He looked stunned by her answer.
“All this time? You’ve never said anything?”
“Would you have answered me?” she asked. “You never speak of her,” she said. “Yet I can feel her in your heart. You never talk about what saddens you, but it’s there, Montgomery. It’s there and as real as if you’d painted a sign on your forehead.”
“Sometimes, it’s better just to forget the past, Veronica.”
She nodded. “You’re right, of course. Forgetting has been so easy for you. That’s why you walk every night, why you look so haunted sometimes, why you hold on to me in your sleep as if I’m your anchor.”
His eyes went from hot to cool in the space of a breath, but she didn’t relent.
“Whoever she is,” she said, “you still love her.”
“How do you know that? Your Gift?”
She smiled. She was familiar with people ridiculing what she knew to be true.
“Is it to be like this for the rest of our lives, Montgomery? Me, wanting to know, and you, hiding every one of your secrets?”
“Isn’t that why they call them secrets?”
She stood, moved into the bedroom, extinguishing the lamp before returning to the sitting room.
“Why are you here, Montgomery? To bed me?”
“Are you sending me away, Veronica?”
“You know I won’t,” she said softly. “I can’t.”
He stood, reached out, and cupped her shoulders with his hands, slowly drawing her toward him.
She tilted her head back and stared at him, wishing he wasn’t quite so tall. Yet her female cousins had remarked, many times, on how tall she was compared to them, how dull her appearance.
Abruptly, she asked, “Would you prefer if I had blond hair?”
Was Caroline blond?
He shook his head slowly, as if uncertain where her question would lead.
“Or if I had blue eyes?”
Were Caroline’s eyes blue, like yours?
“Why are you asking that?”
“Do my looks displease you?”
“You’re a beautiful woman, Veronica.”
She felt a glow of pleasure but pushed it aside for another question.
“Then what is it about me that displeases you?” She forced herself to meet his gaze. “Is it my Gift?”
He studied her for a long moment, and she had the feeling he was treading carefully, walking barefoot on gravel.
“Is it that I’m not an American? We have a heritage in common, Montgomery. Your family is from Scotland as well as mine.”
He gripped her upper arms so tightly she had the feeling he wanted to shake her.
