then perhaps—perhaps he would see her again.
Even when he was too afraid to trust her.
But oh, how it broke her heart, shattering it to pieces.
Because somewhere deep beneath that resolve, she was still a girl in love with a man who had once promised to protect her. And now she stood alone, not just abandoned, but wounded in the place she had just started feeling safe. She had felt almost…at home.
Tomorrow was meant to be our beginning, our union,she thought, swallowing hard.And now it may be the end.
Norman stood motionless in the middle of his studio, hands clenched into fists at his sides, staring at nothing. The air in the room was thick—charged with the remnants of laughter from earlier, of shocked gasps and whispered judgment, now curdling into something bitter and unspoken. Light streamed in faintly from the high windows, casting long bars across the floorboards, like the ribs of a great beast tightening around him.
The door opened and shut—Kitty, Norman realized—with a soft click, but the silence it left in its wake rang out like a cannon blast.
She lingered near the threshold, as if unsure whether to speak or simply dissolve into the shadows.
Her presence unsettled him—not because he didn’t long for it, but because he did. He had longed for her in so many ways, for so long, and yet now he could not find the language to bridge the chasm between them.
He turned to face her, slow and deliberate. “Is there any truth to it?” he asked. His voice did not waver. It was calm. Too calm—barely veiling the storm within him.
Kitty’s face paled, not with guilt, but with disbelief. “What?”
“The letter,” he said. “That thing Cynthia read aloud like some twisted actress upon a stage. Did you—did you have a lover in Venice? Is that the reason you wanted to sabotage this marriage? All that talk about marrying for love…did you have someone you loved in Venice? Is that it?”
Her mouth opened, closed again. Her eyes searched his face, her breath shallow in her chest. “No,” she whispered. “I—I don’t know how she could’ve gotten that letter. I wrote a letter to Marina—yes—but it wasn’t of this sort. I lost her reply last week, I thought I had simply misplaced it. I didn’t even think…” Her words trailed off, lips trembling.
“She stole it,” she said, as if the thought had only now coalesced. “She must have stolen the letter I received from Marina. And she must have written to her. Why else would Marina write to Cynthia?” Her voice rose slightly, strained with confusion. “But why would Marina lie? Why would she twist it into—into whatever that was?”
Norman drew in a long, slow breath, exhaling through his nose. His jaw ached from the pressure of his teeth clenching behind the stillness of his expression. He wanted to believe her—of course he did. Kitty was not a liar. She was impulsive, reckless at times, too open with her heart—but not a liar.
And yet the image of Cynthia, triumphant and smug, lingered in his mind like poison on the tongue.
He turned away from Kitty, striding toward the far end of the studio. “Lie or not,” he said, his back to her, “this will haunt usfor the rest of our lives. You understand that, don’t you? We’ve become a spectacle. A joke.”
The word made him sick to say. A joke. And he could already hear the echoes in gentlemen’s clubs and at supper tables, the snickers beneath breath, the raised brows, the snide asides.
Had she already given her heart to another, long before he ever had the chance to offer his own? Was this why Kitty had seemed hesitant? Why she had clung to her independence so fiercely? The idea carved a hollow straight through him.
All the trust he had begun, so carefully, so painfully, to build—shattered in an instant. He had dared to believe he could be the man she deserved, to lay aside his pride, his polished armor, to love her openly. And yet here he stood, a fool once more, handing his heart to a woman who, perhaps, had never wanted it.
Kitty didn’t respond at once. He could feel her eyes on him, burning like coals between his shoulder blades. When she spoke, her voice was small, but pointed.
“Are we still to be married?”
He turned to face her again, and the question hung in the air between them like a blade suspended by a thread.
“I don’t know,” he said. “We have time to think on it.”
