It's Always Been You

by Victoria Dahl

  Kate pushed past Mrs. Renier and stumbled from the room, her eyes locked on the curve of the stairway.

  “Kate,” she heard Aidan’s voice say. She didn’t look toward him as she finally reached the first step and started her escape. “Kate, what’s wr—”

  “Pardon me.” Kate was amazed that she could speak so clearly. In some distant, still-functioning part of her mind she felt proud of her quiet voice, proud of the way her legs carried her up as if she weren’t dying inside.

  Her legs carried her all the way to the second floor and down the hall to her room. But once she was inside, with the door safely shut behind her, Kate fell to her hands and knees, and put her forehead to the floor, weak with something she couldn’t understand and didn’t dare examine. How could she have imagined that Aidan York was lonely? His whole being defied the idea.

  He was young and handsome and charming. He was rich, strong, and vibrant. Women loved him. She had loved him.

  “Oh, God,” she said. She’d thought he needed her. An image filled her mind—of Aidan bent over Mrs. Renier, his exquisite body flexing, entering, filling her up while the woman cried out. Just as Kate had.

  “No,” she moaned, closing her eyes, struggling to blind herself. Again the scene played itself out, a different woman this time. An icy blonde, screaming her pleasure.

  Oh, all those beautiful, primal things they’d done, she and Aidan, all of them part of some traveling show he trotted out for anyone who asked. Hundreds of them. She dug her nails deep into the wool of the carpet.

  Insatiable.

  Laying her cheek very carefully against the wool, she cursed the softness, wishing it the cold of hard stone.

  Insatiable. Kate had likely been just like the other women to him, except perhaps in that respect. He’d never been insatiable with her. He’d gotten more than enough of her, easily, quickly, had often found nothing better to do with her than fall asleep. I’ve never slept with another woman. My God, she’d been unsophisticated enough to take that as a compliment.

  This newfound understanding of him was painful in so many ways, but humiliation struck her hardest.

  Opening her eyes, she stared across the blurred colors of the rug, stared at the pale fall of drapes over the window. What had he even wanted with her?

  It was true she was not his type—she could see that easily enough with that glimpse of only one of his women. Cool, effortlessly elegant, completely at ease among his peers. Mrs. Renier was beautiful, if a little older than Kate would have suspected. Older. More experienced. Less naïve.

  The thought of her own inexpert responses to him brought tears to her eyes. Eagerness did not make up for lack of skill.

  What was the appeal? The only explanation she could conjure was simple: sheer nostalgia. She was a reminder of his youth. It was possible he’d even meant to marry her. People married for less compelling reasons than nostalgia, certainly.

  But she’d actually thought she was saving him, rescuing him from a bleak existence. My Lord, she’d been about to save a man from a harem. They would have married, she’d have left everything behind to be his wife, then watched, helplessly, as he began to drift away, back to those women.

  This revelation of his true nature was a blessing, she told herself with desperate practicality. A gift to keep her from shackling herself to another endless, fathomless misery. This excruciating pain was better than the dull, eternal ache of yet another life spent with a man who didn’t love her and spent his nights elsewhere.

  This was a rescue. She still had what she’d owned a few months ago. She’d come so close to throwing everything away for him, but she hadn’t stepped over that cliff. Nothing had changed.

  Something wild scrambled inside her, screaming that she lied. She smothered it mercilessly and pushed herself to her feet. It was time to leave this place.

  He knew who was waiting in the drawing room. The butler had whispered the name “Mrs. Renier,” in his ear with a tone that managed both alarm and censure.

  So he expected to see Beatrice Renier when he stepped into the drawing room, but the sight of her still sunk knives of fear into his chest. “What the hell are you doing in my home?” he ground out, as if there were some mystery as to why Kate had floated up the stairs like a ghost.

  “How dare you?” she spat, her lovely features twisting into ugly fury.

  “How dare I what?” He glanced over his shoulder, his mind already straying to Kate.

  Beatrice grabbed his chin and pulled his face back toward her.

