Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
They breakfasted together in a Dolphin Hotel’s morning room off the main dining area. With only three other tables, Kitty had chosen the space so they might dine in relative privacy and she hide from the inn’s patrons gazing in curiosity at the woman in black upon Mr. St. Clair’s arm.
Some nodded to Julian, two rose and shook his hand.
A handsome older man, Mr. John Gilbert, with a lovely girl for company, stuffed his serviette to the table and confidently approached.
Julian had introduced Kitty as Madame Féline, and Mr. John Gilbert’s dark eyes had landed on Kitty’s pearls and then lower, to her breasts.
The girl, his daughter, Susanna, curtsied when presented to them. Julian had smiled when the man inquired on his family’s health, specifically Julian’s brother, Oliver, the famed parliamentarian.
Presently, Kitty picked at her kippers. “Do you know Mr. Gilbert and his daughter?”
Julian, who had been as silent as Kitty throughout their meal, looked to his plate. “I’ve never met him before today.”
“He seems to know you.”
“He knows Oliver as everyone does. And the value of an association with his younger brother.”
Kitty chanced a look behind Julian, at Susanna Gilbert’s resplendent yellow gown—at least the half afforded by the timbered door opening to the main room. “Mr. Gilbert is wealthy.”
“Richer than Croesus.” He nudged Kitty’s leg under the table. “He is married, Madame. Further, your performance last night aside, I expect my wife to settle for tossing nothing less than a viscount.”
Kitty swallowed a lump in her throat. “Is that what you call it? Tossing?”
“Men like me, yes.”
“And the tossing changed nothing.” It came out as a statement, but it was really a question.
He lifted his coffee. She watched his mouth form about the rim of the cup and his eyes meet hers through the tendrils of steam.
“Perhaps,” he said, “we should discuss the laudanum.” He slid his hand across the table, lacing his fingers with hers. “Why, Katherine?”
She yanked her hand away, wishing to crawl into a hole. “Thank you for breakfast.”
She rose with dignity, weaving through the main room’s tables, the conversations, clinks, and stares. She had the urge to run. And just keep running.
An arm looped about her waist, Julian suddenly leading her from the stairs to the entrance vestibule. His hold was highly improper. She couldn’t refuse without a scene. So she walked out to High Street and wherever he might lead her.
He slipped his arm free of her after a few yards but said nothing while a muscle worked at his jaw. The silence was as oppressive as the sky.
“What happened to your cheek?” she asked of the scratch on his face.
“I hit a branch while running.”
His exercise as prescribed by the Greeks, who believed fitness a civic duty. And how attractive the duty which formed his body was to women. To her.
Walking on, she was blind to the world passing her by.
If she was not going to end it, which she had decided to put off further consideration until her birthday, she should be reconciling herself to a future alone and deciding where this home Julian was to purchase her would be.
At minimum, she should be on her knees praying for forgiveness for acting the wanton and taking him with her hand, as recommended by Anthony Philips.
There had been no love between them like they had shared in their youth.
No tenderness of feeling. She had recognized the hollowness of it as soon as he had spilled on her hand.
Julian had succumbed to her advances, but had it brought them closer?
Did he feel anything more for her than he had in the hours before?
She had debased herself, trying to be the woman he wanted.
One of loose morals, the sort who invited a handsome stranger to her room and joined in lustful congress.
And the worst part was she had imagined it just that way.
As if he were a stranger and she a whore. And she had liked it.
Men did not love whores. They used them.
Kitty went rigid when she saw that they had arrived at the shipyard. She could not bear to see the place after what had happened here two days before. “Why are we here?”
He ignored her question, and when she tripped on her shoe, he pulled her upright, unlocked the door, and escorted her up the loft stairs.
He opened the office door and motioned her inside where the chairs, table, and desk had been dusted clean.
After removing her cloak, he settled her in the leather chair behind the desk and left the room.
He returned with a decanter of liquor and two glasses sorely in need of scrubbing. He polished them on his coat.
“I thought it best we be alone, far from the eavesdropping of polite society,” he said, pouring two fingers in each glass.
What conversation required libations at ten in the morning?
His expression uneasy, he raised his glass. “To revenge.”
She gawked in surprise.
“Drink, Katherine.”
“Why would I drink to revenge?”
“Are we arguing already? And where in hell are you going?” he demanded as she started to rise. “Sit down and listen.”
She eased back in the chair and swallowed half the liquor, coughing as it burned a path to her stomach. He topped off her drink and considered her at length.
“It was revenge that I sought,” he said. “I have been angry with you for five, very long years. I have not shouted at you nor raised my hand nor called you names. But I have been, am still, furious.” He toasted. “To anger.”
The glass shook in her hands as she raised it to her lips.
“My silence has been cruel,” he continued. “Withholding my intentions to sell this property and allowing you to think otherwise was indeed punishment of the cowardly kind. At times, I do think I hate you. To hatred.”
“I cannot drink to hatred.”
“Drink.”
She sipped.
“In the future I will endeavor to communicate my anger to you when it arises. As you recall, I come from a noble line of hotheads, so you may anticipate shouting on a level which will pay tribute to my ancestors. I will never raise a hand to you.”
He swung a leg to cross the opposite thigh. “And so comes my offer to you. If you can withstand my temper, my honesty, if you can build St. Clair Shipwrights into something promising—not successful, per se—only promising, by my next birthday, then I shall give you the business. To offers.”
“You would do this for me?”
“Drink.”
“T-To offers.” She sipped several times.
