Chapter 10
“Why are you really going to California?”
Thomas fought to keep from cringing at Kate’s question as he lay beside her on the cave floor. She’d just told him so many personal details. Let down her walls enough for him to peer into her thoughts and fears. He couldn’t brush off her question now.
But there were so many ways to answer. How much was he willing to tell?
About the valet who’d died during his “heroic” rescue in Fort Benton—the man whose face still haunted his dreams?
The knighthood that felt like a brand marking him as a fraud?
The desperate need to start over somewhere no one knew his shame?
“Because I need to prove I can be more than what they expect.” The half-truth tasted bitter. “Because staying here means being the spare brother forever. Because—”
Because running was easier than facing the truth about what he had done.
He didn’t say it. Couldn’t say it. But something in the way Kate shifted against him suggested she heard it anyway.
“Running doesn’t change who you are.” Her voice had gone soft, almost gentle. “It just changes the scenery.”
“Speaking from experience?”
“Maybe.” She was quiet a moment. “I thought bringing Clara here would fix everything. New place, new start, new life. But I’m still the same person I was in Columbia. Still afraid. Still trying to control everything because I don’t know how to trust anyone else.”
The confession hung between them, vulnerable and raw. She’d built so many walls, used sharp edges to keep people at a distance. And here, in the dark, with nothing but firelight and ice and the howling wind, she’d let him see behind them.
His pulse kicked against his ribs. The honesty in her words stripped away something he’d been holding onto, some pretense that this was just about survival. Just about waiting out a storm.
“I don’t know how to trust either.” His voice scraped. “My brothers—they love me. I know that. But they also see me as someone who needs managing. Someone who can’t be trusted to make his own choices.”
He shifted, searching for words for something he’d never said aloud.
“I was knighted a few months ago. In Fort Benton, for saving the queen’s cousin.
Everyone thinks I’m a hero. But I’m not.
What no one talks about is that another man died because I made a stupid decision, and somehow, I’m the one who got rewarded for it. ”
Kate turned in his arms—not pulling away, just shifting so she could see his face in the firelight. Her hazel eyes caught the orange glow, searching his features with an intensity that made his breath catch. In this light, her skin looked like porcelain. Flawless. Breathtaking.
“What happened?”
Her words pulled him from the distraction of her face. Back to the story he never should have begun.
He should deflect. Change the subject. Use that easy charm to smooth over the raw edges of truth. But something about the way she looked at him—like she actually wanted to know, not just to judge but to understand—made the words rise anyway.
“The queen’s cousin came to the Montana territory on a hunting expedition.” He forced the words past the tightness in his throat. “Our father asked that at least one of us go to honor the royal party. Represent the family.”
Kate’s brow furrowed. “Your father asked? Why…?”
The confusion in her voice made him realize what he’d assumed—that she knew about his family’s background. But why would she? The letters his brothers had written probably hadn’t mentioned titles or nobility. Just ranch life and faith and building a future in Montana.
“I—” He swallowed, suddenly aware of how this would sound. “My father is the Duke of Clarence. In England.”
Her eyes went wide, the firelight catching in them as her whole body went still against his. “Duke. As in—”
“English nobility, yes.” Heat crept up his neck despite the cold.
“We were sent to Montana as boys and have lived here ever since.” He pushed on before she could ask more questions.
He and his brothers had spent years keeping that information quiet, building reputations based on their own merit rather than bloodlines that meant nothing in the Montana Territory.
But Kate wasn’t letting him move on that easily. “Sent to Montana as boys.” Her voice carried that quiet tenacity he was learning to recognize—the tone that meant she’d spotted a loose thread and intended to pull it. “Dukes don’t usually send their sons to the frontier. What happened?”
He should have kept his mouth shut. Should have deflected or changed the subject. But Kate’s hand found his where it rested against her waist. Her fingers curled around his, warm and steady.
“My father has a cousin. Reginald Balfour.” Even the name tasted foul. “He wanted Father’s title—the dukedom—and he didn’t care how he got it. First he tried to discredit our mother. Attacked her Scottish heritage, her Catholic faith. Claimed it made her and her sons unfit heirs.”