  He shrugged and jerked free of her grasp. “What did you tell her?” he demanded.

  She crossed her arms and smirked. “I waited for you, idiot that I am. I dressed with such care, imagining what you might like. I had Chef prepare your favorite dishes. And then I waited for hours, like some doxy who’d lost your favor!”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” he snarled.

  Her sneer wavered. “You don’t remember.”

  “Remember what?”

  Beatrice’s shoulders slumped and she became smaller. “You sent a note that you’d come to me, and you don’t even remember it.”

  Damnation. He remembered now. Just before he’d left to retrieve Kate’s watch, he’d promised Mrs. Renier he’d come for dinner. And more. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “But you’ve overreacted. What did you say?”

  “Overreacted?” She laughed, tossing her head back.

  “I reacted exactly as you treated me. Like a whore beneath your consideration. Exactly the same thing that other woman is to you, I assume, as you treat none of us any better than the next.”

  “Get out of my home,” Aidan snarled. “Go back to your husband.”

  “Ha!” she barked, brushing past him as she tugged the veil over her face. “I love how you say that as if you’re better than I. You were no better than I when we were rutting on the good china under his roof. The only difference is that I have someone to go home to, and you don’t.” She stopped at the threshold of the door and turned back. “Not even her, Aidan.”

  His blood went cold. “What did you tell her?” he asked again.

  “I told her the truth.”

  He stood before her door for an endless moment. Fifty heartbeats. A hundred.

  He was waiting for this to get easier, to convince himself that it wasn’t that bad. Beatrice was only one woman, after all. Kate must know he hadn’t lived like a monk. But the look on her face when she’d passed him . . .

  No. It wasn’t that bad. Couldn’t be. He knocked on the door and waited. When she didn’t answer, he knocked again, then pushed it open, his heart skipping as the door stirred the scent of her soap in the room.

  “Kate?” When she didn’t answer, he pushed the door open farther. “Kate?”

  “Yes. I’m here.” She rose up from where she’d been kneeling next to the bed.

  “I’m sorry about . . . that.”

  She stared at him oddly, saying nothing, looking as beautiful as ever, but very pale, very stiff. He stepped into the room, and when he drew nearer, he could see why she’d been kneeling. Next to the bed lay her satchel. It gaped open, and he could see the blue dress inside.

  “What are you doing?” he asked past a tight throat.

  She clasped her hands together and did not look at him. “I’d like to go home early. Today, in fact. As soon as possible.”

  That tightness choked him, closing off his throat in a painful grip. The tension grew, sinking impossibly deep in his chest. Fighting against it, fighting the terror, he opened his mouth, drew in a breath. “No.”

  Her eyes locked on his in a shock of dark fury before sliding deliberately away from him. “It seems the best thing.”

  “I’m sorry that she came here. But I haven’t seen her in months. I swear to you.” His voice sounded distant, shushed by the loud rush of blood in his ears.

  “That’s not it.”

  “What did she tell you?” he snapped. There was only one thing Kate could
have heard about him, but perhaps it wasn’t that, he told himself ridiculously. Perhaps she’d heard something else, something entirely untrue.

  She didn’t want to speak, he could see it in her twisting hands, the muscles working in her throat. He wanted her silence as well, wanted her to shake her head and smile and tell him it was nothing, nothing, just a misunderstanding. When her lips finally parted, when she finally spoke, she stared hard at his shoes, as if she couldn’t bear to see his face.

  “She told me that you are well known for your impressive displays of indiscriminate sex. That you’ve been with seemingly vast numbers of women. That you may, in fact, have already run through the whole of the ton.” She deigned to glance at him then, a terrible blank look that bore straight through his heart. “I did not receive any estimates as to the number of the lesser classes you’ve offered your services to. I’d rather not know.”

  Services. She’d captured it exactly, though she could not know that. Rage rose up—unreasonable, illogical—as if to make an effort at shielding him from his shame. “It’s not what you think.”

  “I’ll be very pleased if that’s true.”

