Lord Hensley was close enough to smell the liquor on his breath. “Perhaps there’s some fun to be had at this tedious event, after all,” he said. Eyes greedy for flesh wandered over her body.
“Let go of me.” He didn’t recognize her. But she recognized him too well, and she tried to pull her arm free, but he tightened his grip. He was drunk, as he’d been so many times before, all those years ago when she’d been a governess to his children. But she wasn’t in his employ any longer.
“Let go of me,” she said sharply.
“Now, now, my dear, you don’t mean that.”
She had no way to defend herself—no weapon of any kind. She tried digging in her feet, wrenching at her arm. Trapped inside whalebone and panniers and skirts, there was little she could do.
He pushed her toward the shadows, dipped his nose to her cleavage. “Mmm, love a bit of perfume between a woman’s breasts.”
She shoved at him, afraid of the attention screaming would bring, terrified of what would happen if she didn’t scream. “My aunt will be looking for me,” she tried, even though Philomena was not her aunt, and now that Lord Hensley had pushed her into the shadows behind a large column, she couldn’t see anyone.
“Your aunt, hmm? Saucy little thing.” He bent his face toward her cleavage again.
“No— Stop!” She struggled against him, but he was holding her more tightly now.
And then suddenly he was being yanked away from her.
“Hensley.” Winston’s voice was ice-cold.
“Winston!” Hensley exclaimed. “Good God, didn’t know what was happening there for a minute—damnation, no need for this.” He pulled away from Winston and brushed his jacket where Winston had grabbed him. “Just having a bit of fun. You understand.”
“Miss Germain is not available for that kind of fun,” Winston said sharply.
“My mistake, my mistake. Couldn’t have known.” He offered her a slight bow. “My apologies for any inconvenience, Miss Germain, and...” His brows dove, and he looked at her more closely. Tucked his chin. “Germain...you’re not the same chit who left us in Venice without a governess...?”
This time Winston stepped in front of Millicent. “No. She is not. I suggest you return to the festivities.”
The threat was palpable. It was not a suggestion.
Hensley withdrew and left them alone.
Winston turned to her. “Was he the employer?”
“Yes.”
“And you said nothing the entire time he was under my roof enjoying my hospitality?”
“Say something? Surely you’re joking.”
Winston looked down at her, his face unreadable in the shadows, and there were more important things now than Lord Hensley and a party that seemed as if it had taken place months ago.
“Is this the end you’ve had in mind?” he asked now. “To become my mistress?”
“No.” It wasn’t. And how could she ever have imagined, even for a moment, that it was? She’d come this close to giving up everything for him—the life she’d wanted for years. The opportunity William offered her that could make that life a reality.
“You already had a position as my medic for as long as you wanted,” he said almost angrily.
She wanted to reach for him, but she couldn’t. It felt as if a great stone wall had sprung up between them. She wanted to be with him so much she didn’t know how she would bear the pain after she walked away. There was so much more to him than anyone knew, hurts that lived far beneath the surface.
But there was no future for them. At least, not one she wanted.
“I can’t be your medic.” Her heart hurt so terribly she could hardly speak the words past the clog in her throat. “I can’t be anything to you. This was a mistake—Philomena was wrong, and I never should have listened.”
She heard him exhale. “Or perhaps she was right,” he said a bit tiredly. “Perhaps I owe you this—more, even, after what I’ve taken from you.”
“Taken.” Was that what he thought? “You didn’t take anything from me, Winston. I gave. And I did it because I wanted to give.” She shook her head. “But I can’t give you anything more.” Her next words were the most difficult. “I’m leaving your employ. Leaving England.”
“Leaving England.”
“With William Jaxbury. He’s offered me a position as his ship’s surgeon.” And even now, part of her wanted Winston to ask her not to go.
He was quiet for a moment. “I see.”
Her throat tightened. “It’s the perfect opportunity.”
“Yes, I suppose it is.”
