It's Always Been You

by Victoria Dahl

  “Oh.” She tried in vain to tighten her mouth against a smile. “You were not supposed to see that, and you’re horrid to bring it up.”

  “On the contrary! I’m offering my support. A warrior needs her strength. Shall we approach the buffet?”

  “You’re not clever,” she murmured. But he was. He always had been. So she took his arm and dipped her head so he would not see her smile.

  “I saw that,” he whispered, and the softness of his words slipped along her skin. Disturbed, she concentrated on the quick glimpse of her slippers afforded by each step.

  “She reminds me of you,” he said softly.

  “Who?”

  “Miss Cain.”

  Her eyes flew wide in disbelief. “You’re mad.”

  “She’s mischievous and bright. Happy.”

  His words bored a hole through her breastbone, then sunk deep to settle in her belly and burn. She was relieved that they’d reached the buffet. She did not have to speak as he served her bits of the delicacies laid out on impossibly long tables. “Duck is a favorite, if I remember correctly?” he asked as he offered a large serving. Yes, he remembered correctly. She wouldn’t let that thrill her.

  When they reached their seats, there were introductions to be exchanged among the other guests. Pleasantries and idle chatter, nothing she had to turn her mind to. So she could think on his ridiculous assertion that Lucy reminded him of Kate.

  Did he really still see her that way? How could he? Was it because he was unchanged? In his severe black suit and white cravat, Aidan looked . . . My God, he looked beautiful. Not so much like an angel as he’d once looked though. Now he looked dangerous as Lucifer.

  Had he always had that knife’s edge to his gaze? She wouldn’t have known. In the past, when he’d looked at her, his eyes had been too full of love to leave room for anything else.

  And just like that, she saw him. Really saw him. His short, slightly wavy hair and his shockingly green eyes. His wide mouth and straight nose and hard-hewn jaw. She saw the changes in him too. The touch of gray in his hair and the faint lines that creased his forehead and the corners of his eyes.

  He had aged, matured in the years she’d been gone. Grown into his tall frame and wide shoulders. He was extremely attractive. Impossibly, even more attractive than he’d been as a young man. He glanced her way and caught her looking, and he smiled. He smiled, and it was as if there were a lamp inside her and someone had just struck the flame.

  Panic welled in her chest and threatened to strangle her.

  That had been the feeling curling inside her since yesterday. Attraction.

  “Katie.”

  She jumped nervously at the rich sound of his voice.

  “Are you all right?” The last of the other guests at the table had departed. When she only stared mutely, Aidan waved a servant over and took a glass of red wine from the tray.

  He held it out toward her, his mouth a line of concern.

  “Thank you,” she stuttered, and reached for the glass. The crystal chimed a pretty note when her fingers struck the rim, and a tiny wave of wine sloshed over the edge. The red stain spread in a slow circle over Aidan’s white shirt cuff. Kate stared in horror.

  What was she doing? What would people think?

  “It’s fine,” Aidan said in a rush as he reached for her hand. “It’s nothing.” His fingers curled over her own and she thought she would dissolve into tears right there at the table. His touch felt wonderful. The heat of his skin seeping into hers. The soft rasp of his fingertips sliding across her knuckles. Wonderful.

  Jerking her hand away, she stood on shaky legs. “I must go. Excuse me.”

  Aidan frowned up at her. “What? Why?”

  “I’m sorry.” She turned and fled before he could even stand, rushing past the swiveling heads of the other guests. She tried to appear calm as she hurried toward the door, tried to pretend she didn’t see the startled looks of her neighbors, but her composure was completely destroyed.

  First he’d brought pain back to her life, now his presence was eliciting other emotions as well. She hadn’t expected this, not at all. And she could not afford it.

  She reached the front door, but only managed three steps past the frame before his alarmed voice stabbed into her.

  “Katie—”

  Feeling a hand close over her shoulder, she stopped, embarrassed to be running away again, humiliated that she now saw hiding as her greatest hope.

