And she would let no one take it away from her.
Aidan stopped just inside the doorway of Hamilton Coffees. The afternoon sun shone warm and high, casting the interior of the shop in shadow. Standing silent for a moment, he let his eyes adjust to the dimness of the building and inhaled. The rich scent of coffee gave him a comfortable feeling—a reminder of countless damp days as a child spent watching his father drink his coffee as he reviewed the daily papers and planned his morning.
As his eyes adjusted, Aidan looked about the place. He’d expected a typical coffeehouse, full of tables waiting for customers to stop in and enjoy company and biscuits. Instead, the small space was lined with lidded bins. Labels were attached to each, no doubt a description of the contents. Hamilton Coffees was a coffee merchant, a very profitable position if one knew the market well.
The room seemed deserted, but once he took a step inside, Aidan saw it was actually L-shaped. A small wing extended to the left of a door on the far wall. And there sat the mysterious woman, bent over a workbook and completely absorbed in her task. He took the chance to study her. She was absolutely unremarkable. Light brown hair pinned up beneath a small white cap. Green dress completely free of any adornment.
He couldn’t begin to guess her age—she was angled a little away from him—but even as he thought it, she turned slightly, allowing him a good view of her profile, and his world lurched with a violent shudder.
It was not her, could not be her, but his heart began a slow, hard thump of recognition. The street sounds filtering in from the open door faded to a dull buzz in his ears.
Her nose was straight and fine. Her lips full and rose red. She was older, certainly. Thinner. But . . . Holy God.
“Katie?” The word escaped his lips before he could form the will to stop it.
She stiffened. It was a subtle movement but obvious to him, he watched her so intently. Odd, though, she did not turn toward him, did not glance up. In fact, she bent a little more closely over her ledger.
“No.” He heard the low word but did not see even a small parting of her lips. Then her chest moved as she drew a deep breath. She closed her eyes. “I am Mrs. Hamilton.”
He felt strangely calm, looking at this stranger, hearing Katie’s voice in her words. Time slowed, allowing him to notice all the small details of the moment. The way her hand curled tightly around a pencil. A strand of nut brown hair that had fallen free of its pins to rest against her cheek. The stiffness of that lush, unforgettable mouth.
“Katie.”
Her lips fell apart just a bit then as she inhaled sharply. “No,” she said again, finally lifting her head. Her closed eyes opened slowly, unwillingly, and met his.
The world sped up with a terrifying ferocity when he caught her brown gaze and knew, finally, that it was her.
“Katie,” he breathed again, the only word he could think past his confusion.
Her face was a terrible mix of emotion—grief, yearning, fear. Before he could speak, that glimpse of turmoil was gone, closed behind a rigid wall of polite indifference. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave, sir.”
He stared at her, drank in the sight of her—her slightly square jaw, her lovely skin, the thick hair held back in a merciless knot. An hour seemed to pass before he realized what she’d said. “Pardon?”
“The shop is closing early. You’ll have to leave.”
“Leave? It’s me. Aidan.”
“I know who you are.”
He frowned, blinked, then felt a veil of shock begin to lift from his mind, exposing a maelstrom of anger and excitement. “What the hell is going on here?”
Her expression did not budge. “I am closing the shop early.”
“Closing the—?” The words evaporated in his mouth, leaving a gritty film. He could only stare at her, openmouthed, utterly stunned at her calm. Perhaps he had lost his mind. Perhaps she was only a stranger and he was imagining that she looked like his dead lover. But she did not look confused. She knew him.
“How can you be here?”
Her eyes blazed with fear, only for a moment, then she turned on her heel and walked toward the doorway in the back wall.
Aidan’s mouth numbed. “You were dead.”
She stopped, spun around and pinned him with a glare. “Dead? What do you mean?”
“They told me you were dead.”
“Who told you that?”
“Your parents. Your parents, of course.”
