He stood and dressed also, his hands clumsy with the simple garments. "Will you at least write now and then? Surely there is a strong enough bond between us for that."

"Perhaps. But first I need to get away. Far away." She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, an absurdly casual caress after the feverish intensity that had briefly fused them together. "I'm very glad to have known you, my dear lord."

He raised her hand and kissed it. "And I you. I… I wish things were different."

"So do I," she said with soul-deep regret. "So do I."


The travel coach would allow her to go like a turtle, with all her worldly goods on her back. It didn't take long to pack. Calmly she bade farewell to the servants she knew best, as if her departure were part of a long-existing plan. Bessy the maid and Hawking the butler stared at her with great accusing eyes, but spoke no reproach. She wondered how much they guessed of the situation between her and Kyle.

Just before going down to the coach the next morning, she realized she still wore his ring. She pulled it off and set it on the dresser, then found the matching Celtic knotwork bracelet Meriel had given her. Family treasures were held in trust, and she was no longer a Renbourne. She never really had been. She set the bracelet around the ring so that they were concentric circles, like the rings of a tree.

Beyond anger, she turned and walked away for the last time.

Chapter 37

« ^ »

There were times and places to get drunk, and Kyle was in one of them. He'd managed to see Troth off in proper fashion, loading her down with cash and a draft on his bank in Edinburgh to keep her until he had a settlement drawn up.

She had behaved with equal formality, manners impeccable, expression inscrutable. After all, they had both known this was coming. Just… not so soon.

After a pleasant nod, she climbed into the travel coach. She'd refused the offer of a maid to accompany her; Troth could and would take care of herself. Her only companion was her little cat, safely stowed in a covered basket.

He memorized her still profile before the footman closed the door. Hard to remember that twenty-four hours earlier they'd been twined in the ultimate intimacy.

After the well-sprung coach had rolled out of sight along the newly curving front drive, he'd gone upstairs to her bedroom. He'd never entered while she was here, but he wasn't surprised to see that the room had changed from his vague memories from seven years before. Furniture had been rearranged, hangings and decorations changed.

The effect was pleasant, but chillingly empty. All her possessions were on the coach heading to the Great North Road. There wasn't a shred of evidence that she'd lived here, except for her abandoned ring and bracelet. There was a terrible finality in the precise way she'd left them, one inside the other.

Saddling Nelson, he went for a blazing gallop over the hills. When they'd both tired, he converted his ride into tenant visits, a proper landlord checking on conditions during spring planting.

In younger days he'd felt suffocated by these responsibilities, with the implication that he was tied forever to the estate. Oddly, now he enjoyed the work even though he'd never have Dominic's genuine passion for farming. In the past, he'd always been a conscientious steward of the family properties. In the future, he would also find satisfaction in being part of the eternal cycles of the land.

Estate documents and correspondence kept him occupied until dinner. He ate in solitary splendor, face impassive. Then he retired to the study and set out to become seriously drunk. Not too quickly-that would be vulgar. A genteel lowering of the level in the brandy decanter should have him pleasantly foxed by mid-evening, and ready to retire upstairs, probably under his own power, an hour or two later.

Perhaps he should go to London. There were plenty of distractions there: endless entertaining, friends he hadn't seen in years, more time with his father.

Marriageable young ladies and ambitious mothers who would love to capture the next Earl of Wrexham.

He shuddered at the thought. Best to avoid London during the Season.

He was on his fourth glass of brandy when he heard distant voices in the entry hall. Hawking and someone else, probably a footman.

Then the study door opened and his brother entered in travel-stained clothes, as casual as if they'd dined together an hour before. "Ah, perfect. A glass or two of brandy will dispel the chill. It was a long ride."

Kyle stared, knowing he was nowhere near drunk enough to be hallucinating. "What the devil are you doing here?"

"Just passing by, so I thought I'd spend the night at Dornleigh." Dom poured himself a glass of brandy and settled into the other wing chair.

"Dornleigh is not on the way from Shropshire to anywhere you could possibly want to go."

