“Perhaps,” Kitty echoed. Her voice was dry. “Or perhaps I made the mistake of believing I could be happy in a place like this. I’m not used to…to this.”
Jane reached for her hand. “This place did not break you. People did.”
Kitty did not respond. She stared through the window at the thin spines of trees rattling in the wind below. The shawl slipped slightly from her shoulders, but she did not move to catch it.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said at last. “Perhaps I ought to leave. Go back abroad.”
Jane stiffened. “You mean to Venice?”
“No,” Kitty said, her lips tightening. “Not Venice. I don’t think I could bear to hear the name again. But somewhere else. Somewhere far. Vienna, perhaps. Or Paris. Or the coast. Or Moscow…we have never been there.”
A silence passed between them.
“I came back here thinking I could finally… build something,” Kitty whispered. “That I could plant new roots and stand on steadier ground. I thought Norman would be part of that. I believed him when he said he would stand by me.”
Jane squeezed her hand gently. “You didn’t imagine it, Kitty. I saw the way he looked at you. I saw what you were to each other.”
Kitty’s throat closed. She looked down at her lap. “Then why did he not believe me?”
“I don’t know.”
“I loved him,” Kitty said, as if the admission hurt. And it did. It seared. “I loved him more than I have ever loved anyone. And now all I feel is… shame. And this unbearable ache in my chest that won’t go away.”
Jane leaned her head gently against Kitty’s shoulder. “He was a coward, not a villain. But that does not mean he deserves you.”
Kitty’s voice wavered. “I keep waking up in the middle of the night thinking I heard the front bell. Thinking there will be a letter. A knock. Anything. But it’s never him. It’s never anything.”
Jane said nothing to that. There was nothing to say.
The silence stretched long again, save for the distant tolling of a bell somewhere in the city and the soft hum of wind past the window panes.
Then came the sound of the door opening downstairs. Footsteps. The low murmur of a voice.
A few moments later, Richard appeared in the doorway.
“Forgive me,” he said, stepping in with a nod. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”
“You’re not,” Kitty said softly, wiping hastily at the corner of her eyes with her shawl.
Richard’s expression was uncharacteristically solemn. “I’ve come to see how you are.”
Kitty hesitated. “I imagine everyone knows by now.”
Richard inclined his head. “The postponement has made the rounds. As for Cynthia’s letter—most know only what she chose to say in the courtyard. And most do not believe her.”
“Does Norman?” Kitty asked, the bitterness creeping back into her tone before she could help it.
Richard said nothing.
“That’s all I needed to know.”
He looked at her with something like pity, but not condescension. Only the quiet understanding of a father who had seen too many good things fall apart.
“I’m not sure I belong here anymore,” Kitty said softly.
“You don’t have to stay,” Richard said gently. “The city has not been kind to you. You owe it nothing.”
Jane looked up, her hand still holding Kitty’s. “She was just saying the same. About leaving.”
