How did I bring it up when Austen clearly wasn’t planning to address it? He’d spent most of his life ignoring important issues that confronted him, but I couldn’t be so blasé. I couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened, or that it hadn’t affected me so profoundly.
“Are you planning to talk about the kiss?” I asked, deciding bluntness was the best approach to Austen’s shifting moods.
His face remained neutral as he stared out the window. “What is there to say?”
“Everything.”
The muscles in his cheek twitched before he said, “There is no reason to discuss something that can’t happen again.”
I leaned back into the seat, trying to control my emotions. He was right. It couldn’t happen again. There would be no more kisses, because there was no future for us.
We drove in silence through the rain to Miller’s Court. Though it was a small space, and I couldn’t avoid touching him, he was hard and unyielding beside me. When the carriage came to a stop on Dorset Street, Austen stepped out and opened the umbrella, then he turned to me, and our gazes met.
From the look in his eyes, I knew he was still thinking about the kiss. I had the urge to return to his arms, right there on the street, to both rekindle the passion and soothe the ache I saw in his gaze.
The ache that was nestled inside my own heart.
Instead, I took the hand he offered and stepped out of the carriage, standing close to him as he held the umbrella over my head and walked me down the passage to the courtyard where Mary’s room was located.
I was conscious of his every movement beside me. Every time his arm brushed mine, the way my skirt rustled against the side of his leg, and the way he held his breath at each touch.
My senses heightened, being this near to him again, and the ache grew stronger.
When we came to number thirteen, we stood close so the umbrella protected us both, and Austen knocked on the door.
I took a cautious look up at him, but he stared straight ahead.
“Please don’t be mad,” I said gently.
He sighed, the tension in his body easing. “I’m not mad, Kate.” He looked down at me. “I’m heartbroken.”
The door opened, tearing my thoughts from Austen.
I turned, expecting to see my sister, but it wasn’t Mary at the door. It was another young woman, probably in her mid-twenties, wearing an old dress and a tattered shawl.
“Can I help you?” she asked in a faint Irish accent as she looked me over with just as much curiosity as I had staring at her.
“Is Mary—Marie Jeanette at home?” I asked.
“Who’s asking?”
I opened my mouth to say I was her sister, but then I remembered that Mary didn’t want me to tell anyone who I was. “Will she be back soon?” I asked instead.
The woman nodded her head at something behind us. “She’s here now.”
Austen and I turned as Mary appeared in the passage. She paused at seeing us and then hurried her steps, passing between us as she entered her room. She turned just inside the doorway, frustration in her gaze. “What are you doing back here?”
“I need to speak to you,” I said. “I went to see—” I almost said her lady’s maid but changed course. “I saw Danbury—”
Mary held up her hand to stop me, glancing out the door before looking at her friend. Finally, she said to Austen, “Wait in the carriage for her. I’ll send her out presently.”
It was his turn to look between me and Mary—his glance shifting to the other woman—before he nodded and left Mary’s room.
“You’ll need to step out, too, Dierdre,” Mary said to the woman in a voice that sounded more like a Whitechapel accent than the cultured one she’d learned as a child. “I need a bit of privacy.”
Dierdre eyed me from head to foot, disdain in her gaze, before she said to Mary, “Don’t fret none, Marie Jeanette. I’ll just pop into the pub and see if Teddy is around.”
Mary nodded as she held the door open for Dierdre. When the other woman was gone and I had entered her room, Mary closed the door and turned to me. “I told you not to come back,” she said, pacing to the window to look out before returning to me. “You’re putting both of our lives at risk, Kathryn. What if someone followed you?”
