Lady Midnight (44 page)

Surely, though, it could be mended! She had only to think of a way.

Kate closed her chamber door behind her and slumped back against it, staring out at the space that had so briefly been hers. It was familiar, her slippers and shawls scattered about, her hairbrush and scent bottle on the dressing table, yet it was altered beyond comprehension.

Kate caught a glimpse of herself in the shadowed mirror and hardly recognized herself in the madwoman reflected there. Her skin was chalky pale, her hair in violent disarray, strands straggling to her shoulders with Christina's pink roses wilting and askew.

Poor Christina.
Imprisoned at Lindley House to protect her from Kate's corrupting influence.

Kate dropped her shawl and pulled off her fine gown, the gown she had taken such delight in but which was now creased and rumpled. She dropped it across the foot of the bed and put on one of her gray muslin day dresses. The roses fell from her hair, and she raked her fingers through the strands until all the pins scattered across the floor. Kicking them out of the way with the toe of her rose satin slipper, she lurched toward the window and threw it open.

The morning breeze was cool and fresh, washing over her face and blowing her loose hair back from her shoulders. There wasn't yet a hint of the heavy mustiness city air always held once the sun rose in earnest. The day was new and clean, the street quiet below her.

And Kate was seized with the sudden desire, the
need,
to be out in that day, to be free from this house. To run away, even if only for an hour. She whirled around and caught up her discarded shawl.

As she crept down the stairs toward the front door, she heard Lady Darcy's shrill voice echoing from the library, hanging over the foyer like a lead-lined cloud.

"I will not stand for it, Michael! I won't have this family whispered about, our name bandied in the penny press as it was when Caroline died. You must—"

Kate choked on a sob and ran out the door. She didn't stop running until she had left the quiet, elegant, genteel street far behind.

"I'm sorry," she whispered on a gasp, knowing Michael would never hear her. "For everything."

* * *

The park was still quiet. No fashionable carriages had yet appeared, no nursemaids walking with their little charges, or footmen with lapdogs on leads. Even the more serious riders, who enjoyed a good gallop along Rotten Row before the stylish crowds arrived, weren't there yet. Kate stopped her heedless dash at the edge of the Serpentine. Her side ached with the unaccustomed exertion, and her slippers—meant for dancing, not running—pinched. She leaned over, her hands clasped to her heaving stomach, and laughed.

It was a bitter laugh, one born of the thought of what her mother's old friends would say if they could see her now. Katerina Bruni, the most pampered and carefully bred would-be courtesan in Venice, standing alone in a deserted park, dressed in an old gray frock, hair tangled. About to be sick because she had run too far, and because she had caused gossip.

Or rather,
she
hadn't caused the gossip. Julian Kirkwood had.

Kate straightened, taking deep, careful breaths as the stitch in her side subsided. There were no words to describe what she had felt when she saw Julian standing there, very much alive. Shock, of course; a flash of hope that because
he
was alive, the others would be, too; dismay; a sense of unreality and illusion. Any vague wish that he might not remember her was quickly broken when he called her name. Her true name.

Katerina.
His Beatrice.

Kate glimpsed a small bench beneath a tree and limped over to drop down on its hard, narrow seat. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the rough tree trunk. Once, when she was very young and foolish, she had briefly found a silly pleasure in Julian's fantasies, in his calling her his Beatrice, his dark-eyed Renaissance princess. For a girl who read poetry, who dreamed of fantasylands, it was romantic and flattering. To have such a handsome, wealthy suitor was what every girl wanted.

What every girl
didn't
want—or at least a girl like Kate—was a man who watched her in intense silence. Who seemed to want to make her into something she wasn't, a Renaissance princess in truth, an object of distant perfection. Not a real woman of emotion and anger and talk. When he had touched her, she shivered. Not from joy, as when Michael caressed her, but fear. Fear she was losing herself in the unholy glow of his eyes.

