“Does that mean you told her about the brief time that we were acquainted?”
This was not the Cait that he knew five years ago. That Cait had been warm and kind. This one was cold, almost hard. “It was more than a mere acquaintance.”
“Yes, though time does tend to alter one's perception.”
“Are you angry with me Cait? Have you been angry with me for five years?”
It was another foolish question. Julian had told her that he loved her and asked her to wait for him and then he wrote that he was marrying another.
“No,” she answered almost with surprise. “I have no reason to be angry with you. There were no promises between us.”
But there had been. She had promised to wait for him.
“It is in the past. There is no wrong to address. Simply inform your aunt, or I will, and then perhaps she will allow us to leave, and we never need to speak on this matter again.”
It had killed him to write that letter so long ago when he had to tell her that he was marrying another. Now she stood before him as if it never mattered. As if she had never cared.
“Is it so easy for you to forget?”
“It has been five years,” she answered. “We cannot live our lives with regrets of the past.”
Yet he had been for five years…and she had not.
Perhaps she had never loved him.
Had he imagined what they had shared?
Julian took two steps toward her. Cait stepped back and for just a moment he saw a flash of pain in her emerald eyes and a hint of vulnerability.
She hurt as much as he but was far better at masking it. She was cold, but out of necessity, he supposed.
“We can try but I do not believe my aunt will accept such an easy resolution.”
“I do not understand the purpose of all of this. Does your aunt even realize how improper it is for a married gentleman to be forced to apologize to a woman he may have wronged in the past?”
Did Cait know as little about him as he did her? “Widower.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Widower,” he said again. “My wife died a year and a half ago.”
He had beena widower for a year and a half!
This entire time, she thought he was still wed. “I am sorry for your loss,” she managed to say.
Cait had understood that he had not wanted to be poor. But, if she had truly mattered to him, Julian would have sought her out after he had mourned the wife he professed never to love. But he had not and the only reason the two faced each other now was because his aunt insisted that he repair a wrong while his only concern was that she’d been angry with him for five years.
“The child—was it a son or daughter?” she asked to be polite and partially wondered if he had his heir, which did free Julian from having to wed again.
“Daughter,” he answered. “Valeria.”
“Did you and your wife have others? Is there an heir.”
He smirked. “No. Imogene and I never had a true marriage.”
Cait frowned. Certainly they…she did not want to think of him kissing another, let alone anything else.
“I married to give the child my name. Imogene and I had separate lives.”