Kate’s fingers tightened against his. She said nothing, but the tension in her hand told him she was listening with every fiber.
“When that didn’t work, Reginald had my oldest brother kidnapped.
Will was just a boy.” He kept the words flat, stripped of the emotion that still churned beneath whenever he thought of it.
“Father’s men found him within a day, but that was enough.
Our father sent us here with our mother and the Wangs—our housekeeper and her husband—to keep us safe. An ocean between us and Reginald.”
“Where is your mother now?”
His throat tightened. “She died two years later. By the time Father considered bringing us home, we’d all grown to love this place more than we ever loved England.”
The silence that followed held a different quality than before—not the sharp-edged tension of their earlier exchanges, but something heavier. Sadder. Kate’s thumb moved once across his knuckles, a small gesture she might not even realize she’d done.
“So the Balfour name didn’t just give you a title,” she said quietly. “It cost you a mother and a homeland.”
The words landed somewhere deep in his chest, in a place he usually kept locked. He swallowed against the ache and forced himself back to the story he’d been telling—the one that mattered more right now than old wounds from childhood.
“Anyway, I went to Fort Benton to meet Lord Weldon’s party. They’d set up camp outside the fort—wanted the frontier experience.” He didn’t succeed at keeping the bitterness from his voice. “We were three days into the hunting expedition when a grizzly wandered into camp.”
Kate’s breathing went shallow, her attention fixed on his face.
“It was dusk. Most of the party had gathered near the fire for dinner. I was checking my horse when I heard the screaming.” The memory rose sharp—the raw terror in those voices, the way his pulse kicked into his throat.
“The bear went straight for Lord Weldon. Just charged through the camp like the rest weren’t even there. ”
His hands had started to shake. He pressed them against Kate’s side, using her warmth to anchor himself in the present.
“Lord Weldon’s valet—a man named Charles—he tried to stop it. Threw himself between the bear and his lord.” Thomas’s throat tightened. “I grabbed my rifle. But my hands shook so badly I nearly dropped it. The bear swiped at Charles, sent him flying. Then it turned toward Weldon again.”
The fire crackled, and somewhere beyond their shelter the wind shrieked. Yet the echo of that grizzly’s roar still vibrated through his body.
“I fired. Hit it in the shoulder. Should have aimed for the head or the heart, but I panicked. The bear turned on me instead.” His chest clenched so hard, he had to remind himself to draw breath. “It charged, and I—I froze. Just stood there like a simpleton while death came at me on four legs.”
He could still feel the paralyzing fear, but something about the dark and the cold and the way her hand still rested in his made it easier to break through.
“Charles threw himself at the bear again. Gave me time to get another shot off. This one hit the heart.” He’d managed to make his voice flat now. Feeling these emotions would make him too raw. “The bear went down. Everyone cheered. Called me a hero. Said I’d saved Lord Weldon’s life.”
“But Charles?”
“Died three hours later from his wounds.” Thomas couldn’t make himself meet her gaze.
“While I sat in a tent drinking brandy with Lord Weldon, being congratulated for my bravery. They gave me a knighthood. Threw a ceremony in Fort Benton with the territorial governor in attendance. Made speeches about courage and honor.”
He forced air out through the rock on his chest. “The whole time, all I could think about was Charles’s face. The way he looked at me before he threw himself at that bear the second time. Like he knew. Like he’d accepted he was going to die so I wouldn’t have to.”
“Your brothers don’t know?”
“They know Charles died. They know I was knighted. They think...” He had to stop and breathe through the pressure building in his chest. “I guess they were hoping it would settle me down. Then when it only made it worse…”
Kate’s fingers tightened around his, and he finally made himself look at her face.
He expected disgust. Judgment. Confirmation of what he already knew—that he was a fraud wearing a title he hadn’t earned.
Instead, her eyes held something that looked almost like understanding.
“You think you don’t deserve the knighthood because someone else died.” Her voice carried no accusation, just simple observation. “You think going to California will let you escape the guilt.”