He moved a little closer to her, his arm an inch from her shoulder. “Let’s meet without an audience.”
Silence.
He inhaled sharply. “Allow me to make right whatever I have done to cause you such offense.”
She shook her head, kept shaking it. “You caused no offense.”
Wester Ross was behind him. People were walking toward them. Eyes everywhere. She was right next to him and was as inaccessible as if behind a wall. Their walk was ending, too—the clock tower of Christ Church became visible above the roofs of the houses lining Cornmarket Street.
“Talk to me anyway,” he said through smiling lips. “I understand walks are an occasion for conversation.”
“I saw Mrs. Weldon on Monday,” she said after a pause, an unexpected spark of her usual passion in her voice. She hadn’t suddenly turned unfeeling toward the world as a whole, only toward him.
“You came back to London?” he asked.
“No.” She hesitated. “I stayed on a little longer than planned, after all.”
This took him unawares. “I see.”
It meant she had effectively thrown him out of her town house under false pretenses. Oh, he had caused her offense. Perhaps it wasn’t something he had done, but rather something he had failed to do, which could be just as injurious to a woman’s feelings. Whenever he had made a foray toward a proposal, she had frozen up and he had refrained from pushing the matter. Had she expected him to do it with more force after all, to claim her the old and tested way by going to her father first, or better yet, with an abduction? He wanted to roar his frustration down the busy street.
“How is good old Mrs. Weldon?” he asked idly.
“Her story is bizarre, Elias.”
Damn if hearing her say his name didn’t ease his displeasure despite himself.
“What is her story,” he asked.
“It turned out that Captain Weldon had a mistress,” Catriona began. “A few years ago, he decided he wanted to live with the woman, but without the scandal of a divorce. So he tried to have Mrs. Weldon committed to an asylum. He sent two physicians to their home, where they posed as people interested in spiritualism. She engaged with them, suspecting no harm, only for them to declare her insane on the spot. They tried to physically drag her from the house to a carriage, can you believe it?”
He was inclined to believe all sorts of insanity at this point.
“Her butler and her housekeeper intervened,” she continued. “It’s the only reason she’s still free. She’s lived in fear ever since, that Captain Weldon could try it again. He attempted it several more times, apparently. It’s why she’s trying to glean his intentions through séances.”
“He’s a dog, not a man,” he said coolly. “He is no husband.”
“Plenty of men are like this, and they are just regular men,” came her soft voice.
Did she think he was one of them?
“She wanted to sue him, over the attack on her person,” she said and scoffed. “Unfortunately, as per the Married Women’s Property Act, a wife can’t take such legal action without her husband’s explicit consent. Captain Weldon, of course, declined to be brought to justice. However”—and now she turned to him, her eyes brightening—“she can sue for the writ for restitution. And she will do it.”
“Anjad? Really?”
She nodded, a smile struggling through as if despite herself, and an echo of their intimacy whispered between them.
“She said she will do it,” she said, softer now. “It will take months to see a result, but we have a chance now.”
He was proud of her, the clever idea and her tenacity, but less than a week ago, they would have celebrated together. “Meet me,” he repeated. “There must be a place where we can see each other.”
“I’m going to London tomorrow,” she replied, back to looking vaguely in pain.
“Again?”
“The final debate on the MWPA bill is on Tuesday. I’m staying with the Blackstones,” she added, as if she had known that he’d go to London, too, to catch her alone.
He didn’t ask when she would be back. In the end, it was her prerogative to abandon an ill-advised liaison without an explanation. If that made him feel crazy, then he had himself to blame for taking her to bed without any commitment. One could not force affection from a woman. He couldn’t ask her to keep breaking all the rules with him, either; the world had no pity and a man’s devotion wasn’t enough to compensate a woman for her fall from grace. This was what he had told himself during the year after Nayla, anyway, whenever the infuriating thought had reared its head that he should have just thrown the girl over his shoulder and walked out onto a boat with her. He would speak to Catriona again when she returned from London. Perhaps their backward laws would be changed on Tuesday. Perhaps that would work a change on her.