It had been very difficult, because she had known that one day she would have to submit to him if she didn't want to be cast out of her mother's house to make her own way. He was far wealthier than any other available suitor, a friend of Edward's.

Then this new life began. A life she could never have dreamed of before. Was it lost to her? Forever?

Kate felt a strange prickling sensation on her skin, a tense, tingling awareness. She opened her eyes, and found Julian Kirkwood standing several feet away at the edge of the Serpentine. Watching her.

Some of his physical perfection was marred. In the ever brighter sunlight, his flesh was very pale, as if he had truly been ill for a long time. He was even more slender than he had been in Venice, and his eyes were covered by the smoked-glass lenses of a pair of spectacles. But she
knew
he watched her, even from behind that concealment. She felt it, just as she had that day on the Rialto.

And suddenly, Kate was tired of being scared. Scared of his ghost, scared of the past. She had lived with it all for too long, and she was weary. She didn't have just herself to think of any longer, either—she had her family.

Kate pushed herself up from the bench and marched toward him, wrapping her shawl tighter about her shoulders, as if the flimsy lace could give her some sort of armored protection. Julian stood very still, watching her approach until she stood before him.

"How did you find me?" she demanded. "No—you needn't say. You followed me here, didn't you? You were watching our house."

He did not deny it. He simply stood there, with that maddening dignity, that loose-limbed elegance."I was very concerned when I saw you running away," he said softly. "Did that man hurt you, Katerina? He seemed very angry when I told him what we are to each other."

Hurt her?
Michael? He never could; his kind heart was incapable of hurting anyone. Not with the kind of deliberate, casual pain that was commonplace in Venice. But someone like Julian could never understand that. "Of course he did not hurt me. He never would. I simply needed some fresh air. And as to what we are to each other, you and me—we are nothing, Julian. We never were."

He
did
react to that, his shoulders drawing back as if she had struck him with a whip. "Katerina, how can you say that? I knew from the first moment I saw you, in the Piazza San Marco, that we were meant for each other. That we had been together many times before, in other lives, and we had found each other again. I loved you with all my heart—I love you still, even more."

Kate watched him, a strange sadness washing over her. Once, she could so easily have turned and walked away from him, from his delusions, and never spoken to him again. Indeed, that was what she should do. But now she knew what love truly was. She knew the piercing joy of it in her heart, the ecstasy, the hope, the fear and pain. Julian's love was not like hers for Michael—it surely had none of the sweetness and Tightness. It was selfish and twisted. But in his mind, it
was
love. And this, Kate could not just leave. Once, her life had been bizarrely entwined with this man's.

"Oh, Julian," she said gently. "Those feelings—they were not for
me.
You never even truly knew me, saw me. You saw only a fantasy figure, a young Venetian girl you could pin all your dreams to. I was never Beatrice. I can't blame you. I didn't even know myself then. But I do now, and that girl you knew is dead. She died that day in the storm, and only I, Kate, am left. We were both given a great gift, a new life, and you have to find your own way in it. Just as I have found mine."

They were weak words, she knew. They could never convey all she had found in this "new life." Yet they were all she had. She could only hope they would give Julian some hope, too, a way to see past the illusions and fantasies he had lived on for so long—that they had
both
lived on.

She turned away to leave, to walk away and go home, but he reached out and caught her arm, pulling her to a standstill. Kate glanced back at him, a small kernel of fear fluttering to life in her stomach. His jaw was set in a hard line, a muscle ticking along his high, sharp cheekbone.

"It is not you saying these things, Katerina," he said, his voice deadly soft. "You felt the same way I did when we met—that we were two souls who found each other at last. I thought I would die of the pain when I lost you. It was as if a part of me was ripped away! And now we have a miracle; we have found each other again. How can you turn away from me so coldly? The girl I knew would have seen the truth, seen the great gift we have been given in each other. She would welcome it, embrace it! What were the odds of us finding ourselves in the same house last night? It was meant to be. We cannot go against fate."

