“Yet you and Ventnor are still fighting over her. And that night in the portrait gallery, you said she haunts you.”
“That night I was intoxicated. Nothing I said was real.”
“That night you said you like me.”
Avoiding her eyes, Rafe set about scooping up clothes and tossing them into the trunk, only for Thea to grab them out and fling them across the room just as fast.
“You are the very devil,” he said.
“You owe me answers.”
“I owe you nothing.”
“You lied to me,” she said.
“My only lie was pretending to believe your lies. You lied first.”
She glared at him. “You put me in a position where I had no choice, when you threatened Arabella.”
“Then let us call it even. Either way, it is over now.” She did not agree, judging by the accusation in her face. “What is really bothering you, Thea? Are you upset because I tricked you?”
“No, it’s that…” She nudged some clothes with her bare toe. “Well, we were on the same side against Ventnor. You made me think we were enemies but in fact we were allies. So it…it would have been nice. To be on the same side. That’s all.”
Yes, it would have been nice. So many things would have been nice. But he could not have revealed the truth back then, because back then, he could not trust her. And now he knew her, it was too late.
He scooped up a cluster of items from her dressing table, hairbrushes and whatnot, and dumped them into the nearly empty trunk. They clattered against the sides.
“What happened in America?” Thea asked.
He shook his head and roamed around, grabbing up items and hurling them haphazardly toward the trunk. “At first, we enjoyed the adventure, though we hadn’t a clue how to make a home, aristocratic offspring that we were. And then, Katharine… She changed. She turned melancholy. Didn’t eat. Didn’t sleep. Just started fading away before my eyes. I promised to take her home to England when I earned enough money.”
“And then?”
“And then…”
Rafe paused to stare out a window and shivered, as if he were back in that cold, dreary cabin they had tried so hard to make cozy. The sunlight hurt his eyes so he turned his back on it; it forgave the slight and generously warmed his skin through his drying shirt. Thea had found a stripe of sunshine to stand in, the dust motes dancing over her white toes and damp blue skirts.
“Her melancholy passed, and I got as much work as I could. Then she changed again. One day, she spent our entire savings and more besides, buying up pots and plates and baskets of produce from the market. Hell, we had live goats and chickens running through our cabin. She said she planned to open a tavern; it would be the most popular place in the land and we’d become rich. I couldn’t reason with her. I mean, she could barely cook the most basic of meals and there she was, trying to cook ten things at once, nearly burning down the house. She didn’t sleep for days, just… And those blasted chickens…” She had alarmed him, with her eyes unnaturally bright and her speech impossibly fast. “Then that passed too, and she was frightened by her own behavior. There were other episodes too. When she had a shock, she lost grip on reality and feared the world meant her harm. And I…”
And he could do nothing. Nothing but hold her, and tell her everything would be all right, and secretly worry how to get her home to England. Time and again, Katharine’s mind turned on her during those years, and Rafe could do nothing but watch.
He wiped his hand over his face as if he could wipe away the memory, but when he looked up, the past was still with him, and Thea’s eyes were wide with concern. She looked almost comical, standing there bedraggled and barefoot, half her hair still pinned up, the rest tumbling over her shoulders. He smiled, despite everything. Oh, to forget the past and be with her now; to run his fingers through her hair and hold her against him, so that she might warm his heart the way the sun warmed his skin.
“You were so young,” she said softly. She took two steps toward him, but the trunk blocked her way. “In a foreign land, with no friends, no family, no solutions. It must have been terrifying for you.”
“I don’t need your pity. It was Katharine who suffered. I promised to look after her but…”
He tore his eyes off her, away from that gentle sympathy that he didn’t deserve.
“Lord Ventnor came,” Thea prompted.
“Right. Katharine had written to her mother, and he traveled all that way to take her home. I let her go. It seemed best. Then Nicholas—the bishop, you remember—he wrote me that Ventnor had put Katharine in a lunatic asylum, so I sailed back to England to get her out. As her husband, I had rights her father did not. If you had seen her when she came out of that place…”