“Now come my conditions. No laudanum.”
“None.”
He frowned. “Our marriage will remain in name only. You will cease your martyrdom. You will not fix me with your heavy silences nor your pitiful expressions designed to elicit guilt.”
“Pitiful?” Her back was up now and charged with liquor. “Is that so?”
“Damn so. And what occurred last night, I’ve thought on it long, wondering as to your motive. You were attempting to be a woman you will never be. Do you know why I know this?”
Waving his glass at her parted mouth, he said, “Because the sort of woman who would do what you did wouldn’t have rolled away like a bloody martyr and ruined what pleasure I gained.
And while I am being honest, and angry, I will tell you I never want you in my bed again.
You are the antithesis of pleasure. You are maudlin and self-pitying, and the man you search for to fulfill your needs does not exist. A man does not want to suffer for a fuck.
Or for what you name love. Neither do most women for that matter.
And while I free you to seek other men, know that at most, in your present state, you will get a man who will bed you once and run. ”
Kitty scrunched her cheeks, on the edge of tears.
“Are you going to cry?”
“No.” She reached for the glass and finished it off.
“Kitty, you and I have changed. What we were can never be again. But I want you to have this opportunity. I owe it to you. I want you to fight for it. You said it was quite simple, your reason for the laudanum. Do you know why I finally decided to marry you? Because you were going to jump out that damn garret window. No more windows. No more laudanum. Stop being a coward and fight.”
“I understand,” she whispered.
“Ah, there is Katherine with her wounded mien. I question the sanity of my offer and my ability to tolerate nine months of misery, let alone your ability to manage men. Your pretty face and their pity will get you through a week before they lose respect for you.”
She jumped to her feet, struggling to mind his generous offer instead of arguing her points.
Points she could not broach without admitting the whole.
And as much as he hurt her—and he hurt her so very bad she thought she might break in two—she could not refute him.
She saw herself through his eyes, and it didn’t matter the reasons why she was, but that what he saw was true.
She was the most miserable of people.
“Know,” he said, “that if you wish to speak to someone about your troubles, if you need a friend, I am here.”
She stretched over the desk, grasping his hand, remembering how it had once been her solace, how any trouble had vanished with his touch.
He hesitated, his gaze pinned to their joined hands. “What is it?”
“I am so very…” She cleared her throat. “That is… I will endeavor to heed your counsel. There. I am no longer that pitiful person. I am brave, you see? And I am more grateful than… well, just much more grateful. Are there more conditions?”
He canted his head. “You will acknowledge me as your husband.”
She withdrew her hand from his. “I cannot.”
“Why not?”
“Because…” She had only to feel her bruised heart to form her reply. And it was half a truth, but still the truth. “You ask too much of me to bear the pitying glances of those who suspect or know you seek pleasure with other women.”
“I will be discreet.” He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Those ready with pitying glances will never know. You will never know. Or I can tell you, so you might avoid them.”
Not just a her. Them. Kitty settled back into her chair, gripping with all her might to the practical part of her who wished to rescue something, make good from her suffering. “I do not want to know.”
“Excellent. Do you agree then on the second condition?”
“Why must I be your wife?”
“Because I’m not dead. Because you are my wife, and our marriage will assist you.
Men will respect you without question if they respect me.
Because if you are successful, when I leave, the men will see you as working under my authority.
Moreover, I pledge to return at the beginning of each season, except winter, to ensure the men do not forget your authority to manage them. ”
He made good sense. Before her lay a generous offer. More than she’d had an hour before. Julian would teach her to oversee a shipyard and visit three times per year when she suspected he could not stand the sight of her.
“I agree to your terms,” she said at length. “But you will allow me to remain Madame Féline. Your wife.”
He shook his head and lifted his glass to his lips. “Can’t bear to lose the memory of Etienne and André, can you?”
She pushed from the chair, recognizing her descent into mopishness, and walked to the bookcase.
She wondered if Andrew would have loved ships like his father.
If his eyes would have turned the darkest brown if he hadn’t died after sixteen short months in her arms. She must find a way to reconcile her feelings to reality.
She could never forget, but she needed to remind herself at every slip into self-pity that her grief meant something more than grief itself.
“I concede. You may carry on as Madame,” he said. “At least you make a convincing widow.”
Don’t I though.
Smoothing her skirts, she turned with what she hoped exuded confidence. “What is our first order of business?”
“We need work and men. And with all diligence and haste, you must prepare the accounts.”
“I suspect,” she said, “we will need work before men.”
He shook his head. “Men first, which we will have to pay to ready the yard and wait, if need be, until we find someone foolhardy enough to trust us. As you can see, I failed quite publicly.”
“Could you find a captain whose ship requires repairs? We could use the graving dock.”
He rose, tall and athletic, from his seat with that lazy swagger in his stride she so loved. The swagger that said I can do anything and she believed him now as she had then. In his eyes was the daring boy she had loved, afraid of nothing, who had given her courage to dream.
He reached to touch her face and dropped his hand to lock it behind his back with the other. “I spoke too harshly in my desire to rouse you. You are a beautiful woman. When I said—”
“Please. Say no more.” She did not require a retraction nor his pity. “I have always valued your honesty. And I have been a miserable person. But I promise you, this will be a time you will remember most fondly.”
She would remain a wife in name only. There would be no holidays, nor the home she had dreamed of as a young girl. She would never share in the joy and heartache of children. She was incomplete and would remain so for the rest of her life. But she had this. And it would have to do.