  “You make it sound like I’ve been with legions of women. I haven’t. Not that many.” Jesus, he couldn’t stop himself babbling. “Only ever widows, or married women who made it well known that they . . .” He snapped his jaw shut, refusing to explain further. It was the past, surely he could make her see that.

  “Married women? Like me?”

  “No! They never meant anything to me, Kate. Not one of them.”

  She drew back from him as if he’d reached for her, though he wouldn’t have dared. “How can you say that? How could you s-s-s—” He winced at the sharp edge of hysteria in her voice and watched her stiffen and stamp it down in response. “—Sleep with all those women if they meant nothing to you?”

  “I never slept with any of them,” he spat, wanting to make her see.

  A gasping, coughing sound jumped from her throat, startling him and her as well, it seemed. She slapped a hand hard over her mouth with a clap that made him cringe.

  “I know,” she gasped, giggling behind her palm. “You already told me.”

  “What?” Frightened by her laughter, he lurched forward to clasp her elbows, to shake her. “Stop it.” Her eyes caught him with their flat, unnatural gaze. “Don’t look at me that way. Please.”

  She only closed her eyes against him.

  Mad fury swept through him—fury at Kate, fury at Beatrice, but mostly, truly, fury at himself for the depths he’d sunk to in the past few years. “Goddamn you,” he ground out between clenched teeth. “If I’d known you were alive, I would never have done any of it.”

  He expected anger, outrage in response. The calm that came over her body frightened him.

  Pale as the white silk wallpaper that glowed behind her, she nodded and dropped the hand from her mouth. “That is something between us then. If I had known I was still alive, I’d have done things differently too.”

  The veil fell away from her eyes, just for a moment. Aidan dropped his hands from her in shock. That brief clarity in her eyes had allowed him a glimpse into her heart, and he’d seen nothing but bleakness. She had no hope for him. And what could that mean for his soul?

  “I’m sorry. I’d take it all back if I could. All of it. But you had a life these past years too, Kate. You lived your life with another man, you loved him once. You shared your bed with him and I’m sure you enjoyed it. But I didn’t even—”

  “Is that what you think?” She knocked his hand roughly from her arm, and he felt it fall away, weightless as mist.

  He watched her watching him. She looked wary and disgusted and ready to attack or flee or both. “What?” he asked, confused.

  “You think that I loved him?”

  “You said you were happy,” he murmured stupidly, wanting it to be true for the first time. “I may not like it, but I understand.”

  “My God. You don’t understand. I don’t want you to understand.” She backed away from him, her feet drawing her too close to the fire.

  “Stop.”

  Her foot shifted. She meant to step back again, to retreat even if it meant letting her skirts brush the flames. Cursing, Aidan grabbed roughly for her arm, meaning only to pull her away before she set herself afire.

  She tried to twist away, but he held tight to her arm and yanked her clear of the danger, shifting her past him so he blocked the path to the fireplace. His heart thumped wildly with alarm; it took him a moment to realize she was struggling in his grasp.

  “Stop it,” he growled.

  “No!” Her voice was shrill as she wrenched her arm free and stumbled a few steps away. “Don’t touch me.”

  An icy flush crept over his skin, crawled beneath his flesh, tunneled into his bones. “You said you were happy. You loved him.”

  “That’s what you think?” She spat the words out as if they burned her mouth. “You think I was just a stupid, fickle girl who was denied one man and decided the next was just as good? Well, you’re right on one count. I was stupid. I was stupid, do you hear me?” One trembling hand rose to press against her throat.

  She began to cry then. Aidan wanted to cover her mouth to stop the welling sound, to halt the words, but he couldn’t move.

  “You think I just decided to make the best of it?”

  “Kate—”

  “I was not a horse to be broken to another rider.”

  The meaning of her words was a searing pain in his chest. He’d thought it torturous to imagine her enjoying another man’s touch, but it was unbearable to think the alternative. “Oh, Kate.”