“My parents. Well, that is not surprising, I suppose, though I cannot fathom their reasoning. I am not dead,” she added needlessly. “Please leave my shop.”
“The hell I will.”
Her eyes narrowed further, but her breath shuddered so hard in her throat that he could hear it.
“Please don’t . . .” he started. His mind was spinning, spinning. This was Katie. His lover. The girl he’d meant to make his wife. The woman who’d died ten years before.
“Katie, damn you. You’d better start explaining.”
“Damn me?” she ground out behind her teeth. “Damn you, you cold bastard.”
He took a step toward her, reaching out blindly, meaning to touch her, to shake her, but she jerked away from him and bolted into the dark room behind her. He heard her ragged breath, heard the slap of her shoes on the floor, then a bright shaft of sunlight pierced the dim as she opened a door to the alley.
By the time he recovered himself and followed, she was gone, the alley deserted. He stood there in the shadowed air and wondered if he’d gone stark, raving mad.
Chapter 3
Oh God, oh God, oh God. Her feet kept time with the beat of the words in her head. Oh God, oh God. She rushed down the alley, trying not to run, trying to suppress the urge to fly into the road in sheer, blind panic. The alley spilled into the bright sun of the street. Kate looked back, saw that no one followed, and pushed into the flow of traffic.
What were the chances? What were the chances he would wander into her shop?
Turning left at the next lane, she found a deserted alleyway and stopped to lean against the rough stone. Sounds flew from an open doorway further along, the clinks and clanks of the printer’s shop jostling her nerves.
Her face began to crumple, her eyes stung, and the loss of control set off a rhythm of panic in her veins. Terrified at the rush of feeling, Kate raised her head and forced her face to be still. He was nothing to her, nothing. He’d sent her away long ago. He’d forgotten her until it was too late.
He was nothing to her. And yet she’d run from him. Fled from her own home as if he could harm her. It had taken her years to build up some semblance of her old courage, and now she’d dropped it and run as if her hard-won bravery was a worthless rag.
What was he doing here? What did he want? And most importantly, how had he found her?
Her legs weakened. She slid down the wall and crouched there, listening for pursuing footsteps.
He could ruin everything.
She took a deep breath and told herself not to be a coward. He knew nothing of her life. In fact, he seemed to think she should be dead.
Closing her eyes, she drew a deep breath and tried to still the hundred questions swirling madly about her head. None of that mattered right now. She only had to think what to say to Aidan York.
Rubbing her forehead lightly, she cursed herself. She should not have reacted to him so, should have been cool and calm and completely at ease with his presence. Should have acted as though his appearance meant nothing whatsoever to her. Because it meant nothing, surely. He’d set her aside. She’d been given to another. It was as simple as that.
But how disturbing to see him again. He did not look the same. He was older, and his body was larger or harder or simply more intimidating. She might not have recognized him if not for his voice shaping her name. Katie. It sounded like an old secret. Or an old betrayal.
“Faithless wretch,” she whispered, pressing a handkerchief to her hot face. She had loved him so much.
With every fiber of her earnest, eager heart.
“Missus?”
Kate jumped, pushing herself up along the wall at the man’s graveled voice.
“Be ye all right, missus?”
“Oh, yes.” She tried to smile at the hunched figure of the local rag picker, tried to remember his name. “Yes, um. I’m well, thank you.”
“Ye look a mite bloodless.”
“The sun. I think I shall return home. Get out of the heat.”
The man glanced around at the shadows of the lane. “You do that, missus.”
Kate set her teeth and pushed away from the wall. But she didn’t turn back toward her shop on Guys Lane. Instead she walked. Walked for blocks until the pain had numbed. Until she’d calmed down. Then she headed back to him.
She had a masquerade to maintain, after all. She could not back down from it now. Not even for Aidan York.
Aidan stared out the small front window before resuming his pacing. He felt like a wild animal, wanting to growl, to snap at someone or something.
