The apartment address Cornelia had given him was modest in appearance, but suitably proper. Leam made a quick perusal of the neat garments of the manservant who admitted him, and the well-

appointed parlor into which he was taken to await his wife.

She did not make him wait long. Entering, she glanced at him, then went to the sideboard and poured a glass of sherry. With trembling hands she drank it all.

“Taken to the bottle in your absence?” He studied her. Without gloves, shawl, and hat, she looked much like the girl he had first met, but for the preylike hesitation in her blue eyes now.

“No. It is for my nerves.” She turned to him, pressing her hands into the sideboard behind her.

“You are overset.”

“Come now. You would not have appeared to me like a ghost if you had not wished to make a dramatic effect.”

She threw herself toward the window, clutching the draperies and averting her face.

“I didn’t know how to— I thought of all the ways I might …” She peeked over her shoulder, her golden lashes fluttering. “I was so anxious to see you, I did not know how to do it.”

“Where have you been, Cornelia?” He spoke evenly, an odd calm settling over him.

“Here and there.”

“Where in particular?”

“It does not matter anymore, does it? I am here now.”

“It matters quite a great deal to me. Where? ”

She turned halfway to him, still gripping the curtains and her gaze darted to the bottle on the sideboard. “Italy.”

“Don’t lie to me. You haven’t any reason to now.”

She whirled about. “I was in Italy. For nearly three years.”

“And before that?”

“America. I hated it. I was glad to leave.”

“Who,” he said, “is keeping you?”

Her eyes went wide as saucers. “Keeping me?”

“Your lover, Cornelia. Your protector. Tell me his name.”

“Why?” she shot out. “So that you can—” She clamped her rosebud lips shut. “I haven’t a lover.”

“Then who”—he gestured about him—“is maintaining you here? I do not recall my solicitor requesting that funds be sent to my dead wife lately.”

“Don’t tease, Leam.” Her brow crinkled. “I never wished everybody to believe me dead. I swear I did not.”

“Who, Cornelia?”

“My parents!” She crumpled onto a chair, casting her face into her hands. “I ran away and they helped me flee.”

Leam swallowed back the cold in his throat.

“Your parents attended your funeral. Do your sisters and brothers also know you are still alive?”

She lifted eyes and cheeks glistening prettily with tears. “No. Only Mama and Papa. They were as frightened of what you might do to me as I.”

“They knew about your affair with my brother, then.”

Her lips trembled. She nodded. “What will you do now, Leam?”

His hands fisted, nails biting into his palms.

“For more than five years, Cornelia, you allowed me to believe you killed yourself. That I drove you to it.” He could no longer bear to look at her. He crossed to the sideboard and poured a brandy.

Then when he had swallowed that, another.

“Taken to drinking in my absence, husband?”

The back of his neck prickled. The voice was petulant and harder than he had ever heard it. She was no longer a girl even if she looked like one.

“Who is in the Blackwood mausoleum, Cornelia?” He spoke with his back to her.

A moment’s hesitation. “I don’t know.”

“She wore your gown, the one I bought on our wedding trip. And your betrothal ring.” For weeks after they found the body he hadn’t allowed his housekeeper to touch the filthy rag and muck-

encrusted gold and diamond band. Looking upon them each day had been his penance. His own living hell.

“I had them when I ran away to find my parents. I thought Mama and Papa were here in town, but they were not. I sold the gown and ring to a girl on the street for money so that I could hire a wretched room. It was horrifying, filthy, and there were rats. I didn’t sleep. But I was able to send word to Papa and Mama and they came and fetched me. When I heard about the girl and how you and everyone else believed her to be me, I was sorry.”

“Sorry? Did you pause to consider her family?”

“I don’t think she had one. She was a—a—” Her brow grew more fretful. “From the people I saw her with, I’ve no doubt she met the end she expected to someday.”

“That is unforgivably cold, Cornelia.”

“I was frightened of you! You had—” Her voice broke off. “James had died and I did not know what you would do next.”

He turned. “An affecting story, to be sure.”

She stared at him.

“Do you hate me so much still?” she whispered.

“No. I never did.” The admission no longer surprised him. “Rather, myself.”