And it hurt, more and more with each passing second, but it was just as well that he didn’t beg her to stay because she would have had to tell him no.
He stood looking at her, the gold embroidery on his jacket catching the faint light from the torches farther down, his skin giving off the hint of a perfume that wasn’t hers. “Is there anything I can do to make things right?” he asked.
“I already have everything I need,” she said quietly. “You don’t owe me anything. Go and have your fun.”
“Millicent, what you saw in there—”
“You don’t need to explain. I know what kind of man you are, and I’ve never pretended you were anything different.” She looked up at him, blinking back tears. “You’re the only one who’s done that.”
* * *
HE WATCHED HER walk away and disappear through the doors into the ballroom.
It wasn’t as if he didn’t know it would end. It wasn’t as if he could really have kept her as his medic forever.
Forever?
His chest hurt. He rubbed the base of his throat, trying to ease the tightness.
“Winston.”
He turned, saw a familiar figure coming onto the balcony. “Taggart.”
“Problem?”
“No.” Winston realized he was still pressing his throat and let his hand drop. “Taking the air.”
Lady India’s husband smiled a little. “That doesn’t sound like you at all.” And then, “India thought her friend Miss Germain might have come out here, but I don’t see her.”
“She just went inside.”
“Ah. Well, then, no doubt India’s found her by now. Suppose I ought to leave you to your air-taking and go inside myself before India finds some trouble to get into.” He laughed. “I don’t have to tell you about that. Enjoy the evening.” He started to walk away.
“Taggart.”
Nicholas turned back.
Leave it alone. “Was Miss Germain with India in Paris?”
Nick went from smiling to serious in a heartbeat. “Yes. Before the wedding.”
“She was aboard that ship with your wife, wasn’t she?”
That ship. The one that Lady India—and if he didn’t miss his guess, Millicent—had stolen right out from under Katherine Kinloch’s nose.
“What is it you want to know, Winston?” It was clear Taggart didn’t want to discuss any of this. Winston couldn’t blame him—nor did he care.
“I want to know how she might have come by a lashing that left her back looking like the devil’s tally stick.”
Nick’s voice dipped, quiet and low. “Some things are better left in the past.”
“It isn’t in the past for her.”
“If you’re concerned about having her in your service,” Taggart said, “I’ll tell you this—Miss Germain is a desperate young woman who will do nearly anything to accomplish her ends. I won’t pretend there’s any love lost between us. But she is India’s dearest friend, and I can’t deny that she has suffered greatly. But if I were you, I should keep my valuables safely locked away.”
He took a step to leave, but Winston blocked his path. “Tell me who did it.”
“It wasn’t me, if that’s what you’re thinking. But if you want to know Miss Germain’s secrets, you’ll have to ask her yourself.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
SHE DIDN’T TAKE the books he gave her.
They sat on the table in her room in two neat stacks, he saw in the early hours of the morning. Winston had stayed later at his club than was advisable because he didn’t want to face...
This.
So he didn’t face it. He stopped torturing himself and went to his rooms, tried to sleep in linens that still smelled like her, arose the next day and went about his business—and the next day, and the day after that, until he was no longer needed in London and he decided to return to his estate and find out how Cara was faring.
If he had to, he would bring the best physician in London to Winston until Cara was determined to be perfectly well. And this time, the physician would answer the questions he was asked.
* * *
“A CHILD?” WINSTON stared at Cara and Edward, standing in their drawing room at the vicarage, scarcely believing what he was hearing. “You’re certain?”
“Yes,” Cara said, flush with happiness, looking up at Edward, who put his arm around her now. “Nothing is ever certain, of course not, but...” She looked at Winston. “I know we’re going to be blessed.”
“I’m...” Speechless. “I’m exceedingly happy for you. For both of you.” And seeing their joy, knowing the deep affection they had for each other, he felt a moment of envy.
“I thought surely Mr. Germain would have told you by now,” Cara said.