  “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  “I just . . . I have to go.” She was stammering. Stammering .

  “Here.” Aidan took her arm and led her gently down the stairs and into a hidden corner around the side of the house. “Tell me.”

  His warm fingers touched her chin, a startling contrast to the cool air. She closed her eyes against the beautiful pressure of him tilting her face up. She tried not to remember this same touch, long ago, this same motion just before he’d pressed his lips softly into hers for the very first time. Her eyes burned, wanting to weep.

  “Katie—”

  “Don’t call me that!” She heard his sharp inhalation and shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Please don’t call me that. I’m Kate now.”

  “All right,” he said carefully.

  “And . . . I’m sorry but I can’t see you again.”

  His fingers held her chin for a moment, tightened almost imperceptibly before they fell away. “Of course.” She didn’t dare look at him, didn’t dare to see what emotion chilled his voice. “Then I will take this opportunity to say good-bye. I’ll leave for London in the morning.”

  “Yes. I think that’s just as well. I didn’t mean . . .” She forced her eyes open, willed away the tears before they even formed. “I only meant that it is too strange, seeing you. It’s discomfiting. And there are . . . There is my husband. I’m sorry.”

  His mouth had lost its gentleness; the cold shadow of his eyes fell impersonally on her face. “Of course,” he repeated. “Would you like to return to the party?”

  “No.”

  “Let me walk you home at least. Did you bring a cloak?”

  He retrieved her cloak and reappeared again. This time, he did not offer his arm, and she was grateful. He was far too real now to touch.

  They walked as strangers, silence between them like another companion. Clouds passed the moon and shifted darkness over them, only to be banished by the bright lights of windows they passed. In and out of shadows they walked. He did not speak until they reached her narrow lane.

  “Katie . . . I mean, Mrs. Hamilton . . .”

  Her feet slowed, but she didn’t stop and turn to him until she’d passed into another patch of darkness.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for how things ended between us. If I could go back, I’d change so many things.”

  She could not see his face, thank God. She could pretend it wasn’t him as she nodded. “I’m sorry as well.”

  And what else was there to say? They made their stiff farewells at the door, she avoiding his eyes, he bowing perfunctorily. Then she fled into the shop and up the stairs to lie down in her bed fully clothed, wrinkling her best dress and not caring in the least.

  He was leaving.

  She was relieved and somehow burning with anger also, because even his departure disturbed her, flooding her with desperate regret.

  My God, how could she be attracted to him? Granted, he was handsome, he always had been. But she’d not looked at a man with anything more than a distant sort of weariness in so long. She’d assumed herself immune to men and their charms.

  Staring at the ceiling, she watched pale light fade as the moon rose past her window. The darkness thickened. She stared.

  Her body had betrayed her. It seemed to have some memory of Aidan and the love she’d once felt for him, the passion. The idea was foreign to her now.

  She knew, intellectually, that she’d once wanted him, even that she’d enjoyed making love with him, but
she could not really remember it. It was as if it had happened to someone else, someone who’d told her the story. She knew he’d touched her body but she could not recall the feeling of it. Her mind was crowded with the impersonal grip of her husband’s hands, his blunt fingers digging into her flesh. Worst of all, she had ruined those memories of Aidan herself.

  David Gallow had been her husband, and so she’d shared his bed. Still, for the first few months of her unwanted marriage, she’d thought Aidan would come for her, so every time her husband had taken her she’d been tortured with guilt. She betrayed Aidan, letting another man do that to her. It had seemed impossible Aidan would still want her, could still desire her, if she let another man touch her.

  In defense, she’d tried to fill her mind with thoughts of him, ignoring her husband’s impersonal assaults. She’d thought it would lessen the betrayal, thinking of Aidan. Instead, it had obliterated all her memories of his gentle attention to her body.

  Kate couldn’t remember their lovemaking, but her body seemed willing to draw him near again. She could not do that. She was not free to do that.

  The flat blackness of her bedroom blanketed her. He would leave tomorrow. She felt the wet tickle of a tear inching slowly down her skin and thanked God that he was going.

