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It was Terric’s wife.

Another knock. “Cait, are you sleeping?”

They locked eyes once more, and then Conrad moved to the door.

“No!” she whispered fiercely, her tone frantic.

But he would not hide. If she’d come to England after all this time, there was a reason for it. He would learn that reason, but first they would stop hiding that they had been important to each other. They’d done enough of that.

“Conrad!”

Conrad glanced at her over his shoulder, not bothering to mask his confusion and pain, then reached the door and pulled it open.

“She is awake,” he said to Lady Roysa, her rounded eyes no less than what he would have expected. “I was just leaving.”

“Conrad, wait.”

He wanted to stay. Part of him was still desperate for answers.

But the cynic inside him, born of pain and sorrow, insisted it did not matter. He wasn’t the same man who’d been beguiled by a young Scottish lady at the tournament. Who had longed to learn more. Who had fallen in love with that very lady through her letters.

She was here, aye, but too much had passed between them.