It's Always Been You

by Victoria Dahl

  And nothing, after all, could be changed or taken back. So the present was her only concern. And there were small problems, in addition to the large ones. Her ongoing war with the old stove, which either refused to hold heat or charred anything she tried to cook. The nearly empty bin of beans from Sumatra and the wholesaler’s promise that he would surely have more by Friday. And of course there was Aidan, who meant to return.

  She felt sick at the idea, but even his return was a small problem. He would come and he would go, and that would be that. He would have no reason to tell her family. He’d certainly have no reason to try to track down her husband.

  She opened the back door and swept the floor, then poured herself a cup of her new coffee blend before putting a sausage on to cook. She couldn’t afford a daily maid, and she was determined to master the simple act of cooking a meal. So far the results had been less than perfect. In fact, she’d given up earlier in the week, but she could not bear another dinner of cheese and bread. She was forced to dare the stove.

  Kate sipped her coffee and glared at the pan. The sausage was barely sizzling. She added more coal, then jumped back with a hiss.

  “Evil thing,” Kate muttered to the stove, bringing a burnt fingertip to her mouth to soothe the sting. The flames looked too high now, but the sausage was finally cooking. Poking at it with a long fork, she prayed for the best.

  What an exhausting day. What an awful day. And she still had to prepare her first delivery for the Stag’s Horn, one of the best inns in town and her first big client. She’d almost forgotten, and that was only proof that nothing good could come of Aidan’s return.

  She gave the sausage an angry poke, and in revenge, it rolled away to reveal an underside burnt to black. Kate screeched in wordless frustration, reached for the handle of the pan . . . and remembered at the last possible moment that she didn’t have a rag to protect her from the heat.

  “Ha.” She reached in triumph for the cloth, absurdly proud that the sausage hadn’t goaded her into burning her entire palm. “I’m far more clever than you,” she insisted with a smug smile—at the sausage, at the stove, at the whole kitchen.

  The rumble of a man clearing his throat chased her triumph away and sent her twisting around, rag clutched like a shield against her chest.

  “The door was open. . . .” Aidan gestured toward the alley.

  Kate closed her mouth with a snap and glared at him. What was he doing here, taking up far too much space in her tiny box of a kitchen? “You’re not supposed to return until tomorrow.”

  He looked as tired as she felt. A small frown caught between his brows, his wide mouth tightened with tension. And those strong shoulders looked hard as stone. “I . . .” He shifted, clasping his hands behind him as he glanced toward the door. “I can’t wait until tomorrow, Katie. Can you?”

  She tried to ignore the bright pain in his eyes. “I can’t have a man in my shop after hours. It’s unseemly.”

  “Perhaps dinner at the inn then?”

  “As you can see, I’ve already started my dinner.”

  He raised an eyebrow. His nostrils flared. “I think you may be in need of a new plan.”

  She opened her mouth to refuse him again, but her nose caught the acrid odor of burning fat and she groaned instead. “Oh, no.”

  Spinning back to the stove, Kate jerked the pan from the fire—using the cloth—and banged it down onto the cool side of the stove. The sausage was black and crispy, and tendrils of smoke curled tauntingly up from the pan. Her eyes narrowed, her hands clenched into tight fists.

  “The inn?” he murmured.

  She would have ordered him out with no hesitation if there’d been any hint of amusement in his voice, but she heard none. Willing herself to calm, she let out a long, slow breath before turning to face him.

  “No.” Her tone was rude but she wasn’t screaming and stomping her feet as she wished to do. That was something.

  His jaw clenched, but he held tight to his frustration as well. He dropped his head and frowned at the floor instead of her. “All right. But you said there was a strolling park. It won’t be dark for a half hour yet. Perhaps we could walk.”

  She found herself staring at the top of his head. His brown hair was shorter now, but it still looked soft as sable to her. Out of the blue, a memory assaulted her. Of her hand sliding into his hair. Of her fingers gripping the soft strands as he lowered himself over her . . .

  “Just a walk,” he whispered. “Please.”

  “I’ll need my cloak.” She’d meant to snap the words in irritation, but they emerged as more of a rasp. “Excuse me.” She dropped the rag on the small table and covered the fire before she walked serenely up her stairs. But once she closed the door at the top, she had to lean against it to try to draw a breath past her blocked throat.

  She’d forgotten. She’d forgotten everything, and that had been good. To not remember. To not know him. She could not bear much more of this. Aidan was a ghost to her, and she needed him to be unreal.

  So she removed her apron and folded it before walking slowly across the room to retrieve her gloves and her cloak. She would walk with him, and then it would be done.

  She couldn’t get her dry throat to work, so she descended the stairs and said nothing. He offered his arm, and there was no choice but to take it, though the contact brought a shiver of uneasiness to her belly and made her glad she at least had her gloves. Aidan had not worn his, she saw with a glance at his tanned hands.

  She refused to remember his hands.

  They strolled in silence, halfway to the park before he cleared his throat to break the tension hovering between them.

  “You’ve been living in Ceylon?”

  She shook her head and lied. “India.” Ceylon was a small island, after all, and she might be known as a notorious murderess. She couldn’t let him know a thing.