"So I lied," Dominic said peaceably.

A footman arrived with a tray of food. Dom directed him to set it on a side table, then asked for a fire to be built. Kyle waited until the footman had complied and left before saying dryly, "Go ahead, make yourself at home."

"Well, it was my home for many years, and if any of the servants balk at obeying my orders, I can always pretend to be you. You need to add another stone of weight, though. It's too easy to tell us apart at the moment." Dominic stretched his feet toward the hearth. "You should also allow yourself more luxuries like fires-it's a cold night."

"Not after several brandies."

"Ah." Dominic set aside his glass in favor of ale and a sandwich made from crusty bread and thick slabs of ham. "What's wrong, Kyle? I've felt as if I've been kicked in the stomach since yesterday morning. I haven't been, so it must be you."

Kyle sighed. "How do you always know when things aren't going well?"

"You do it, too. Besides being twins, I think we both inherited a touch of Highland second sight from Mother. Remember that bad fall I had when hunting in the Shires? You knew immediately, and were at my bedside bullying me within two days."

Kyle remembered that time vividly, along with the almost unbearable fear he'd felt when his brother fought at Waterloo, and the days after when Dominic had been missing in action. Such awareness was the dark side of the twin bond they shared.

All levity gone, Dominic said, "I knew that something horrible had happened to you in China. I… I couldn't believe you were dead, yet thought I must be deluding myself because the horror didn't pass. Though it ebbed some after you were released from prison, it's never really gone away. For a long time I wondered if your soul was in purgatory." His voice dropped to a whisper. "It feels as if you still are."

His last sentence hung in the air as an oblique question.

No point in delaying the inevitable. "Troth left this morning for Scotland."

"For how long?"

"She won't be back. Ever."

Dominic gave him a slanting glance. "Hence the decanter of brandy."

"We never intended a real marriage, so we told people here that we'd performed a nominal handfast as a way of helping Troth leave China. With the year and a day mostly over, naturally she's gone."

Not fooled, Dominic said, "For someone who didn't want to be married, you're absorbing quite a lot of brandy in the absence of your nonwife."

Kyle closed his eyes, temples throbbing. "I'm… very fond of Troth. I'll miss her."

"So she was the one who wanted to end it? Odd. I had the impression that she was more than a little fond of you."

"Fondness isn't marriage."

Sandwich gone, Dominic returned to his brandy. "Are you going to make me pull this out of you one word at a time, Kyle? I will if necessary, but it will be easier for both of us if you just tell me what the devil went wrong."

Kyle stared at the licking flames, appreciating the warmth. He hadn't known he was cold until Dominic arrived. "It was… difficult for both Troth and me. As she said, we're more than old lovers, but less than true mates. I didn't like seeing her go, but it was the only fair thing to do. She has spent most of her life feeling like an outsider. She deserves to find a man who can put her in the middle of his world forever."

"And you can't?"

"I loved that way once. I'm not capable of doing it again."

"Let me see if I understand this properly. You're saying that you don't and can't love Troth, so even though losing her is tearing you up, that isn't love? "

"Not the way I loved Constancia." Kyle closed his eyes, remembering. "I never told even you this, but I married Constancia just before she died in Spain. Part of me died with her. I can never love anyone as I loved her."

Instead of showing decent sympathy, Dominic said, "Of course you can't. Your feelings for her were unique, rooted in whatever qualities made her special to you. More than that, Constancia was your first love, and a great love. But losing her doesn't mean you can't love another woman in a different but equally powerful way."

"I've never had your roving eye or resilient heart," Kyle said dryly.

"Until I met Meriel, I'd never been more than a little bit in love, though that was enough to teach me that each time and each woman is different. Thank God I've never lost a great love. If something happened to Meriel…" A shadow passed over Dominic's face. "Let's not talk about that. What I wanted to say is that love is not a finite substance that is used up and never replenished. The way you loved Constancia proves you have a tremendous capacity for loving. Isn't it possible that you already love Troth at least a little, and you might come to love her more with time?"