Her lower lip quivered.

“Then do you—Can—Leam? Husband, can you love me still?”

His stomach turned.

“When, I wonder”—he could barely mouth the words—“will you ask after your son?”

Her eyes widened. She folded her hands in her lap. “How is he?”

“Well.”

“Does he…?” She blinked as though deterring tears. “Does he ever speak of me?”

“Rarely, which is to be expected. You know, your maternal devotion intrigues me.” He took up his glass and refilled it, the brandy barely touching the icy center of his chest.

“What do you mean? I have missed knowing him dreadfully,” she said quickly, a slight whine to her tone now. “I have, Leam. You must believe that.”

“I don’t, really.” He downed the spirit, then lowered the empty glass from his lips and set it on the table. “Especially since you left him in the care of a man you feared would do you serious harm. For years.”

Her mouth opened and closed.

Taking up his hat and crop, he moved toward the door. The rustle of her skirts preceded her light footsteps across the floor. She grasped his sleeve.

“Don’t go, Leam. Please.”

He looked down at her small hand wrapped around his arm like a talon, her knuckles white.

“Do not worry yourself needlessly, my dear,” he said, drawing air into his compressed lungs. “I will return. And when I do, I expect you to still be here.”

She released him. “I—I will be.”

“Cornelia?”

“Yes, Leam?”

He looked into her face, so close now, and saw fear and uncertainty behind her blue eyes. “Why did you reveal yourself now?”

“Mama and Papa said you had thrown off your ungentlemanly ways quite abruptly,” she whispered. “As long as you adopted them, I knew you would not remarry.” Her pink lips curved into a quivering smile, and for a moment her dimples flickered to life. “My Leam would not court a lady looking like anything but a perfect prince.”

She reached to touch him again. He moved away.

Not swiftly enough he was on the street, mounting his horse, and riding—he knew not where, he knew not for how long. Only that he sought motion to give rest to his careening mind. He would move until he could no longer, then he would drink. In the activity or alcohol he might find sanity.

Something in her eyes and tone rang false. Falser than years ago. He would discover it and finally lay his ghosts to rest.

Kitty did not receive callers or pay calls. She kept to her personal chambers, once daily walking to her brother’s house. She read to Serena, and brought over interesting books and music. When her sister-in-law wished to rest she went home and locked herself in her rooms once more.

She told her mother she was unwell and disinterested in company, and indeed felt perfectly wretched, inside a welter of unhappiness. At lunch near the end of the week her mother questioned her.

“You look pale, Kitty. This malady is persisting far longer than I like.”

“Oh, no doubt I will be well enough shortly.” In a hundred years or so. Dear Lord, she hadn’t imagined anything could hurt so much. Her heartbreak over Lambert Poole held nothing to the pain inside her over losing Leam to his dead wife. She felt faint perpetually, as though living in a terrible dream.

“You are not eating.”

“It is a stomach complaint, Mama.” Nausea beyond anything she had ever felt, thorough, endless, filling her heart and head. She folded her napkin and placed it on the table. The footman came forward to pull out her chair.

“John, Lady Katherine is not yet ready to retire from the table,” the dowager said. “That will be all.”

“Yes, mum.” He left them alone.

“Mama, truly I feel quite peaked. Allow me to wish you a pleasant afternoon at the salon with Lord Chamberlayne and—”

“Kitty.” Her mother’s voice was soft and firm. “Lord Blackwood has called on you several times daily for nearly a sennight.”

Kitty barely managed to lift her brow in an attitude of curiosity. It was difficult to do so and not succumb to tears.

“Oh, really?” John and Mrs. Hopkins had delivered each of his calling cards to her personally.

“How persistent of him.” She should speak with him. But once they spoke it would be truly over and she was not yet ready for that. She needed time to accustom herself to losing him before she had ever really had him.

“You have heard, no doubt, the remarkable news?”

“What news is that, Mama?”

“His wife appears to have returned from the dead. Apparently she suffered an accident and amnesia. Her parents have only just discovered her in an Italian convent.”

“How nice for them all.” She pushed out her chair, holding the tears at bay as she had been doing for days. “Mama, I really feel quite ill. Please excuse me.”