“I could have held a pistol to her head and she wouldn’t have told me. I won’t say I didn’t consider it, for Edward’s sake.”
“I shouldn’t have kept it from him,” Cara said.
Edward squeezed her shoulders. “No, you shouldn’t have.”
“I was just...so frightened.”
Of course she was. And they all knew the reason—it sat in the room like a fourth person nobody wanted to acknowledge. And in a way it was a fourth person. It was the child he and Cara had created that hadn’t survived.
But now Cara was smiling at him in a very suspicious way. “You said she just now, when you spoke of Mr. Germain.” She glanced at Edward, then back at Winston. “It’s no secret among us anymore that she wasn’t a Mr. Germain at all. Please tell me she’s come back from London with you.”
“I’m afraid not.” It shouldn’t have been so difficult to say. “She has...left my employ, actually. Left England, in fact, on a ship bound for the Mediterranean. I understand she’s spent some time there working as a ship’s surgeon—”
“A ship’s surgeon,” Edward said. “Can it be possible?”
“Of course it’s possible.” Cara laughed. “She passed for a man, after all.”
With Millicent, Winston was beginning to think anything was possible.
“She had an opportunity she couldn’t pass by,” he told them. There was that tightness in his chest again. “It was perfect timing, actually.”
And now Cara was looking at him more closely than before, and he shifted his weight under her too-knowing gaze, and for the first time it occurred to him to wonder whether Millicent might have said anything to Cara about him. Them.
Edward and Cara exchanged a meaningful look, and now Edward broke away from her. “Walk with me to the church,” he said to Winston. “I left some business unfinished for Sunday, and I was just on my way there when you arrived.”
They turned just as Cara came forward and reached for Winston’s hand. The contact startled him, but she squeezed tightly and he could not let go. “You’re a good man, Winston,” she said, searching his eyes. “Deep down, you are.”
* * *
THE TWO MEN walked in silence along the stone path that led to the church. Through the wooden door worn smooth with age, into the cool, shadowy interior lit by slender windows all around the upper part of the walls. Their footsteps echoed as they walked down the center aisle.
Edward went to the pulpit. Winston sat in the front pew, leaned forward with his forearms on his knees, staring at the smooth stones in the floor, listening to Edward’s rustle of papers.
“I compromised her.” Winston heard his own voice swallowed up in the empty church. He hadn’t meant to say anything, hadn’t wanted Edward to know, but there it was.
“Who?”
“Miss Germain.”
“Ah.” Edward was quiet for a moment, and still Winston stared at the floor. “Your medic.”
Winston’s head snapped up. “She was my medic. That was all. She was no whore. She was an innocent. Untouched. She was like the bloody Virgin Mary, for Christ’s sake.” The words resounded through the church just as Winston realized what he’d said and where. “Apologies.”
Amusement edged into Edward’s eyes. “With a few adjustments, you could deliver from the pulpit.”
“I’m glad you find this amusing.”
“So what are you saying? Are you in love with her?”
“Love? No— No. It’s nothing like that. It’s...” What the devil was it? “Just another of my carnal vagaries.” Even he didn’t believe that.
“Was she unwilling?”
“No.” Winston stood up, paced to the front of the church. “But she should have been. I had no right to do it. No intention of doing it.” He leaned forward and gripped the wooden railing that separated the congregation from the altar area. “There hasn’t been a single defilement in all these years. I haven’t let it happen again. Until now. I’ve ruined another life just at the moment that you and Cara finally—”
“Winston...”
He turned his head and looked at Edward, who stood with his hands resting on the edges of the pulpit. “If it weren’t for me,” Winston said hoarsely, “you and Cara would have any number of children by now.”
“Winston, don’t do this.”
Winston let go of the railing and went to the pulpit. Looked Edward in the eye. “I want you to tell me to go to hell.”
“I don’t need to. You’ve done a good job of sending yourself there, and without reason.”