He could not get his mind around the situation. She had not died ten years ago and seemed not to even know she should be dead. Unless that was just part of the lie. Where the hell had she been? His confusion made the specter of madness more real.
Through the glass of the front window, Aidan watched a woman stop and peer curiously at the closed door. After the first customer had come in and asked after Mrs. Hamilton, Aidan had turned the lock. He was in no mood to act as substitute shopkeeper.
This woman put her hand to the glass to peer blindly around. Her round face and the avid curiosity in her eyes reminded Aidan of his mother. My God, his mother was going to love this story. She wasn’t an unkind woman, but gossip was gossip after all, and the story of Katie had always been a delicious one.
Mrs. Hamilton. Was she married then, or had been? Had she run off with someone else, leaving her parents to concoct a story to cover her indiscretion? The possibility stunned him.
He glared out the window for the hundredth time, watching for her. He would have some answers, if, of course, she hadn’t disappeared again. The thought turned his blood cold, stopped his heart completely.
Just as his hand curled into a fist, he heard a small sound from the back room and twisted to find her standing there, smiling tightly.
“I apologize for walking out.” She jerked her fingers vaguely toward the alley door.
“What happened?” he snapped.
“I . . . I just . . .” She paused to swallow. “I was only surprised to see you. Of course I was.”
“No, not that. I don’t understand what happened. To you. What happened?”
“I have no idea.”
“No idea? We argued, Katie, and then you disappeared.”
Her smile slipped and she glared at him. “We argued, and you told me to go.”
“I was angry!” he shouted, but Kate cut him off with a sharp wave of her hand.
“There’s no point in discussing this. All that matters now is you’ve found me.”
For a moment, the clouds of confusion parted, and Aidan caught a brief moment of hope.
But Katie shook her head as if to warn him away from such foolishness. “How did you find me? How did you track me down?”
“What?”
“I need to know. I . . . I have no wish to present myself to my family. Do they know I’ve returned?” Her fingers twisted nervously together, and anxiety tightened her brow.
“Returned from where?” he asked before shaking his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“How did you find me?”
Aidan threw his hands up. “I saw you on the street! I followed you here.”
Every muscle in her body seemed to freeze solid. “That’s it?”
“Yes! A ridiculous happenstance. Meaningless and random.”
She looked thrilled by the circumstances, but Aidan felt only a growing horror. If he’d left that office a few minutes before, or a few after, Katie would’ve walked on, unnoticed.
“Katie,” he said on a strangled breath. “You still haven’t told me what happened. Did you . . . the ship . . . did it sink?”
She spared him a distracted glance. “The ship?”
“To Ceylon.”
“Oh, that. No. But it hardly matters now.”
“Don’t be absurd. Of course it matters.” He took a step toward her but was stopped when she raised a hand.
“It was a lifetime ago. What story could I tell that would make any difference? I can’t . . . I can’t think. And I wish you would just go.”
Strange that words could cause such stunning hurt. Aidan drew his shoulders back in an attempt to hide the force of the blow. She wanted him to go. And he could only imagine staying. For hours. For days. Staying until he’d satisfied himself with every detail of every second of her life since she’d left.
“Did you mean to leave?” he asked softly.
Her mouth twisted into a grimace for a brief moment, but she stayed silent.
He tried again. “You said you would marry someone else.”
“You told me I should,” she whispered.
Weariness seeped into his limbs and muffled his brain. It had been an argument between children. Had she really married someone else because of their foolish, angry words? She must have. Her name was Mrs. Hamilton now, after all. And of all things, she was a coffee merchant.
His shoulders felt too heavy as he glanced helplessly around the small, spare room. “You’re married?” he asked.
“I am,” she said quickly and without emotion. Her hands tightened their grip on each other.
“Your husband?”
Her eyes fell to the floor. “He’s not in England at the moment.”
