Captain Conrad Essington kicked his horse into a canter, and as he crested the rise in the road he spied a gig beside it, the horse grazing lazily on the tall grass. Up a gentle hill, just beyond the shade of a wide ash tree, a man and woman stood together. The setting sun blazed behind them, turning them into little more than silhouettes. The woman tried to walk away, but the man grabbed her by the arm.
‘Listen to me,’ he demanded.
She twisted out of his grip. ‘No, I won’t hear it.’
‘Can I be of some assistance?’ Conrad slid off the hired horse and flicked the reins over the animal’s head.
The man let go of the woman and offered a dismissive wave. ‘I assure you, we’re fine.’
Conrad continued up the hill, not so easily dissuaded.
‘And you, my lady?’ The brown grass crunched beneath his boots, releasing the sharp aroma of warm, dry earth. Conrad pulled in a lungful of air. Even with the nip of autumn in the air, after a year and a half in the stinging cold of the Arctic, this was paradise. ‘Are you well?’
The glare of the sun behind her blotted out all but the roundness of her hips beneath a dark-green dress and the light ringlets of blonde hair framing her face.
‘No, not at all.’ The familiar melody of her voice more than the waver in her words slowed Conrad’s steps. It drew from somewhere deep inside him a happiness and comfort he hadn’t experienced since he’d stepped aboard HMS Gorgon and set sail in search of the Northwest Passage.
She started cautiously down the hill towards him, entering the shade of the tree. The shadow freed her from the overpowering sun and brought her cheeks and fine nose into focus. Her brilliant blue eyes stopped Conrad and he stood in awe as she approached.
‘Katie?’ In the dark hours of the long winter aboard HMS Gorgon, when the sun had lain hidden beneath the horizon, months away from shining on him and his crew, he’d dreamed of this moment, of seeing her again. It was all he’d thought about during the long walk across the ice and snow, and in the ship coming home. It was the one thought which had guided him since disembarking in Portsmouth this morning. He’d sent his lieutenant, Henry Sefton, ahead to London with Conrad’s official report so Conrad could set off in search of her. He hadn’t expected to stumble upon her on the London road, or for her to be more beautiful than he remembered.
‘Conrad?’ Uncertainty as much as the fading daylight danced in her eyes, making them glow like the low polar sun on the ice. ‘Is it really you?’
‘It is.’ He raised his hand to touch her cheek, then hesitated, afraid if he caressed her she might disappear like one of the many mirages he’d seen hovering above the Arctic sea. Returning to England and Katie had seemed like an impossible dream when he’d imagined it from the cold hold of a ship buried beneath darkness and ice. Even a mile back, when the tang of chalk from the Downs had at last replaced the mouldy stench of bilge water clinging to him, his weary mind still couldn’t believe his trials were over.
Now, with the curve of Katie’s small chin so close to his palm, her thick eyelashes fluttering with each disbelieving blink, the grip of the nightmare began at last to ease.
He was home.
Conrad brushed her face with his fingertips and the tender warmth of her skin made him shiver for the first time in more than a year from something other than cold. Despite the shadows beneath her eyes, the faint blush spreading under the smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose could hold his gaze for hours. He shifted closer, craving the sweet taste of her lips parted with surprise. He’d been too long without her and the comfort of her embrace.
Conrad leaned down, ready to claim her mouth, but Katie didn’t rise to meet him. His hand stiffened against her cheek while he waited for the adoring woman he’d left over a year and half ago to embrace him, but she didn’t. In her eyes wasn’t the love she’d seen him off with in Greenwich, nor was it simply disbelief. It was a lack of faith, the same blistering kind he’d seen in Aaron’s eyes before he’d walked out into the snow to die. Conrad’s stomach clenched as hard as it had the night he and Henry had watched the sea ice harden around Gorgon.
‘Miss Vickers, do you know this man?’ the gentleman asked, his intrusion as much a shock as the silent gorge opening between Katie and Conrad.
‘I do.’ Katie stepped back out of Conrad’s grasp, her blush deepening with something Conrad sensed had nothing to do with the strength of the afternoon sun. ‘Captain Essington, allow me to introduce Mr Prevett.’
Conrad straightened and dropped his hand. His fingers, stiff after months of near frostbite, tightened into a fist at his side. He stared at Katie, as unsure of his position now as when Gorgon had sailed north beyond the known regions of the map. He searched Katie’s face for some silent explanation, reluctant to hear the one he expected her to provide.
‘Captain Essington is my intended,’ Katie clarified.
Conrad’s hand eased. Whatever had shifted between them, at least this still remained.
Mr Prevett’s gaze jerked back and forth between Conrad and Katie before an awkward smile broke across his thin lips. ‘Captain Essington? Why, I can’t believe it, all of England thought you were dead.’
‘So did I, more than once.’ Conrad laced his fingers behind his back as though on deck and examined the man as he would an unruly junior officer. ‘Tell me, Mr Prevett, what are you doing out here, alone with Miss Vickers? Have you no care for her reputation?’
‘Her reputation?’ Mr Prevett snorted before a fierce glare from Conrad sobered him. ‘We were searching for fossils. I’ve had a great deal of luck finding them in this vicinity.’
Mr Prevett, who could be no more than thirty, appeared too finely turned out for a man hunting only bones. ‘It seemed as though you were having a more heated discussion than one about fossils.’
‘We were having a disagreement regarding a certain line of research he wished me to pursue,’ Katie hurriedly explained. ‘I told him he should abandon it, as I have my own ideas about how best to proceed with my research.’
‘Speaking of which, I must be getting home. My wife is expecting me.’ Mr Prevett shuffled past Conrad, pausing beside him, but not too close. ‘Congratulations on your return, Captain Essington. I look forward to reading your papers when you publish them.’
‘I’ll be sure to send you a copy.’ Conrad replied, the demands of publishing the details of his expedition paling beneath the desire to be alone with Katie.
Mr Prevett hurried away down the rise and soon the grinding of wheels over dirt joined the fading plod of the horse as it drew the gig out of sight.
Katie didn’t watch Mr Prevett leave, but remained focused on Conrad, sliding her opal ring on and off her finger, the movement jerky and fumbling.
‘Did you really forget me so soon?’ Conrad accused, suspicion hard in his voice.
‘So soon?’ Katie shoved the ring back on her finger. ‘You promised me you’d only be gone for six months, for as long as the Arctic summer lasted, but it’s been over a year since you were supposed to return. I thought you were dead, everyone did. How dare you come back now and accuse me of anything?’
Conrad trimmed his suspicions like a sail in a storm. A calm head would win the day, just as it had seen him and his men through the winter. ‘I only want to know what was happening between the two of you.’
‘What you saw was the result of your having been gone, of you chasing your ambitions and leaving the rest of us to deal with the consequences.’
* * *
Katie rushed past Conrad and down the hill, as livid as the day his uncle, the Marquis of Helton, had turned from ruining Katie’s reputation to destroying her father’s. For the better part of the last year, she’d borne the malicious whispers