“You and I could go together,” she breathed.

The words hung in the air … huge, shimmering, powerful.

She waited, suspended, it seemed, floating.

They were alone, just they two, with her great, glorious idea.

But as the seconds ticked by on the clock, it dawned on her that he’d said nothing back yet. And he should have by now. He should have grinned widely—right away—and said something like, “Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?”

But he hadn’t. In fact, he was staring at her, through her, actually. Surely he was simply in shock at her great, glorious idea. If he really loved her, wouldn’t he move mountains to be with her?

Of course he would.

But her heart began to skip oddly. And her breathing—well, she wasn’t breathing at the moment. She couldn’t. Her lungs felt as if they were being filled with cold water. Her whole body was cold. Her fingers, her arms and legs, her feet—everything in her shivered with the cold.

Why didn’t he say something?

His gaze finally met hers, and she knew.

She knew it was over.

“We have to face the truth,” he said carefully. “We can’t have a future together. We’ll have to say good-bye for good.”

She blinked. How did one deal with one’s world—one’s dreams—collapsing into dust in a fraction of a second?

Stephen sighed and rubbed her upper arm.

She flinched and pulled back from him. “What’s stopping you?” She almost didn’t recognize her voice. It was bold, angry, some might say slightly hysterical, but she knew better. It was the true Jilly. She wasn’t hiding from anyone anymore.

She was done with hiding.

“Why won’t you go with me?” she asked, her heart hammering in a steady, hard rhythm. “Because I know you can. You can do anything you want, Stephen Arrow. You’re a free man. Not only that, you’re the bravest man I know.”

He said nothing.

She rose to her knees, then stood, the soles of her feet pressed firmly against the rug, her breath coming in great, even lungfuls.

He stood, too, and faced her.

“I love you,” he said plainly. “And I know you had every reason to lie about your marriage. But there’s a part of me that can’t—that can’t let go of that.”

She tossed her head. “Just because you were lied to by your mother and your village about your father—which they did to protect your feelings, by the way, so you’re utterly selfish holding it against them—you’re willing to let me go?” She scoffed. “That’s not love. That’s an immature boy who hasn’t learned to grow up.”

She strode away from him, and with shaking arms, thrust the window up and pointed out.

“Get out,” she said.

His face was still, his expression inscrutable.

When one loved, one didn’t hide. It was a lesson she’d learned too late. But now that she knew, she couldn’t go back.

“You have to know this pains me to the core,” he said, pronouncing every word as if it were a shard of glass he must swallow. “You’re everything to me.”

She kept her eyes on his, daring him to look away. “You’re the one who pursued me, who entangled me in that foolish web you created to keep Miss Hartley at bay. You’ve come here twice now and made love to me in my bedchamber, practically under my husband’s nose. We were in this mess together—or so I thought. I’ve told you how sorry I was for deceiving you, but no. My explanation isn’t good enough for you. I’m not good enough.” She lifted her chin. “What do you know about what’s right and wrong? You’ve never been in my position and will never understand what it’s like to be a woman afraid.”

Once more, she thrust her finger at the open window, at the dense fog hanging there like a shroud. “I never want to see you again,” she told him. “Don’t attempt to contact me.”

She couldn’t be there to watch him go. She left, taking her candle with her. Downstairs, she shook the kitchen boy awake, and told him to take a lantern and walk a straight line out back until he reached the stables, where he should rouse a groom immediately. She needed to get to Otis, to Hodgepodge, and to Dreare Street—

The fog, Hector, and Stephen Arrow be damned.

CHAPTER THIRTY

There was something wrong with him. Stephen knew that now, as he stumbled through the fog toward Dreare Street. He’d never realized it before.

He was a coward.

He winced just thinking of the word.

Coward.

He’d always used it to describe other people. But it was what he was.

Good God, and he’d been so sure of his identity. He was a tested warrior, a former captain in the Royal Navy who’d earned high honors. He’d fought and won battles against merciless enemies.

He also had supreme confidence on land. With women, especially, he was assured of his prowess as a man.