  Chapter 8

  Aidan tossed the remainder of his cigar onto the rocks beneath the train platform and strode down the steps. He headed for the crowded street where Penrose had already hailed the carriage. By the time he threw open the door of his modest Mayfair townhome, any sense of calm that the train had rocked into him had vanished.

  “Shall I bring your personal letters immediately?” Penrose asked.

  Aidan wanted to snap at the man, but he could not decide how he should answer. Instead of shouting, he bit his tongue and brushed past his secretary to retreat to his study. With a sneer, he took a seat behind his massive mahogany desk. The piece was a monstrosity that had come with the house, likely because it wouldn’t fit out the doorway.

  Penrose said not a word as he retrieved a glass of whisky for Aidan, then disappeared through the door that led to his own smaller office beyond. The fluttering sounds of paper being sorted filtered through the door. Aidan stared absentmindedly out the large window next to his desk and thought of nothing.

  He finished the tumbler of whisky, and Penrose brought him the decanter and a few pieces of correspondence before retreating again.

  Aidan ignored the papers before him and resumed his study of the window.

  “A note from Mrs. Renier,” Penrose murmured when he reappeared to add another letter to the pile. Aidan snapped that one up and looked it over. She was in London for a brief stay while her husband was on the Continent. She had instructed the butler not to place the knocker on the door, but a private dinner in her salon would not be an imposition.

  At their last private dinner he’d fucked her on the table before the soup course had ended. The footman had dropped the fish course in the doorway, but they hadn’t bothered to stop what they were doing. She had simply bared her teeth and growled at Aidan to pound her harder. Perhaps that kind of mercenary focus was exactly what he needed.

  Aidan folded the letter and considered her offer. He’d already ended the affair, and he was usually unforgiving in that regard. The invitation should have irritated him, at the least. On a bad day, he might’ve been enraged by it. What the hell kind of day was he having that he was actually tempted to take Mrs. Renier up on her offer?

  Aidan frowned at the window. Perhaps it wasn’t a bad idea. If he resumed his normal activities, that would be proof that Katie’s resurrection meant nothing. “Penrose.”

  His secretary materialized in the doorway. “Sir?”

  “Please inform Mrs. Renier that I will join her for dinner tonight at nine.”

  “Yes, sir. And Mr. Scarborough’s invitation to tomorrow’s lecture?”

  “Pardon?”

  Penrose’s gaze slid to the desk, and Aidan saw that there was now a tall stack of correspondence there. He’d only made it through one piece in—he glanced at the clock—an hour.

  He cleared his throat. “I’ll look over the other business later.”

  “Later, sir? All of it?”

  “Yes, all of it. Leave me be.”

  Penrose nodded and shut the door to his little room with a wary look. Normally Aidan let nothing come between him and work. Today he simply swung back to the window.

  Katie had turned away from him . . . and he’d let her. Her claim of being disconcerted had wounded his pride and pushed him on his way—exactly the outcome she’d been looking for, he realized now. The lie that he’d only wanted to say good-bye had come easily to his lips. He’d been trying to wound her as she had wounded him. Instead, he’d seen relief in her eyes.

  But why was she so disturbed by him? When he’d boarded the train, he’d told himself that she was married now and cared nothing for him, but that made no sense now that he’d shed his anger. If she were indifferent to him, completely absorbed in feelings for another man, his presence would be less than disturbing; it would be inconsequential. But he’d affected her, and that meant she still felt something.

  “Hmm.” The progress of a slowly strolling couple occupied his eyes as they passed on the walk in front of his window, but his mind was still far north of London.

  Perhaps he had exited the field prematurely. That story about her husband was poppycock. No man would let his wife live halfway around the world if he loved her. And no decent husband would let his wife toil in a shop when he had funds enough to run a plantation.

  She’d left her husband. She must have.

  Still, it had nothing to do with Aidan. He’d pass an evening with Mrs. Renier just to prove it.

