It had to be Kate. Perhaps she was with child. What other kind of emergency could possibly call for such discretion? If she was . . . Despite all the impossibilities of such a thing, his heart beat with hard joy. He’d marry her. He’d kill her husband himself if he had to, but he’d marry Kate if she carried his child.
If she was still determined to resist, he’d convince her. He’d move to Hull and sit on her doorstep every day and show her that he deserved her love.
Aidan burst from the door, nearly knocking down a boy running past. “Sorry,” he muttered to the startled child as both of them blinked at each other in shock. Finally, the boy ran on, and Aidan snapped the door shut behind him. But he’d only taken two steps when someone called his name.
“Mr. York!” Penrose rushed toward him, one hand raised in alarm.
“Penrose, where the hell have you been?”
“I thought you’d be on the eight o’clock train. I meant to meet you. . . .”
“I came through Leeds. The first train I could get.”
Penrose leaned over, fighting to catch his breath, but Aidan wasn’t sympathetic. He grabbed the man’s collar and hauled him up. “What the hell is going on? Is it Kate? What’s happened?”
“Mr. York,” Penrose gasped. “Mrs. Hamilton has . . .” He gestured vaguely toward the coffee shop.
Aidan gave him a shake, then forced himself to let Penrose go when passersby began to stare. “Spit it out.”
He didn’t realize just how hopeful he’d been until Penrose spoke four awful words. “Her husband is here.”
The shock forced Aidan back a step. “What?”
“Mr. Hamilton. He arrived on a ship three days ago.”
One more step back and Aidan’s heel hit the wide stairway of a bank. He sat down hard.
“Mr. York!” Penrose reached out, but Aidan waved him off with a slow sweep of his hand.
“What did Kate say?”
“I didn’t speak with her, sir. Miss Cain asked me to send for you. She seemed . . . overwrought.”
Fear took over his gut. “Why?”
Penrose’s gaze darted up and down the walk as if he were afraid of being overheard. He leaned closer. “She said that his return was unexpected and that Mrs. Hamilton seemed quite alarmed, but otherwise nothing was amiss.”
“What did Kate say?”
Penrose cleared his throat. “I don’t know that she said anything at all, but I thought you should like to know.”
“Yes,” he murmured. “Of course. Thank you, Penrose.”
His secretary cast another nervous look around. “Sir, perhaps we should discuss this in your rooms. If—”
“I’ll go see her now. Wait here for word.”
“Mr. York, are you sure that’s—”
But Aidan waved him off and surged to his feet. Her husband was here. Aidan tried to find some way this could be a good thing, but it couldn’t be, no matter how quickly he turned it in his mind. Neither could he find a way to convince himself that rushing to see her was a good idea, but here he was, nearly running down the lane. What would he say? How could he look this man in the face?
Aidan had no answers. All he could think was that he must get to her now, now, before she was lost for good.
The front of the shop was still locked up tight, so he circled to the back, his heart beating so hard he could hear nothing but his own fear. He tried the alley door as if he had the right to simply walk into her home, but that door was locked tight too.
Aidan banged his fist against the wood, then waited, glaring a hole into the tops of his boots. When there was no answer, he banged again, harder this time, until the door bruised his hand. Still nothing. “Answer, damn you.”
Where was she? Where had she gone?