Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Julian and the courtesan had boarded a gondola, pushing off into the canal before Kitty had forded the stone stairs leading to the water door. In her haste, she slipped on the algae-covered step and gripped the railing, watching them float away surrounded by water glittering like diamonds.
Awash in torchlight, Julian lazed back upon the cushioned seat and removed his bauta. Such a face. Angles of masculine symmetry. And Madame Allard, lounging next to him, her face was beautiful beyond measure.
Kitty turned from the scene and trudged back up the stairs, through the portego and out onto the street.
She wandered, her costly hem dragging on stone, through puddles of unknown substances.
She stole inside the Chiesa di Santa Maria, slipping off her shoes and padding down the deserted nave.
She went where her memories took her often, easing to her knees and staring in earnest at the mournful sculpture of Mary holding her son in death.
No prayers came. No tears. She cursed her faith even as she was drawn to the Holy Mother and the lingering scent of incense.
Her Catholic faith had marked her as different. It had killed her dreams.
She pressed to her feet and continued her journey across islands and bridges surrounded by light and muffled conversation coming from the homes stacked along the narrow streets.
By the time she reached the pale pink door to their let palazzo, the fog had begun to roll in and her hair was damp from the sea air.
Inside, she kicked off her shoes, smarting at a blister gnawing at her right heel. She greeted the footman, Pietro, and climbed the marble staircase. Down the length of the long corridor abutting the waterside, candlelight flickered over the muraled walls.
A door clicked shut.
She retrieved a candelabra and tread down the Gothic hall.
She had assured herself for two years that it was a foregone conclusion that her husband would satiate his needs with another. She had prayed on it. Asked the Holy Mother for strength and understanding. Patience. She was prepared for this moment.
Her throat tightened at the image of Julian in the arms of another woman. Kissing her. Touching her. Fitting himself inside her.
She opened Julian’s chamber door and halted at the black. Stepping in, she lifted the light toward the bed. And felt his gaze upon her before she saw him.
“Good evening, wife.” Julian rested against the pillows, a leg bent and his arm draped over his knee.
He was still in his evening breeches and hose.
He had untied his shirt, the hard lines of his chest visible in the open V.
Sinews and veins bulged at the back of his hands where he clasped his knee.
He was alone? His gaze was hot, too hot for a man to be alone.
Turning, she lofted the candelabra and peered in the shifting light and shadows, over a lacquer armoire, an intimate placing of cushioned chairs at an empty hearth, a chaise of oak and white velvet.
“Are you unwell?” he asked, canting his head.
“I cannot go on like this,” she said in the quiet.
He looked her over as she stood at the foot of the bed the candelabra shaking in her hold. As if he did not know her. And what he saw, he pitied.
She remembered the scandalous list of acts Anthony had given her. She hurried to the bed and laid her palm against the warm expanse of his thigh.
His gaze flicked down in surprise at her intimate touch. She leaned across the distance between them and slipped her hand farther up his thigh, whispering against his mouth. “Julian, I am your wife. And I wish to be your wife. In all ways.”
He clamped an arm over her left shoulder to halt her, plucked the candelabra from her right hand, and planted it beside the bed.
He extricated her hand from his thigh and contemplated the emerald wedding ring on her finger.
“I am sorry, Katherine, but it cannot be. God, I do not want to hurt you. But you will never be my wife in all ways, and if I haven’t made this clear in the past two years, I am at a loss as to how to convince you. ”
“What can I do? If I were to please you in bed—”
He groaned.
“You have been faithful to me,” she said. “This must mean something.”
Cursing, he rolled opposite, coming to his feet with an agile fury.
“I have been faithful, but understand what it is. A man keeping his vow. Who struggles against his vow every night. Who often damns the day I saved you. Who wishes—” He paced several feet, stopping in the dark, only his words giving his presence away. “Who wishes to be free.”
Oh God, no.
Her heart tumbled over itself. She nearly retched at the image of Julian free.
But where would retching or weeping get her? She didn’t want pity. Though her life had made her a frequent recipient of it. She wanted his singular confidence gazing down on her, his arms enveloping her, his body upon hers. She wanted him to love her. Love her as he once had.
For months she had searched for a way back to them, but too much a coward, she hadn’t approached him with what she knew was her only chance.
It came out in a rush. “We could make a better life together than this. We could be free together. To follow our old dreams. Dreams that are not too old to reclaim.”
“So now you wish to return to England? To be a shipwright’s wife? An earl’s second son? Who works with his hands? When it wasn’t good enough before?”
She couldn’t see his sneer, but it was there, she knew.
A frisson of defeat coursed up her spine. She knocked it back. “I love you, Julian. I always have.”
“And I do not love you.”
Tears shocked her eyes, plummeting down her face. Angry at herself, she swiped them away.
“I am so very sorry for what I did,” she said.