  He told himself to leave off staring out the window and be productive. An hour of work and he could bathe and dress and set off for Mrs. Renier’s house and a few hours of oblivion. But he was so damn tired.

  Weariness pulled at him as if weights hung from his wrists and ankles. The feeling should’ve been familiar. He never slept well. But usually his tiredness was a restless ache. This felt more like a shroud of lead.

  He glanced at the clock. Seven P.M.

  Perhaps the sleepless nights in Hull had finally caught him up.

  “Penrose,” he said sharply.

  The poor man looked downright worried as he rushed into the room.

  “You may depart for the evening.”

  “But, sir—”

  “On your way out, tell Whitestone to ready a bath.”

  “Of course, but if I may . . .” Penrose held up a sheaf of papers.

  Aidan caught sight of the seal at the top of the first page. An important contact in France. Someone he’d been waiting to hear from. But his head felt ready to explode and his bones seemed to want to fall from his skin.

  He reached for the decanter and poured himself another glass. “No,” he finally answered. “Not tonight.”

  “Oh. Of course.” Penrose hesitated a moment, as if waiting for Aidan to admit he was only joking.

  Just as he turned away, Aidan gave in to one last impulse. “Have you sent the note to Mrs. Renier yet?”

  “I have it here, sir.” He raised a small square of paper.

  “I’ve changed my mind. Let her know I’ll come to dinner tomorrow.”

  “Of course,” Penrose said as he retreated.

  Relief spread through Aidan’s muscles. Tonight he would simply have dinner and a bath and find his bed. He didn’t need a woman’s body tonight. He didn’t need to exhaust himself, he was already there.

  He took his bath, then drank too much, forgetting dinner altogether as he fell into bed. Amazingly, he got through the night with no dreams, but he woke with a memory, and a certain mission. A sense of purpose that had nothing to do with his work, for once.

  He had to return to his family home, not to visit his mother or his brother or any of the dozen people sure to be hanging about. He had to return and f
ind the box he’d hidden in the attic so many years ago. Because the contents of that box would give him a reason to see Kate again.

  Chapter 9

  “Aidan, my darling boy!” His mother enveloped him in an energetic embrace as he bent down to kiss her cheek.

  “Mother. How are you?”

  Her arms squeezed harder. “Thank God you’ve come! It’s madness!”

  The words didn’t cause any alarm. His mother’s world was always in crisis. “What’s happened now?”

  “Your cousin Harry,” she wailed. “He means to propose to . . . to someone, and I’m sure he’s chosen Miss Samuel, but he refuses to confirm.”

  “Confirm what?”

  “That he means to ask for her hand!”

  Aidan shook his head. “But he hasn’t asked yet, correct? Perhaps he’d like to wait until the woman has accepted his suit.”

  “Oh, but there is planning to be done! We must have a party to announce it, and it must be before my birthday, and there is only so much I can do without knowing who the bride will be. It is all so frustrating.”

  He frowned. “There are two Miss Samuels, aren’t there? Which one do you mean?”

  “I don’t know! If your sister were here, she could surely find out more. I’ve asked her to return.”

  That caught even Aidan off-guard. He’d been reaching toward the sideboard for a drink, but he stopped to frown at her. “You asked Marissa to return early from her honeymoon?”

  “Well, she is the Miss Samuels’ best friend.”

  His brother, Edward, stepped into the drawing room, and Aidan met his bemused gaze with his own. “Ah. Completely logical then. What did Marissa say?”

  “Pooh. She didn’t even mention my request in her next letter. Just went on and on about the sights of the Ottoman.”

  Edward snorted loudly enough to convey his exasperation to their mother. “Good for her. It’s almost as if she’s a sane person.”

  “Baron,” their mother snapped. “Don’t be snide. If you would only order Harry to tell us the truth, I daresay he would.”

  “Ah,” Edward said, reaching past Aidan to snag the whisky he’d poured. “But I am almost a sane person myself, you see, so I won’t order him to do any such thing.”