“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.