Aidan ignored his unfortunate relief. He studied her, taking in her patent discomfort, her downcast eyes, and he could not identify the emotions scrambling inside him. “Do you really want me to go?”
“Yes.”
“How can I?”
“I have a shop to run,” she said simply.
“The door is shut. Leave it for the day.”
He knew her answer when she met his gaze. When had her eyes ever been so cool? “There are deliveries to be made. I cannot ignore them.”
But stubbornness was new to her, and Aidan had worn stubbornness like a skin since the moment he was born. “Fine. But I’ll come back.”
“But . . . why?” she asked, though resignation was writ clear on her face. Whatever she was feeling, she could not imagine he would leave this be.
“We owe it to ourselves to figure out what happened, don’t we?”
She shook her head. “I don’t see what difference it could possibly make.”
“Don’t you?” Aidan’s hand lifted the barest inch, wanting to reach out to her, to pull her against him and feel the realness of her body. Her eyes flew to that small movement and widened in alarm.
“Tomorrow then,” she blurted, taking a small step back. “There is a strolling park—”
“I’ll come for you.”
Her eyes flew to his before skittering away. “Good afternoon, Mr. York.”
Chapter 4
Kate locked the shop door behind him. Despite her words, she would not reopen today; her shaky knees could barely hold her.
Oh, this was not good. This was not safe and peaceful. This was dangerous.
She pressed a hand hard to the ache in her stomach and wondered whether she would be sick, but a few long minutes later the nausea passed and she made her way up to her rooms, to her bed, crawling beneath the thick blanket to hide under the covers.
Aidan York. My God.
The last time she’d seen him she’d threatened to marry someone else. He’d told her she damn well should. She’d hated him for weeks afterward. But in the end, she’d still thought he would save her. She’d waited for him for so long, wondering every morning if this would be the day he would come for her. . . . But all that time, he’d thought she w
as dead.
It shouldn’t have hurt more than his abandonment, but it did. It broke her heart to think of that terrified girl, holding on to her soul so that she could save something, anything, of herself for him. Knowing that if she just hoped hard enough, he would appear in Ceylon and take her away. In truth, there had never been any hope of rescue at all.
A ragged cry escaped her lips as she tried to stifle her sobs. It was no use. A deep well of emotion was uncapped and she could not close it. The tears overflowed her eyes and streamed down her temples as she finally gave in—just for a moment, she promised herself—and allowed her throat to open. The keening that emerged was a shock and a relief. Sobs wracked her body as she thought of the life she’d lived on the other side of the world.
The rage that rushed over her did not dry her tears but turned them vengeful, and she cried into her pillow until sleep fell over her, a sleep disturbed only by vague dreams of heat and black soil and the incessant sounds of insects.
When she woke, greeted by a headache and gritty, swollen eyes, she squinted at her small clock to find that two hours had passed. Six-thirty, and she felt like she’d lain abed for days. Rain pattered the window in a soothing ruckus. Her legs wanted to refuse service, but she forced herself to rise. The shop needed sweeping, the counters wiping. And she should eat.
Life moved on. She’d learned that lesson, at least. Life moved on and she must keep the lie going. It would not go well for her if she dragged around her shop like a grieving widow.
She washed her face and took her hair down to brush it before twisting it up again. Her hair had once been her vanity. In Ceylon it had become a heavy veil that seemed to capture all the moisture from the air and press it to her skin. She’d yearned to shave it off, as many of the men had done. Who would have cared, after all?
But now it was neither vanity nor curse, it was only a chore to be completed.
Turning her mind from the past, she pinned up her hair and hurried down the stairs to set a pot of water on to heat. The present was problem enough. And after that crying fit, she felt almost calm. She’d meant what she’d said to Aidan. What could any explanations matter? She was alive and finally well. And Aidan certainly looked no worse for wear. Older, yes, but strong and healthy. His gloves had looked cut from the finest kid. His hat had been of the latest style.
It's Always Been You Page 2
