“But you forgave yourself?”
“Nyet. Maybe. Time makes the hurt lessen.”
“Why couldn’t it be something other than time? I’d give you and Lydia my years if I could. I’ll never make up for my lies. I wish I hadn’t gotten scared of the sickness. I wish I hadn’t listened to Tavis or his parents.”
“His parents? The Palmerses were your escorts to St. Petersburg, but they confirmed Tavis’s lies?”
“Yes. They said they knew you. They supported everything Tavis told me about your womanizing and gambling.”
“The same parents now spreading gossip and demanding I write them an apology for letting you marry their son. Unbelievable.”
“They’ve come after you, too?” She shivers. “I’m getting what I deserve … and lost Papa’s watch, too.”
“Katherine, you don’t deserve to be disrespected or to have things hurled at you. You don’t deserve to be hurt at all.”
“Time has told you that, Jahleel, or has pity?”
I wrap my arms around her, my hands threading about her middle as I would’ve done when she was pregnant … if we’d been normal.
Silent tears run down her cheeks. It washes her face cream onto my robe. Somehow, that seems fitting, us in each other’s arms with medicine all around us.
But it doesn’t quench the fire building inside, or the truth that nothing good can come from wanting more from her. We have separate paths. They must remain that way, even if my foul blood is stirred.
Yet it feels good to have her in my arms. Katherine’s not marble, not hard stone. She’s warm and quite human, after all.
Chapter 26
KATHERINE—MYRULES
When a midnight carriage took a bride from her guardians to a dacha far from the city, I sat like this, curled atop my new husband’s thigh. Barefoot with hands caressing my feet, then all of me—we existed for each other, only for each other. We had four gloriously sated weeks of love.
Then Jahleel grew ill.
I thought he’d die. The relief I should’ve felt when he recovered felt like delayed suffering. I believed I’d been lied to and betrayed.
All that noise in my head made me forget how safe I felt in his arms.
In my mistress bedchamber, his heart beats the rhythm of our first dance, Beethoven’s Contredanse No. 12. And like he’s read my mind, Jahleel begins to hum it.
Those memories of us—before discovering his illness, before listening to lies—help me realize how cheated I am. I threw away joy. I needed to believe in us, believe in love over fear.
“Jahleel, thank you.”
“For what? I’ve done nothing.”
“I remember this tune. Sometimes, I smile thinking of how you made everyone give way for me—a stranger, a foreigner. You made me believe I was special.”
“Good memories. And youarespecial.”
Looking up at him, I find his eyes closed. He smells good, and feels like well-worn leather, smooth and oiled with sandalwood, fitting me perfectly. The dark red nightshirt and deep-blue indigo robe are styled for a king.
Though lean, his face bears chiseled cheeks and a wide nose with a point. Always handsome and noble, he’s still handsy. He caresses my foot that I’d drawn up near me. Then Jahleel finds the front seam of my robe.
His fingers slip through and touch my stomach. I pray he doesn’t tickle me, for that will lead to unbearable, out-of-control feelings. The passion that follows is the same.
I want to be crazy again. I don’t want to think about tomorrow, or the price I’ll pay.
Nonetheless, nothing has changed. Jahleel will get sick again. I will lose him. And Lydia and I will have to figure out how to heal. “I wish you were a villain.”
