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“When was that?” she asked.

“In three months’ time. As I said, it was a tiny village. I managed to talk my way onto the traders’ boat and eventually landed myself in a port town, where I could arrange for passage to the British base at Kingston. From there it was a simple matter of getting home.”

“Except it wasn’t simple when you arrived,” she said quietly.

“No,” he said.

The word hung around them heavily until finally he said, “And now you. You’ve told me some of what happened while I was gone. What of the rest of it?”

Lavinia squeezed her eyes shut tight as though trying to work up the courage to tell him. Except she didn’t need courage for that. She was already the boldest woman he knew—brave enough to steal papers from a dangerous man’s home, all while clad in an evening dress of her own design and construction. No matter what, his respect for her would never be diminished again.

“Your father received a letter from the shipping company. Your ship had been lost at sea. No survivors.” Her eyes opened and he could tell she was reliving the depths of whatever emotions had gripped her on that day. “He came to the vicarage as soon as he’d read it and told me. He said it wasn’t right that he should know before I did since we were to be married.”

“He was a good man,” Andrew said quietly, regretting that he hadn’t been there for his father’s twilight years before the hardworking ferryman had slipped away in his sleep.

“He was. When he told me . . . I never thought once that I’d lose you. Even when you were at sea where all number of things could happen, I’d always thought that you’d be safe because you were mine.” She coughed once to clear her throat. “But you were gone. It was written on the page with such certainty, but I didn’t want to believe it. How could I?

“At first my mother and father thought I was just showing the appropriate respect and mourning you as any woman would, but after three months they began to disapprove. I wouldn’t wear anything but black. I hardly left the house, and I refused to go out in society. My mother began to ask her friends to bring their unmarried sons to call. It was uncomfortable for them and humiliating for me.”

“What of Parkem?” he asked, trying to keep his voice neutral.

“I told you—”

“I want all of it.”

She blew out a breath, and he could feel her steel herself next to him. “Six months after you’d been reported dead, Mamma and Papa called me to Papa’s study and told me that a proposal from Alistair would be imminent. He’d called a time or two, but I’d hardly paid him any attention. I should’ve realized that his mother was great friends with Mamma and the two of them had been trying to engineer a match for years. With you dead, she saw her chance.

“Alistair proposed the following day. I turned him down thinking that the matter was finished, but he came back. He came back every single day for nearly two months, and I still refused. I couldn’t—” Her voice thickened. “I just couldn’t.”

He didn’t want to hear this. The physical intimacy they’d shared was one thing, but this was rewriting everything he’d assumed he knew about her. He needed to believe that she’d moved on from him. That she’d chosen to marry another man—even loved him. It was the foundation upon which he’d built these last twelve years and if that foundation was shaky—or, worse, nothing more than a figment of his imagination—then what had his life been built on?

The lies he’d told himself.

The wrongs he’d done to Lavinia without remorse.

Those realizations ripped at his chest, as though his heart were being pulled in two, and yet Lavinia kept speaking, hardly knowing what her words were doing to him.

“Mamma got her way in the end,” she said with a weak smile.

“By posting the banns and locking you away?” he asked, fury striking in him at the thought of anyone trying to steal Lavinia’s spirit. Her freedom.

“Papa was the one who posted the banns, but yes. She told me in no uncertain terms that I would marry Alistair or she’d let it be known that I’d let myself be ‘defiled’ by you and cast me out. That’s what she called it, as though what we did was something improper and nasty.”

Something in his chest twisted. He’d known her mother to be a hard woman, thoroughly disapproving of him and his working-class father. Yet he hadn’t thought the woman would stoop to threatening the ruination of her own daughter just to break her.

“Mamma was the most determined woman I’ve ever known when she thought she was right,” said Lavinia. “In her own delusional, misguided way, she must’ve been trying to protect me. Alistair could provide me with a life and a seat at the forefront of the community that she thought I should have. Except Alistair lied. He lied about the security of his business and his worth. He was nothing more than a confidence man, moving money around to make it seem as though he was always flush with cash. All it took was one ship sinking and the loss of its cargo to ruin him.”

“How did Alistair die?” he asked. “Did he . . . ?”

She shook her head, dismissing the idea of suicide outright. “The doctor said that he had a weakness of the heart that couldn’t have been diagnosed. And so, after two years of marriage, I was a widow.”

Not knowing what else to do, he gathered her closer, thankful to be able to feel the soft beat of her heart against his chest and the faint tickle of her hair where it spilled over his arms.

“When I returned to Eyemouth and saw him with you, I thought you’d wanted this.”

“How could you not?” Her soft voice was laced with regret. “It wasn’t even a year, and already I was married. But I never wanted to be, Andrew. You must believe me: I never could’ve given my heart so easily after you.”

I never could. It was a far cry from I never have, but he wanted to believe, lying on the wide feather mattress of his rented rooms in a city that wasn’t his own, that it was what she meant to say. If only she could.