  Silence returned, descending with surprising weight. Kate made a conscious effort to relax the fingers that gripped his forearm.

  “So . . . that is where you learned the coffee trade?”

  “Yes, my hus—” Swallowing the word, Kate cleared her throat again. “I lived on a coffee plantation.”

  “Did you return to England recently?”

  “A few months ago. As soon as I was able, actually.”

  “You did not enjoy India?”

  That surprised a laugh from her. The strained sound drew a look from Aidan, but she rushed on before he could probe. “I did not enjoy the heat.”

  “And that’s why you returned?”

  Here it was. She didn’t hesitate over the story. “My husband wished to start a new venture. Coffee distribution. Due to our own plantation and his contacts in the community, we can guarantee the highest quality of product at the lowest price.”

  “But where is your husband?”

  “The . . . the heat made me ill, so he sent me ahead to start the shop. He is in India for the moment, arranging new contacts.”

  “I see,” he said in a way that made his confusion clear. “Are coffee shops really so profitable?”

  “It is only the first step.” Hands clenched tight together, she waited for him to kick at the cracks in her story. Why was she running the shop herself? Why did she have no workers? Why would her husband not travel with her?

  Just as he seemed about to speak, the strolling park appeared before them and distracted him from his study of her face. His eyes swept the grassy square before he led her to sit on a small bench sheltered beneath a willow tree. Kate perched there and stared at the dying leaves of the tree, waiting for him to speak again.

  She felt him shift toward her. “What happened? How did this . . . happen?”

  Her breath swelled in her tight chest. “I don’t know. After we quarreled, I returned home. I was so angry. You told me we couldn’t marry—”

  “We couldn’t.”

  Kate closed her eyes, remembering the awful things they’d said to each other. She’d called him a coward, and he
’d called her a naïve, stupid child. “You’re right,” she murmured. “We couldn’t marry. So I married someone else.”

  “In Ceylon,” he said flatly.

  “India,” she said again, feeling the lie on her tongue. “And that is what happened.” Oh, but that so simplified it that she couldn’t honestly say it was the truth. She didn’t care.

  Aidan pushed to his feet, shoving one hand through his hair. Kate felt stupidly jealous of that hand.

  “That is all?” he bit out. “That is all you have to say? You could not marry me, so you married another?”

  She shook her head, knowing he could not see, and said nothing.

  “But they told me you’d died. Why?”

  Why, indeed? Because she’d resisted the marriage? Because she’d refused to agree? Because they’d intercepted letter after letter begging him to come for her? Perhaps he had come for her, and her parents had been forced to fabricate her death. But she said none of this. Instead, she shrugged. “My father meant to make an advantageous match.”

  “I remember,” he said dryly.

  “My husband . . . he had money. Lots of it, and a desire to see the governor of Ceylon replaced. My father had influence over government appointments but never enough money. It was exactly the match he wanted.”

  “Exactly what I could not offer,” Aidan grumbled.

  “Yes.”

  “And you simply agreed?”

  “I had no choice.”

  His head snapped up, and he looked at her. Really looked. Grief etched his handsome face, she realized suddenly. Lines of pain and weariness beyond his years. She’d been cruel not to see it before. She could not imagine what she’d have felt if she’d thought him dead. “I’m sorry they told you I was dead. I’m sorry.”

  He seemed not to hear her. “They forced you to marry him? They forced you to go to India?”

  Her spine stiffened. Her skin burned. That wasn’t grief on his face. It was pity. Pity. In his quiet words. In the softening of his eyes. Grief was there, yes, but pity rode close on its coattails, waiting to take over.

  She set her shoulders back and decided to put an end to this. “Yes, well . . . I was privileged to travel to exotic lands and meet interesting people. Not many young girls are offered that opportunity.”

  His face went rather blank at that, she saw with satisfaction. “Oh. Of course. It was not altogether horrible for you then?”

  “Certainly not.” An impossible smile stretched her mouth. She’d be damned if she’d have him leave here feeling sorry for her. She was not the stupid, stupid girl she had been. She would not have anyone thinking of her that way.

  Kate stood, forcing him to join her as she stepped onto the path. Aidan frowned at the grass as they walked, frowned at his feet, at everything but her. “Your time in India has been a benefit to you, it seems.”

  She made a sound of agreement.

  “What was it like there?”

  “Hot. The plantation was isolated and somewhat primitive, I suppose. The animals were strange. . . .” Her voice faded away at the thought of the strange animal who’d been her husband. It had taken her so many years to understand him.

  She felt Aidan’s arm tighten like a wary cat beneath her fingers as he prepared to ask something he didn’t wish to.

  “Were you comfortable with your life there then?”

  “Comfortable? Yes. It was a very comfortable life. We must have had twenty servants inside the house alone.” Not one of whom had ever spoken to her of anything but their duties. Kate had come to think there was nothing more disorienting than living for years in a house full of people who refused to see you. Only her stepson, a boy her same age, had watched her, and Kate had eventually wished him blind.

  Setting the disturbing memory aside, she studied Aidan for a moment from the corner of her eye. He looked confused and a little angry, his jaw ridged with tension.

