“I like hunting, but that doesn’t mean I feel the need to kill my own meat for every dinner.”
She paused, and after a moment, he couldn’t help but look at her reflection.
Her lip was between her teeth, as if the answer was not straightforward and she wasn’t sure how much of herself to give up.
So he stayed silent. She would tell him or not. It would be her choice.
Bessie kept her mouth closed and went about the business of measuring her client. Eventually Fiona spoke. “It was a few years before you and I met. Father had already left Scotland. He’d been in trouble with the law and so he disappeared. I was living with my aunt and uncle on their farm in Bandeforde. The soldiers came at daybreak.” She faltered there, as though the words were more than a memory. As though the soldiers were before her and the shock had stolen her breath.
“We were given two hours to collect our belongings and leave. The laird who owned the farm wanted the land for sheep grazing—it’s a better business investment, ye ken—and we were simply in the way.
“There weren’t many options. We gathered our things and took my uncle’s wagon to Aberdeen. We sold what we could, including the cart, but could only scrape together enough money for four tickets to the Americas, and so they left. They felt bad. I ken they did. But they had my cousins to think of, so they left me there with just a few coppers.”
He pictured it, this flame-haired woman standing on a dock, with all her belongings at her feet, watching what was left of her family sail away. The thought ignited a small lick of anger within him. “And yet you’re here. You’re not still in Scotland,” he said.Thank God for that.
“I knew my da had moved to England; the last I’d heard he was in a village in the south. So I gathered what clothes I had with me, rolled it into a pack, and began to walk.”
The shock of her words stunned him. It took a long moment before his brain could form words again. “That’s got to be six hundred miles.”
She gave a small, wry smile. “Almost. I didnae walk the entire way. I took main roads in the hope that somebody would pick me up and take me closer in a cart. There was no money for the mail coach.”
Edward’s heartbeat thundered in his ears, the rushing and thumping akin to the worst of storms. A young woman traveling alone. Anything could have happened to her. Then a sick feeling formed in the pit of his stomach.
Maybe something did happen to her.“That’s not the safest of situations for a young woman to be in,” he said quietly. He couldn’t bring himself to put his question into words. He hoped he didn’t have to.
He fixed his gaze onto her reflection in the mirror. He had to know the truth. He wasn’t sure what he’d do with the knowledge but he had to know. Quietly, Bessie rolled up her measuring tape, gathered her notes, and exited, giving her client the space she clearly needed.
Fiona swallowed hard, the muscles in her throat working. She didn’t seem to notice the seamstress leave, so lost was she in the memory. “I learnt quickly when not to accept a ride. And there were nights…when I had to barricade the door to whatever room or barn I’d been able to barter my cleaning services for.”
Edward’s fists clenched. He wanted to wrap his hands around the throats of the men responsible and throttle them. Assaulting any woman was a bastard act. Assaultinghiswould be a death sentence. But luckily for them, he would never know who they were.
“That should never have happened to you.” He worked hard to keep his tone neutral. She had her own feelings to bear. He would not add to them with his own rage and terror.
She shivered. “The cold was the worst part—especially on those nights between villages. It was warmer to climb a tree than stay on the ground, but then I couldnae sleep. Most nights I couldn’t start a fire. You need dry wood for a spark to catch and it was not always available.”
And so she had created friction matches. A young woman with nothing to her name, nothing but fury and resolve, had taken all of that fear and anger and trauma and had channeled it into a tool that could change the world. “I am sorry that you had to go through that.”
She shook out her arms, as though the cold still nipped at her. “It’s nae your fault,” she said. “You don’t need to apologize.”
And there was his Fiona—not wanting anything from anyone. Not even condolences. “I’m sorry, nevertheless. But still confused. After all of that, why would youchooseto walk?”
She gave a soft, sad smile as she stepped down from the dais and took her shirt from the back of a nearby chair. “That journey taught me an important lesson. That if I wanted security, I would have to create it for myself. I cannot count on anyone else. I couldn’t count on my father to stay out of trouble. I couldn’t count on the lord who owned our farm not to kick us out. I couldn’t count on the person offering me a lift to be doing so without ill intent.”
“And you couldn’t count on me.” He’d promised her a home together, a marriage, a life—and then he’d reneged. He’d known he was hurting her when he ended things, but he’d had no idea that he’d been the final bit of proof she needed that she could rely on no one.
“And I could not count on you.” There was a tremor to her voice, and she carefully slipped her injured arm into a sleeve and then pulled the shirt on over her head.
“I’m sorry that I broke your trust.”
She laughed cynically as she fumbled with the laces. “If it makes ye feel any better, by the time I met ye, I had no trust left to break.”
“I loved you, you know.” He needed her to know that. To know that she hadn’t been a mere dalliance. That despite how he’d betrayed her, she had meant something to him.
She caught his eye in the mirror’s reflection. “I wish I could say the same, but I never knew you. I knew a boy called Edward, nae the Duke of Wildeforde.”
His chest constricted at her words. They weren’t the truth. She was the only one who actually did know him. Everyone else knew the curated version—the perfect image he’d worked so hard to create. Even his siblings. Only Fiona had ever seen him cry. He missed being truly seen almost as much as he missed her.
She came out from behind the screen, her shirt and waistcoat on, her jacket hanging over her uninjured arm. She held her wrist out to him. “Would you mind?”