“Without reason?”
“All these years— Winston, all has been forgiven since the very first. Nothing can be gained from rehashing it now.”
“But you shouldn’t have forgiven me. You should have called me out. Bloodied my face. Said at least one word in anger. But you didn’t. Even after what I did, even when year after year went by and my two best friends had no babies because of me. I didn’t deserve your forgiveness.”
Edward was quiet for a moment, then sighed. “I didn’t do it for you, Winston. After that mess happened, I had a choice. I could either lose my best friend in the entire world and the woman I love more than life itself, lose both of you to hatred and anger, or I could forgive. That was my choice.” Edward brought his finger down hard on the pulpit. “I forgave for myself, so that I wouldn’t carry that burden.”
And in doing that, Edward had lifted the burden for all of them. Winston had kept his two closest friends, and Cara had married the man she loved.
The significance of it took his breath away.
“My God,” he said after a moment. “The debt I owe you...” Even if he knew how to keep that vow he’d made, even if he kept it for the rest of his life, it would never add up to this.
Edward just shook his head. “Forgiveness cancels debts, my friend. You don’t owe me anything. That vow you think you made... You didn’t make it to anyone but yourself. And the only one who hasn’t forgiven you is you.”
He hadn’t. He couldn’t.
Edward came out from behind the pulpit. “Forgive yourself, Winston,” he said firmly. “Here. Now. Do it today, and free yourself from this burden. You don’t need to carry it anymore.”
Winston tried to comprehend what Edward was saying.
Forgive himself. That was all Edward wanted.
* * *
THEY WERE NEARLY off the coast of Spain. Squalls could come up quickly, but for now the sky was clear, and the only clouds were in a long, barely visible bank on the western horizon, somewhere out over the open ocean.
From inside William’s great cabin, looking out through the bank
of windows at the stern of the ship, Millie watched the waves erase the ship’s wake behind them. “I don’t want to stay with them,” she said, turning away from the windows now. “There’s no reason for it. I shall be perfectly fine here.”
Pacing at the end of the table, William exhaled and rubbed the back of his neck. “Going to be too dangerous here, in your condition.”
Millie glanced at Zayn Carlyle, who sat leaning back in one of the chairs with his hands clasped across his stomach, gazing thoughtfully at the center of the table. “I’ve got a sister in Cairo and one in Alexandria,” he said evenly, looking up at her. And then, with a hint of teasing in his dark eyes, “And a friend in Tripoli who could possibly be convinced to accept another wife.”
William flashed a grin at Zayn. “Could leave her with a band of Bedouins in Algiers.”
Zayn allowed that with a lift of his brows. “Or a nunnery in Rome.”
“Now you’re just being ridiculous,” Millie said, and headed for the door, but William caught her by the hand, and she stopped.
“Watched Katherine go through this,” he said. “If I’d had anywhere else for her to go, believe me I bloody well would have sent her there.”
“William, you’re the closest thing to family I have.” She put a hand on her belly. “The closest thing we will have.”
She saw him glance behind her at Zayn, and she knew exactly what they were thinking.
The baby had a father.
“We don’t need him,” she said flatly. “I won’t take anything from him. You already know I won’t.”
“The child will need an education,” Zayn commented. “Legitimate or not, Winston will be able to pay for the finest schools in Europe and use his influence on the child’s behalf.” It was said in Zayn’s quiet, matter-of-fact way.
Millie was learning that sometimes Zayn could be infuriatingly practical. And it was difficult to tell, but sometimes she imagined he was flirting with her. It made her feel...good. Desirable, and not just by a man whose taste ran to any female who happened to be available.
“I don’t want to hear about Winston,” Millie told Zayn now. And then, to William, “And I don’t want to hear about being abandoned with strangers. I belong aboard this ship, I’ve proven myself, and I shall prove that my condition won’t change anything. I’m going back to the infirmary.”
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