Fate—meant to be.
The words echoed hollowly in Kate's head. Julian's hand tightened on her arm, holding her fast even as she tried to draw away.
Don't be scared,
she told herself. They were in a public place; even now people were appearing at the edges of the park. He could not hurt her here.

Still, she was frightened. She longed for him to let her go, to stop saying these bizarre things. She wanted home, Thorn Hill; she wanted Michael.

"Do you even hear yourself, Julian?" she cried. "It was never like that between us. It was never
love.
You wanted to possess me. To possess something that never even existed. I am not sorry that you are alive, but our previous acquaintance is at an end. Now let me go!"

She tugged harder on her arm, but he was stronger. He drew her even closer, his free hand clasping around her other arm. She could smell his expensive cologne, feel the fevered heat of his body.

"Katerina, you have lived too long among these people," he ground out. His eyes were concealed behind those glasses, yet still his stare burned into her, held her. She was frozen, captured like a rabbit in a snare. "They have made you forget who you truly are. They have tried to make a Renaissance princess into a staid English governess. But they cannot—
he
cannot—know your heart. That scarred English squire..."

"Don't you dare speak of him!" Kate said fiercely. "He is a fine, honorable man, one someone like you could never fathom."

Julian's clasp lightened for an instant, as if in surprise, but before she could tear away it tightened again, bruising. "So that is it. What has he promised you, Katerina? Marriage? Country respectability?"

Kate said nothing. Her throat was closed, her mouth dry.

"Yes," Julian whispered. "That is it. Well, I can marry you, too. I can give you everything your scarred squire can, and more. You will be Lady Kirkwood, and will go back to Italy. Is it jewels you want, Katerina? Houses, travel, love? I can give them all to you, if you will only agree to be mine. To open your heart to me."

His tone was pleading, desperate, but Kate's fear had driven out all her pity. "My heart is already given to another. We are lovers, and I will never leave him. Not for someone like you—not for all the jewels in the world."

She gave her shoulders a sharp, quick twist, breaking away from him at last. Without an instant's hesitation, she turned and fled back along the banks of the Serpentine, dodging the people who walked there. They gave her shocked glances, angry frowns; she did not even notice. She only heard Julian's shout of anger and despair floating behind her, the sound reaching out with piercing, predatory talons, trying to drag her back.

Kate ran even faster
back
to the house than she had run
away
from it. It was as if demons from hell chased her down the well-manicured streets of London town houses, nipping at her heels. She stopped at the corner of her own street, leaning against the wrought iron rails of a fence to catch her breath and try to calm her fears. They would be tamped down, pushed into tiny, compressed shapes, yet they would not be altogether banished.

Julian had lost none of his obsession with her, his delusions of romance and fate. In fact, those strange fantasies had only grown in the long months of their separation. How could she ever be free of him, of all he stood for, again?

Kate pushed her damp hair back from her brow and neck, letting the heavy length fall down her back as she tried not to give in to helpless sobs. Crying would get her nowhere. Then she saw a most strange sight halfway down the street. At first, she thought it was a ghost, ethereal and insubstantial in the morning light.

Kate blinked, and saw that it was
not
a ghost. It was Christina, trudging along the pavement in her white gown.

"Christina!" Kate called, dashing to catch up with her. "Christina, whatever are you doing?"

Christina whirled around, and Kate saw that she had been crying. Her green eyes were red-rimmed, and her freckled face was pale and drawn, stained by tracks of dried tears. "Mrs. Brown!" she cried, and ran forward to throw herself into Kate's arms. "Oh, Mrs. Brown, it was horrible. Mary has become some sort of bedlamite, ranting and raving all the time about the sinful men of her family and woman's lot in life. She locked me in a bedroom, and I had to climb out the window and down a tree to escape. I got lost trying to find our house, and now—oh, Mrs. Brown!"