Until now.

For another quarter of an hour, he wended his way, slowly, instinctively, through the blinding vapor. On the sea, fog could be both a helpful friend or one’s worst enemy. It allowed one to hide from danger. You could slip right by an opponent’s ship, and they’d never know you’d come near. But a dense fog could also lead a ship to the rocks and almost certain death.

Stephen had come to find out, however, through his lengthy experience with it, that fog wasn’t the real challenge. Fear was. The test came in his own response to the primal fear fog induced. Fog was a great separator, the reminder that in the end, you were alone to either give in to the fear—or not.

Until now, Stephen had chosen to be soothed by the notion that he was ultimately his own man. Finding out that his mother and his entire village had perpetuated a myth about his beginnings only affirmed the fact that he lacked an anchor, was sailing through life on self-generated power, answerable to no one, his destiny in his own hands.

But now in the midst of the mist, he had the odd sensation of being panicked. His natural fluidity—his calmness in the center of the white blindness—was shaken.

He was glad when the fog began to ease slightly, enough that he could see a few feet ahead of him in the dark. A well-lit carriage crept by, the horses whinnying in fright, the driver calling encouraging words to them. Stephen watched and wondered who would take a carriage out this late at night and in such conditions. A doctor on the way to see a patient? Some drunken fool on the way home from a rout?

Who else would dare?

When the last ring of the horseshoes on the cobbles faded in the distance, he was left behind, a solitary shadow figure on an empty street.

He remembered Jilly’s cozy bedchamber, the rug, the low fire, and he wished he were back there with her.

But once again, he was cast adrift. It was what he knew best. There was to be no more Jilly. And no more Dreare Street.

When he arrived back at Number 34, the house was dead quiet. He felt much too empty—raw, actually—to sleep. He knew if he tried, the sheets would feel like sand, the mattress like gravel.

He lit a candle from the mantel and saw a small, bound book lying next to it.

Alicia Fotherington’s diary.

Otis had given it to him earlier to keep safe for Jilly.

He picked it up, took it to a chair, and sat down to read. He’d nothing else to do, and reading would remind him of her. At first, the entries in the diary were cheerful. But little by little, the tone changed.

Lyle just added on a second wing, he read. Our elegant little house is getting larger and larger. Lyle makes it very clear why. He’s preparing the house for our children. But—it pains me deeply to say it—I’ve not been able to conceive. Every day that goes by, he acts more like a disapproving father, not a loving husband.

All these years later, Stephen felt sorry for Alicia. A little while later, she wrote:

A chill fog this morning seems to match my growing sadness about the lack of a babe in our lives. I don’t believe Lyle loves me anymore. Indeed, I think he might have taken up with someone else. He comes home with the scent of her on his garments.

Stephen read swiftly. Alicia had his complete attention now: The third wing is complete, she wrote. It is to house her. He pretends he feels pity for her. She’s been widowed these two years. But I know why she’s here. She’s my cousin. How could they do this to me?

Stephen gazed into the candle flame. Poor Alicia Fotherington. How different these later entries were from the first ones, where she’d had such hope about her new life as wife to Lyle. As he turned the pages, more and more entries mentioned the unrelenting fog.

The sun had just come up when he began the last entry:

I’m a far distance from the woman I used to be. There’s nothing left here that I love. The house is a rambling mess of wings that reminds me every day that I’ve failed in my duty as a wife to bear my husband children. My beloved street fair is long gone, chased away by the strange, clinging fog that seems peculiar to Dreare Street only this past year. I’ve decided I shall run away, but before I do, I must save some money. It will take me at least a year of my gritting my teeth and pretending I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ll do it. And then she’ll have to move out. They won’t have me here to guard her reputation anymore.

And that was the last thing Alicia Fotherington had to say.

Stephen closed the book and thought about Jilly, about Alicia, about all women who’d been mistreated by unloving mates.

It was a sad thing, profoundly sad. But there was nothing he could do about it, although everything in him raged against cowardly beasts like Lyle and Hector.