parallel wheel tracks with dry grass growing in between. She kept her back straight, attempting to maintain some distance between them, and ignored the shift of his thigh muscles beneath her own. She didn’t want to tell him, or relive any of the ugly moments of the past eighteen months, especially the night she’d nearly been compromised, but he’d seen too much for her to dismiss it easily. ‘I asked him to drive me to Dr Mantell’s so I could share with him my papers and drawings of Father’s best fossil specimens. Mr Prevett mistook my request as an invitation for something more.’
‘Why did he think you might indulge him?’ His body tightened against hers, making her heart race, his solid presence as disturbing as his sudden return.
‘Because while you were gone, your uncle did everything in his power to ruin me,’ she retorted, her base reaction to his nearness more unnerving than his question. ‘As you saw, he succeeded.’
‘He hasn’t succeeded for good. Whatever he’s done, I’ll undo it and make him pay,’ Conrad said sternly. ‘I promise.’
She looked down at his wide hand on her stomach, the fingertips spread over her dress. It would be so comforting to lean in to him and believe in his promise the way she used to when they’d lay together in the field above the slate mine with the dust of the rocks still fresh on her hands. Back then, it’d been so easy to trust in Conrad’s love and his promise to treasure her more than any reputation or expedition. Both had been illusions, like a white stone which from a distance looks like something spectacular, but up close is nothing more than a plain rock.
Pain tightened her chest and she closed her eyes to picture the bones arranged on the small table in her father’s old study, the ones she’d dug from the Downs a week ago. They were clean now, the clinging dirt carefully chipped and brushed away. In her mind, she tried to imagine how each fitted together as she always did, but nothing came to her now. It couldn’t, not with Conrad so close.
She opened her eyes just as they reached a fork in the road and Conrad urged the horse to the left.
‘Where are you going?’ Katie demanded. ‘Whitemans Green is the other way.’
‘Heims Hall is closer. We’ll rest there tonight and in the morning I’ll see you home.’
‘I don’t want to go there.’ He’d already conjured up too many tormenting memories for her to face more.
‘You needn’t worry. Miss Linton should be there and can serve as an appropriate chaperon,’ Conrad offered, as if guessing her concern.
Katie heaved a weary sigh. It was Miss Linton as much as spending the night at Heims Hall which worried her. The spinster had only ever been grudgingly cordial to Katie; she wasn’t likely to welcome her, or her tattered reputation, with open arms now. More than likely she’d pull Conrad aside and whisper in his ear every disgusting London story the marquis had created and spread, including the one where she’d traded her favours for a single published paper in an obscure journal.
Katie sagged a little against Conrad. She’d never thought he would come home, so she never thought he would ever have to hear the nasty things being said about her in London. Now he would hear them all. Whether or not he would choose to believe them, especially after what he’d seen today, she didn’t know. Everyone else had been so quick to accept them, so why not him?
‘I’m home now, Katie, you don’t have to worry,’ he whispered in the same soft voice he’d used to deliver the news he was leaving for his expedition. It didn’t soothe her any more now than it had a year and a half ago.
‘It would have been better if you’d come back sooner.’ Before she’d lost all faith in him and their future together.
‘I would have, but the ice had other plans for me.’
His hand against her stomach eased. Guilt swept over the back of her neck along with the faint caress of his breath. For everything she’d suffered, his suffering must have been tenfold. She laid her hand over his, noticing the slight tremor in his fingers. She squeezed his hand and the shaking stopped. Their future together might be over, but it didn’t mean she didn’t care for him or couldn’t soothe him.
He didn’t return the small squeeze, but slid his hand out of hers and took the reins. He was pulling away from her and she couldn’t blame him. This wasn’t the homecoming he’d expected. It wasn’t the one she’d pictured either, though she’d given up imagining him returning months ago. Now he was here and she didn’t know what to think or believe.
The countryside around them appeared to Conrad like a dream. Familiar rocks and trees dotted the landscape and the rising full moon turned them a ghostly grey. A cool breeze brushed through the grass flanking the road, and the steady clop of the horse’s hooves filled the night air. Wisps of Katie’s hair danced about the sides of her face, sliding free of the slim pins keeping the tangle of blonde curls together at the back of her head.
An owl called from somewhere overhead and the horse broke its steady pace. With one hand, Conrad tugged the reins to stop the horse from bolting. With the other, he held on tight to Katie to keep her from falling. The soft inhale his grip provoked proved as jarring to his nerves as the owl’s screech, more so when his manhood stirred at the shift of her buttocks against him. Conrad drew in a steadying breath. In the evening air hung the faint must of wet, fallen leaves mingling with the sweetness of Katie’s rose soap. Without thinking, he drew her closer against him, the heat of her more welcome than any he’d ever enjoyed from the stove deep in the hold of the ship trapped in the hard-packed ice.
She sat rigid against him, refusing to relax the way she used to whenever they’d ridden out together in search of fossils and time alone. The distance between them unnerved him. He didn’t know the extent of what had happened while he’d been gone, but he could imagine. Without Conrad to protect her, it would have been easy for Lord Helton to set the dogs of society upon a woman of Katie’s humble background. He’d seen his uncle level several such attacks on his mother and knew the vicious lengths the marquis might employ to ostracise and punish those he didn’t think worthy of bearing the Helton family name.
Conrad adjusted his feet in the stirrups. He’d promised Katie when they’d become engaged he wouldn’t allow society or his uncle to harm her. He’d failed. It was another in a mounting pile of failures and mistakes threatening to crush him like an avalanche.
He ran his fingers through his hair, the shortness of it still a shock after he’d grown it so long in the Arctic. By now Henry must have reached London and handed Conrad’s report to Second Secretary of the Admiralty, John Barrow. Conrad could only imagine what fury and damnation awaited his inability to find the Northwest Passage and bring Gorgon home. Mr Barrow had stood beside Conrad before, when Lord Helton had done all he could to prevent Conrad from receiving a command. He didn’t know if Mr Barrow would stand beside him again or viciously denounce him like he had Captain Ross after Ross had failed to explore the bay Mr Barrow believed led to the Northwest Passage. The Second Secretary had been stealthy in his attacks against Ross, penning anonymous articles in widely read magazines and whispering against him to influential members of the Admiralty. No one could ever prove it was Mr Barrow who’d been behind the attempts to discredit and disgrace Captain Ross, but he’d never been fully exonerated either. If an attack was coming, Conrad wouldn’t see it until it was too late.
The horse rounded a curve filled with trees and Heims Hall at last came into view. Conrad straightened in the saddle, indulging in the sight
