me make my decision. I stepped forward into the room. “Coming.”
He slid his books to the side, clearing the space at the table that was usually mine, and I sat down at my usual chair. There was nothing comfortable here, but I was determined to be here anyway. I was determined to reclaim my place. I felt, deep within, that if I did not claim it now, I would lose it forever.
Certainly Mrs. Delafield would want me to leave and never give her cause to worry again about her son’s future. But Mrs. Delafield was not in this room, and she might be able to stop me from ever marrying Henry, but that did not mean she could stop me from being his friend.
“What are you reading?” I asked as I sat at the table.
He held up a leather-bound book. “Dr. Faustus. By Goethe.”
“In German?”
“Naturlich.” His curt tone grated on me.
“Oh. Naturlich,” I repeated with a sarcastic bite to my voice.
He lowered the book and looked at me. “What is wrong with that?”
“You have everything given to you, Henry. You have your tutor teaching
you German and French and Latin, and you can study things I might never
be able to. So don’t pretend it is ‘natural’ at all.”
Henry held my gaze, his grey eyes reflecting a battle within himself. He seemed about to argue with me. I was sure I could see building in his eyes some fire that he would unleash on me—a fire of indignation, of pent-up
arguments, of impassioned feelings. The space between us grew taut with my anger and his, and I saw a muscle leap in his clenched jaw, and his lips pressed together so that a line creased his cheek. I stared at that crease, and in a flare of longing wished that I could simply reach for him and touch his face.
I looked down. I took a deep breath and tamped my feelings down deep,
until I no longer felt the ache of longing. And then I said in a quiet voice,
“I am sorry. I did not mean to be angry with you, after all your kindnesses toward me.”
He reached out and grabbed my wrist. I looked up in surprise. “Don’t
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make me out to be some sort of angelic character,” he whispered fiercely. “I have done nothing out of kindness, Kate. Do you understand?”
I stared at him in surprise.
He released me and leaned back, raking his hand through his hair. Then
he shook his head and muttered, “I am sorry.”
There was so much between us. So much we were not saying to each other.
But I could say that. So I did. “I am sorry as well.”
And I was. I was sorry for everything. I was sorry for my embarrassment
of a mother and my scandalous sister and the fact that I had fallen in love with a boy who could never be mine.
Henry rubbed a hand over his face, then stood and walked to the window
and looked outside for a long time—so long that I gave up waiting for him and pulled the top book off my own stack and cracked it open. But I was only two pages into my study of the life of Mozart when Henry returned to the table, sat down, and picked up his book.
“Would you like me to tell you about Faust?” He offered me a smile. “I
will translate for you.”
I closed my book. “Yes. I would like that very much.”
Chapter 35
Present Day
“Good morning.”
I cleared my throat and tried again for something louder than the ragged whisper I had just produced.
“Good morning, sir.” That was a little bit better. Mama pushed me forward, making me stumble into Henry’s grandfather’s room. I glared at her over my shoulder. “I told you I would do this. Please stop pushing me.”
She waved her hands at me. “Just get on with it. I’ll be standing guard out in the hall. That servant will discover he wasn’t needed in the kitchens and be back here in under five minutes, unless Maria can distract him.”
With another shove at my back, she cleared me of the door, which she shut firmly behind me, leaving me in the dim room.
Henry’s grandfather was not sitting in his normal chair by the win-dow. He sat up in bed with a tray of food beside him. At the sound of the door closing he looked up, his grey eyes settling on me for a moment.
“Kate Worthington,” he said, his gravelly voice quiet in the still room.
My heart pounded out a message that this was all wrong—that I could not go through with this. But I had made a bargain, and bargains 243
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had to be fulfilled. I stepped toward him. “Yes. Good morning, sir. I hope you are well today.”
At my approach, his gaze shifted from me to the door. His fingers clutched at the blanket covering his lap, twitching at it, and his gaze twitched too, back and forth, between me and the door. His legs moved restlessly, and when I reached his bedside, a panicked look filled his eyes.
“Will you . . .” He licked his lips, his fingers pulling at the threads of his blanket. “Will you go outside and close the door and then come back in again?”
I stopped, looked at him closely, and said, “Of course.”
My heart beat fast with the feeling that something was not right. I walked to the door, opened it, and passed through the doorway into the hall. Mama saw me and came toward me, but I shook my head at her as I closed the door, waited a moment, and then opened it again. He was waiting for me to come back in. His look was alert and suspicious and worried. As I stood again inside his room he said to me, “Now. . . . which Kate are you?”
Dread and fear pooled in my stomach. I looked around, as if I could find an answer to his madness here in the room. “I am Kate, sir. Kate Worthington.”
“Whose Kate Worthington?”
I swallowed hard. I was certainly not Henry’s Kate. And I was not my mother’s or my father’s. I was, in fact . . .
“Nobody’s. I am nobody’s Kate.”
His gaze pierced me for a moment before he closed his eyes and be-gan to move his head back and forth, back and forth, while muttering, “Nobody’s Kate. Nobody’s Kate. Nobody’s Kate.”
It made my heart quicken with fear. Dismay filled me. I should not have come here. I should never have seen this. Backing up slowly, I reached for the door handle and quietly eased the heavy door open.
Mama stood right outside the door, leaning toward it eagerly. “Well?
What did he say?”
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I shook my head. “Come away from here, Mama. He is not well today. We must leave.” My hands were shaking.
“Nonsense.” She brushed past me. “Every man can be persuaded.
Even the mad ones.”
I watched with dread as she entered his room. Upon seeing her, his eyes grew wide, fear and alarm etched in his wrinkled face. He dived under his blankets, lifting the covers so roughly that the tray of food clat-tered to the floor, and pulled the blanket over his head. She reached for the blanket, as if she would pull it off him, like forcing a turtle from its shell.
“No!” I yelled, suddenly terrified for him. I rushed forward and grabbed her arm. She looked at me with eyes wide with shock. “You mustn’t do this. Leave him be!” I pulled her even when she tried to push me away, and I did not stop pulling her until I had wrestled her toward the door.
“What’s this?” The butler appeared in the open doorway. “What are you two doing in here?”
Mama yanked her arm free of my grip and quickly smoothed her hair, shooting me a dark look before turning to the butler with a smile.
“My silly daughter was trying to give me a tour of the house, and she became completely turned around, I’m afraid. Perhaps you could tell us how to reach the main staircase.”
The butler looked from us to the bed, where Henry’s grandfather hid under his blanket, to the food scattered all over the rug. My cheeks burned with embarrassment when he turned his accusing glance my way.