  She fought the impulse to appease him. She was done being that woman. She’d eventually found a small purpose in Ceylon. If Aidan wanted to wish her miserable with her husband, then he deserved his own misery. Could he not wish her happiness? After all, he didn’t look as though he’d spent the last decade locked in an asylum, mad with grief.

  “It was a long time ago,” she said. “We were young. And naïve.”

  Aidan winced as if he remembered with perfect clarity the words he’d shouted at her that day.

  Kate made her mouth smile. “You were right, you know. We couldn’t have married, so how else could it have turned out?”

  He did not answer her, but seemed lost in thought as they circled the park before heading back toward her lane. The sun was setting, the air cooling around them. The coldness soothed her nerves. She inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with iciness. When she exhaled, she felt at peace, and she leapt into that peace with a final lie. “Perhaps it was better this way. If I’d married a man in England, it would’ve served neither of us well.”

  He looked dumbstruck at the idea.

  “I’m glad you came tonight,” she said. “But we should return now, I think. And say our farewells.”

  “I thought I would return tomorrow evening. Perhaps dinner—”

  “I’m already obliged for tomorrow evening,” she interrupted. “A reception.”

  “Can you not bow out?”

  “The dockmaster is hosting it. It would not do to insult him when our family business depends on timely shipments.”

  “I see.” Green anger flashed in his eyes and silence fell again. He said not another word until they stopped before the door of her shop. “I’ll bid you good night then,” he said flatly.

  “Aidan.” She could not keep the weariness from her voice. “We must say farewell. There is no point to this.”

  She expected an argument, but what she got was worse. His eyelids dropped slightly. His jaw hardened to steel and edged forward. His eyes glinted cool fury.

  When she’d known Aidan, he had not often lost his temper, but when he had, he’d become intractable. And he’d looked exactly like this.

  Kate sighed. “Good evening then,” she murmured. “And . . . please do not mention me to anyone. I am not Katie Tremont anymore. I no longer know my family and I do not wish to. Please.”

  He nodded and she turned to unlock the door. Her fingers were clumsy. It took her a moment to even find the keyhole. Just as her hand slipped off the key, she felt Aidan’s large presence draw close to her back, felt his warm fingers slide over her gloved hand.

  “Here.” His voice rumbled just inches from her ear as he guided the key into the lock. Kate twisted it, quick with panic, and pushed the door open. She moved to escape him, but before she’d shifted more than a few inches, before she could get free of his heat, that voice touched her ear again, impossibly soft. “I am so glad I found you.”

  A shiver slid up her spine, icy, feather-light. She closed the door behind her, not daring to even glance in his direction.

  Chapter 5

  The third glass of whisky went down more quickly than the second. Aidan didn’t notice the subtle taste of peat and oak. All his subtler senses had deserted him hours before.

  Katie was not only alive, but she was here. Here, in his reach. He didn’t know what to feel about it. The strong veil of anger that overshadowed his other raging emotions surprised him. He actually felt angry that she was alive, ridiculous as it was. Angry that he’d been tortured by grief when she had been alive and well in India.

  Perhaps the well rankled most. It seemed as though she’d settled in nicely to her life on a coffee plantation, married to some faceless man. Surely, if she’d wanted to, she could’ve avoided the marriage. She could’ve turned to Aidan. She’d claimed to love him. She’d given herself to him.

  He chastised himself for the anger even as he gave in to it and raised his hand for another drink. She’d only been a child. Well, not quite a child perhaps, but at most a very, very young woman. She hadn’t reached her majority, and her father had refus
ed Aidan’s offer. They could not have married, not for three years, at least.

  A curse escaped his lips. These thoughts were meaningless, futile, and yet they seemed unstoppable.

  He pictured Katie as she had been—confident, mischievous, daring. She had dazzled him, had even been slightly overwhelming in her exuberance. The very first time he’d seen her he’d been enchanted, captured by the contrast of her demure white dress and the sharp glint of humor sparkling through her eyelashes. She hadn’t even been out yet, had only been allowed to attend dinner at her family’s ball before being forced to bed before the dancing. But she’d been confident enough to smile in his direction and exchange a few pleasantries over dessert. And when her mother had ushered her quickly out at the end of dinner, his fate had been sealed. What young man could resist forbidden fruit?

  But how different she was now. She seemed to have grown into stillness. She was beautiful though; still lovely in a quiet way.

  Beautiful and married. Did she love the man?

  The question stuck in his mind, a barbed thorn, irritating and painful. Did she take her husband to her with the same breathless excitement she had Aidan? It was maddening to think so, despite the dozens of lovers he himself had entertained in the past years.

  Aidan snorted at the comparison. His nights with women had little enough to do with love. Nothing, actually, to do with it. That was the point—to keep as far away from love as possible.

  The fourth glass of whisky succeeded where the others had failed and actually quenched his thirst. Aidan stared at the last drops of amber liquid, at the dim light wavering through the thick glass. What did he really feel, underneath the anger and jealousy? The emotion was familiar in a vague, distant way, and he thought that perhaps it was relief.