Page 110 of Counting on a Countess
“It would have been a huge expense. We had been wed such a short time, and then we learned the condition in Lord Somerby’s will that gave me control of the money. I didn’t know how you would have felt if I’d said I needed to spend the lion’s share of our new fortune.” She spread her hands. “I was afraid, so I said nothing. And adhered to my plans in secret.”
“I was your dupe.” The pain in his words cut her like a blade. “You used me.”
“We used each other,” she said. “To you, I was a means to get Lord Somerby’s money. And what of your pleasure garden? You tried to make me care for you so I’d give you the funds to pay for it.” She spread her hands. “Neither of us are guiltless.”
His chest moved up and down as he drew in shallow, furious breaths. “That’s your defense.”
“It was for them,” she said, waving toward the village. “I did it for them.”
She took a step toward him, but he backed away. He moved slightly, and then put more distance between them. Finally, he turned and began walking.
“Kit? Where are you going?”
He whirled back and strode to her. “Not to worry,” he said bitterly. “I won’t go to the authorities. I won’t have Lady Blakemere clapped in irons.” He opened his mouth as if to speak more, but then shook his head and marched off into the night’s shadows.
Her feet would not move to follow him. Everything within her was cold as granite, and just as heavy. She sagged against the fence behind her, using it to prop her up when she would have surely sunk down to her knees.
Fear gripped her throat tightly. Now that he’d learned the truth about her smuggling, he could destroy not only her, but Newcombe, as well. He was so bitter, so angry that she’d broken the law; there was every chance he’d change his mind and turn her in to the customs officers.
Pain engulfed her like a smothering blanket. Everything they’d built together had been destroyed.
What do I do?
Chapter 28
Like an avenging spirit, Kit roamed the surrounding countryside. Anger and sorrow and pain urged his legs into constant motion. Yet no matter what field he walked through, or bluff he stood atop, or crumbling castle keep he skirted, he never discovered the answers he sought—what to do about his wife and her smuggling.
He strode away from the coast and its beating surf, seeking silence. As if impelled by memory, he found himself at the edge of the forest where she’d taken him earlier. With grim determination, he moved deeper into the woods, bittersweet thoughts of their earlier lovemaking pulsing through him.
The hot wound of Tamsyn’s deception continued to throb as he pushed his body to its limits. From the beginning, she had lied to him, even using their home as a place to store her contraband goods. He remembered how, the morning after they’d first made love, she had been absent from bed. When he’d found her, coming up from the house’s lower floor, she’d said she had been handling a domestic emergency. Another fabrication.
She’d defied the law, as well. Wasn’t that what he and his men fought to preserve? Had their injuries and deaths meant nothing to her?
He stopped at the clearing where they had lain. They had shared pleasure, but not the truth. Slowly, he crouched down and placed his hand on the dew-covered grass that was still flattened.
In the morass of his thoughts, one sang with a low and insistent note.
You weren’t honest with her, either.
His fingers brushed over the grass, and predawn damp coated his skin. The coolness of the moisture jolted him, waking him from the cloud of his thoughts.
He stood and frowned at the leaves overhead, swaying in the darkness.
Perhaps their respective crimes canceled each other out. He was no stranger to morally ambiguous deeds. In Belgium, he’d shot a man in the back—but the enemy had been running to warn his comrades of the advancing English soldiers. He’d acted in a way that made his heart shrivel, yet it had been for the greater good.
She and the villagers defied the Crown and disregarded the law, but they had done so to survive. Adults could sometimes endure starvation, yet children could not. He’d seen the shriveled bodies of Spanish and Portuguese babies held in the arms of their wasted parents. That same fate could have befallen the children of Newcombe if Tamsyn hadn’t intervened.
Whether or not that made his and Tamsyn’s actions right, he didn’t know.
The forest oppressed him now, choking him with its lush foliage. He hurried out of the woods, his strides taking him away from thoughts of what they’d created, and what they’d lost.
More landscape scrolled past him as he walked. The black night sky began to turn indigo with the coming of dawn, and shapes emerged from the darkness. Snug farmhouses and barns appeared. A handful of goats bleated at him as he passed their pasture.
The route he traveled sloped downward, and buildings grew more plentiful, until he discovered himself walking down the village high street.
Despite the earliness of the hour, people were already up and tending to their daily business. Women scrubbed at their washing or carried baskets. A sleepy child sat on the front step of a house, groggily playing with a doll. Out on the pier, men moved with familiarity on their docked boats, preparing their vessels before heading out for a day’s fishing. Distantly, Kit wondered if their catch had improved over the years or if they still hauled up empty nets at the end of the day.
The people he passed continued to give him cautious looks. He couldn’t blame them. He had no business being up at this hour and roving through the village like a specter.
