So she removed her apron and folded it before walking slowly across the room to retrieve her gloves and her cloak. She would walk with him, and then it would be done.
She couldn’t get her dry throat to work, so she descended the stairs and said nothing. He offered his arm, and there was no choice but to take it, though the contact brought a shiver of uneasiness to her belly and made her glad she at least had her gloves. Aidan had not worn his, she saw with a glance at his tanned hands.
She refused to remember his hands.
They strolled in silence, halfway to the park before he cleared his throat to break the tension hovering between them.
“You’ve been living in Ceylon?”
She shook her head and lied. “India.” Ceylon was a small island, after all, and she might be known as a notorious murderess. She couldn’t let him know a thing.
Silence returned, descending with surprising weight. Kate made a conscious effort to relax the fingers that gripped his forearm.
“So . . . that is where you learned the coffee trade?”
“Yes, my hus—” Swallowing the word, Kate cleared her throat again. “I lived on a coffee plantation.”
“Did you return to England recently?”
“A few months ago. As soon as I was able, actually.”
“You did not enjoy India?”
That surprised a laugh from her. The strained sound drew a look from Aidan, but she rushed on before he could probe. “I did not enjoy the heat.”
“And that’s why you returned?”
Here it was. She didn’t hesitate over the story. “My husband wished to start a new venture. Coffee distribution. Due to our own plantation and his contacts in the community, we can guarantee the highest quality of product at the lowest price.”
“But where is your husband?”
“The . . . the heat made me ill, so he sent me ahead to start the shop. He is in India for the moment, arranging new contacts.”
“I see,” he said in a way that made his confusion clear. “Are coffee shops really so profitable?”
“It is only the first step.” Hands clenched tight together, she waited for him to kick at the cracks in her story. Why was she running the shop herself? Why did she have no workers? Why would her husband not travel with her?
Just as he seemed about to speak, the strolling park appeared before them and distracted him from his study of her face. His eyes swept the grassy square before he led her to sit on a small bench sheltered beneath a willow tree. Kate perched there and stared at the dying leaves of the tree, waiting for him to speak again.
She felt him shift toward her. “What happened? How did this . . . happen?”
Her breath swelled in her tight chest. “I don’t know. After we quarreled, I returned home. I was so angry. You told me we couldn’t marry—”
“We couldn’t.”
Kate closed her eyes, remembering the awful things they’d said to each other. She’d called him a coward, and he
’d called her a naïve, stupid child. “You’re right,” she murmured. “We couldn’t marry. So I married someone else.”
“In Ceylon,” he said flatly.
“India,” she said again, feeling the lie on her tongue. “And that is what happened.” Oh, but that so simplified it that she couldn’t honestly say it was the truth. She didn’t care.
Aidan pushed to his feet, shoving one hand through his hair. Kate felt stupidly jealous of that hand.
“That is all?” he bit out. “That is all you have to say? You could not marry me, so you married another?”
She shook her head, knowing he could not see, and said nothing.