“Sorry.” He laughed and dropped to the chair beside the empty hearth. “The truth. I am sorry as well. I wish I could give you what you want. But I cannot. It’s gone. For good. And you would not want me to lie to you, would you?”
She stared numbly into the candle flame, unsure if it wavered from the tears still awash in her eyes or a breeze stealing through the open window.
“Know I will,” he said after a great length, “always provide for you. My offer of an allowance and initial settlement remains.”
She searched out the cold comfort of the pearls circling her neck. “You have been a most thoughtful husband.”
She couldn’t keep him to herself. Not with a marriage in name only which she had agreed to. Which he had been perfectly honest about.
He regretted saving her from Lord Staverton, who her father had chosen for his adherence to the secret Catholic faith. What would her life be like as the third wife of a slovenly man over sixty? So much worse. At least, Julian had given her freedom to do as she wished.
What she wished for was unattainable.
Gone for good.
She stiffened her shoulders when she wanted nothing more than to fall to her side and curl into a ball upon the bed. She crossed herself and decided this black sorrow would end, one way or another, by the first of July. The anniversary of her son’s death.
Fetching the candelabra, Kitty walked to where Julian sat with his head in his hands.
Stop feeling guilty, Julian thought. You don’t love her. She knows this.
A beautiful courtesan had offered her services. Right this moment he could be plowing the finest cunny the French had to offer. Instead, he had escorted the woman home. Home.
He had best figure out how to deal with his guilt. He had been celibate for two years. Because of a bloody vow.
Kitty’s stockinged feet whispered across the carpet. His body wound tighter the closer she came.
“Julian?” She knelt before him. “I know what we must do.”
He scoured a hand down his face. With a semblance of calm, he leaned into the chair back. “Do you?”
“Yes. We must return to Southampton. We will build ships together. I will ask nothing more of you except to be my partner. I will mind the money, and you will manage all else. We, you, will realize your dreams. We will find our purpose there.”
God, her face. The huge hazel eyes ringed in black, the slanted brows, heart-shaped chin, her nose with the slight, delicate, irresistible upturn.
He looked away. To the French gown he had purchased her of silver and blue with the ivory half-moons of her breasts snug against the gemmed bodice.
Jewels blanketed her slim form, the rich blue petticoat sparkling like a clear night sky.
Her vivid blue-stockinged feet peeked out from her silver-trimmed skirt.
None of it was more arresting than her face.
“And I”—she swallowed, her eyes growing even rounder—“I will allow you your freedom. You are free to seek your needs with other women. I will tie you down no more to your vow. What we have, what we can do, is enough.”
“It will not be enough for you.”
“Yes. Yes, it will.”
“You lie to yourself.”
“No, I… that is… perhaps I do not love you in the same way as I did. You have changed, and so likely have I.”
Julian stared at her slim fingers clutched at her middle like she was praying.
He allowed that she spoke the truth. Her love had changed into a maudlin, desperate thing.
She had worked at gaiety during their time in Paris.
In Vienna, amidst the glittering ballrooms, she had grown melancholy.
In Rome, she had become sullen. In Venice, where romance and lust filled the air, he could hardly stand to look at her.
“And you,” he said, “will you be free to seek other men?”
She nodded without hesitation.
Irritation pricked at his shoulders. Not that he was jealous. No, he would never barge into her room searching for a lover as she had done. He was irritated because she made it sound so simple.
She locked her gaze with his, like she believed every word she spoke. Like the Kitty he had fallen in love with. His wife believed it so easy to pick up lost dreams where they had fallen. He was tempted to agree with her, to teach her a lesson that dreams died and resurrecting them was futile.
“If we return to England,” he said, “you pledge to release me from my vow of fidelity? To not speak of it when I do?”
She held up her hand, a feverish solemnity in her eyes. “I pledge.”
“You will stand by meekly as I bed other women.” She winced. He shot to standing, bringing her with him, clasping her arms. “Is that the way of it, Katherine?”
“With one condition,” she said.
“Of course. Do you have a lover in mind already? Let me guess, Anthony?”
“Anthony is hardly a friend,” she said.
“And hardly friends make ready lovers.”
She went rigid in his hold. “I wouldn’t know.”
He crooked a finger under the highest strand of her pearls circling her slim throat and pulled her to his chest. He felt her softness mold against him. “You suffer, I know. And you see me as the source of it. How do you bear it?”
She pushed off of him. Her long fingers made a fist at her stomacher as she turned her back to him. “I will not be known as your wife. I will be Madame Féline, your partner. A widow of a French master shipwright.”
Well, bloody surprises. His wife was full of them, and most had brought him to his knees. “You want to be a widow?”
She faced him, lifting her chin. “Yes.”
To hell with her. If she wanted to revisit their dreams as someone else and see how he had failed, then so be it.
“I’ll make arrangements,” he said. “If the weather holds, we should arrive in Southampton by July.”