  Her fury spilled out of her, deaf to his words. “How could you think I loved him? I loved you. I was your wife, not his. Despite that we’d never made it to the church, I was yours. I kept telling myself that, even when it seemed hopeless. Even when he held me down on his bed and took me. Even when I waited and waited and you never came. Even when I thought myself too used for you to love. I knew I was yours. I was yours.”

  Horror and grief stretched his soul thin until it was as tight as the skin of a drum. Every word set off a vibration of pain in his chest. “Oh, Katie. You didn’t tell me.” The disgust in her eyes when she looked at him made him cringe.

  “I didn’t want that pity I see on your face. I still don’t. And how could you possibly understand? You gave yourself to every woman with a friendly glance and a warm bed! How could you understand what I felt?”

  Thoughts and fears wrestled, fighting inside his head. He wanted to scream, to rage, to injure. But he tamped that need down and tried to reach for her. She slid from his grasp and stumbled back to her bag as tears streamed down her face.

  “Kate, what happened?” he rasped.

  She stuffed things into the bag, giving up any semblance of order. “I was sent to the other side of the world. I was given to a man I’d never met. I was as dead as my parents named me. And you did not mourn me at all.”

  “That’s not true!”

  Kate paused, both hands clutching the edge of the bag. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It wasn’t that I thought you hadn’t had lovers. I understood that I wasn’t the only woman you’d—”

  “No,” he barked. “No. You are not just one of them. I love you. I love you, Kate. I want to marry you. I want you to be my wife.”

  She shook her head. “We can’t marry, Aidan. We have very separate lives. You have an important business here in London, a life—” Waving a hand, she gestured to indicate his family, his friends, his tawdry affairs. “I have the shop in Hull. And a husband.”

  “No. I’ve already planned. I will move to Hull, work from there until a divorce can be arranged. Most of my business is correspondence anyway. I could travel to London every few weeks. . . .”

  His frantic words faded into silence as she paced away from him to stare out the window.

  “I don’t want to marry you,” she said softly to the glass. “I do n
ot wish to become less than, again.”

  “Less than what? I want to give you everything. Everything I have—”

  “I can’t marry you.” The abrupt loudness of her words hung between them. She couldn’t hide her disgust, her utter hatred of him at that moment. It glowed from her skin.

  “Kate, please,” he pleaded. “Please let me explain. Will you?”

  She turned back to the window, but then she met his eyes in the reflection of the glass and nodded once, very slowly.

  Aidan held her gaze for a long moment before he turned away to sit on the bed. He hung his head, staring at his shoes.

  “You died. And I was lost. I didn’t know what to do with myself except drink, so that’s what I did. One night, a month or so later, an innkeeper’s daughter took pity on me and coaxed me upstairs. Afterward, I thought I would die of the guilt. . . .”

  He glanced up, but her reflection only watched him in cool silence.

  “The guilt was enough to keep me living like a priest for a few weeks—a drunken priest. But at some point . . . at some point, the liquor stopped doing its job. It ceased to banish your ghost, ceased to make life tolerable. I would dream of you, and that was the worst thing—waking up in the morning thinking you’d returned, then realizing it was a dream.

  “I wanted another way to lose myself, and I found I was the object of a flood of feminine interest. I didn’t know why.”

  “You’re handsome,” she said bitterly. “Charming.”

  “That wasn’t it. It was you, actually. My mother spread the tale of our young love and its tragic end. She titillated the ladies of the ton. Apparently there is something unbearably attractive about male pain.” His laugh was a bitter shell of humor that grated from his throat.

  “The interest took its natural course and I found, to my extreme relief, that I could set your memory aside, could forget the sad state of my life, if only for a few minutes, a few hours, at a time.”

  He looked up at her and saw that she’d finally turned toward him.

  “I was entertainment for them,” he said. “And they were a distraction for me. I offered nothing except the use of my body for a short time. I never seduced, never promised. But, of course, my reputation precedes me.” His mouth twisted around the words. “I am a purebred stud. Unbroken. Spirited. Highly recommended for my gait if not my temperament.”