With the small bag in his hand, he stepped off the block, patting the horse’s rump as Mr Peet led it away.
‘Shall we?’ Conrad motioned to the house.
* * *
The rising moonlight glinted off the large bank of windows making up one wall of the conservatory jutting from the rear of the house. Katie didn’t want to go inside, especially with the light burning in the upstairs window. The flick of a curtain in Miss Linton’s room announced the spinster’s presence and her curiosity. Whenever Katie and her father had stayed here, she had gone to great lengths to avoid the thin, buck-toothed woman. More so after Katie and Conrad’s engagement had been announced. The woman, only a year or two older than Katie’s twenty-five, had always looked upon Katie with as little warmth as Lord Helton. However, they couldn’t stand in the mews all night and Katie accompanied Conrad up the walk and into the conservatory.
She tried not to look at the marble table in the centre as they passed through the moonlit room, her shoulders brushing the delicate fronds of the many palms filling it. It was too difficult to see the empty top of the table and not think of her father working on the strange tiger-like fossil there in happier times. Through the opposite door, they entered the dimly lit hallway and the scent of scouring soap and wood oil overwhelmed her. Surrounded by so many familiar things, it seemed as if she could reach out and take Conrad’s hand and the past year and a half would vanish. If it did, then all the optimism and faith she’d once possessed in him might return. She kept her hands at her sides, unwilling to expose herself to more disappointment and heartache. She’d spend one night here, then tomorrow she’d leave Conrad and their past behind.
The hallway opened into a tall entrance hall with a slate floor. In the moonlight coming through the window, she could see the scattering of ammonite fossils embedded in the flat stone. Then the dark imprints of curving shells caught the orange light of a candle from somewhere above them and Katie looked up to watch Miss Linton descend the stairs.
A plain house dress hung from Miss Linton’s scrawny shoulders and her lacklustre brown hair was pinned in a tight bun at the nape of her neck. Unlike the groom, there was no wide smile to lighten her long face. She fixed her eyes first on Conrad and then Katie, her scowl deepening with each step until she was at last in front of them.
‘Conrad, what are you doing here?’ It was exactly the sort of dismissive greeting Katie expected from the shrewish woman.
‘Cousin Matilda, it’s a pleasure to see you as well,’ Conrad replied with a sarcastic bow.
‘Of course, I’m glad you’ve returned safely,’ she replied as if he’d been out in the fields, not presumed dead for nearly a year. ‘It’s certainly most unexpected.’
‘Is the guest room and my room as I left them?’
‘They are, but the linens haven’t been changed or the fires lit. If I’d received some notice of your arrival instead of being startled at night, things might have been better prepared.’
‘A man doesn’t have to send word to his own house.’
Miss Linton stiffened at the reminder of her place. Frustrated in her effort to enforce some control over Heims Hall, she turned to Katie. ‘Will she be staying here?’
‘You mean Miss Vickers?’ Conrad’s voice was low and warning. ‘Yes, she will.’
The little colour in Miss Linton’s face drained out, leaving her an unappealing shade of white. ‘But, Conrad—’
‘We’ll rely on you to serve as an appropriate chaperon.’
Miss Linton jerked back her shoulders in indignation, as if Conrad had asked her to walk down the high street of nearby Cuckfield naked. ‘I don’t think it’s appropriate for a woman like me—’
‘Thank you, Matilda.’ He cut her off, turned to Katie and held out his arm. ‘Shall I escort you to your room?’
Only the desire to vex Miss Linton prodded Katie to place her hand on the firm muscle beneath the wool coat. ‘Thank you.’
Conrad guided them around his cousin and they climbed the stairs. His solid form beside her was a welcome comfort against Miss Linton’s hostile stares burning a hole in the back of Katie’s dress. If only he had come back sooner, before Lord Helton’s lies had done their damage.
The staircase curved, taking them out of sight of Miss Linton and Katie removed her hand from Conrad’s arm, reluctant to encourage any intimacy between them.
Conrad didn’t protest, but continued to escort her down the short hall illuminated by the light spilling out of Miss Linton’s open bedroom door. It filled the narrow space with a wavering amber glow and sharpened the lines of Conrad’s straight nose and strong forehead.
He stopped before the open door of a bedroom in the middle of the hallway. Thankfully, it wasn’t one of the adjoining rooms at the end, the ones she and her father had occupied when they’d stayed here to study the tiger fossil. There were enough lingering memories to torment her, she didn’t need more.
‘In the morning, after we’ve both had some rest, we’ll talk,’ Conrad stated, as if the problems of over a year could simply be surmounted with a conversation.
She took the satchel from him, careful to keep her fingers away from his. ‘There’s little to discuss.’
She moved to enter the room, but Conrad shifted between her and the door. ‘There’s everything to discuss. Whatever happened while I was gone to make you think differently of me, I’ll see it set right.’
Katie fingered the rough spot on the satchel handle where the varnish had been rubbed away during her father’s many trips to visit scientific men. They’d appreciated his ability to find fossils, but not his theories on why the strange animals no longer existed. ‘Conrad, I spent my childhood listening to my father make promises to my mother, one after another. He’d make sure she never regretted leaving her family for him, he’d spend time with her once he was done with this paper or cleaning that fossil. In the end he couldn’t keep any of them.’
‘I’m not your father.’
‘But you have his passion for work, the all-consuming kind which places itself above anyone and everyone. When you first proposed, I told you I had doubts about entering your world, making myself visible to society. You were so gallant in your promise I’d never suffer and I believed you. Then you left and everything I feared, everything you assured me wouldn’t happen did.’
A new light flickered behind Conrad. Miss Linton stood at the top of the stairs at the end of the hall, her disapproving scowl deepened by the candle she held.
He lowered his head, his face so close to hers, Katie could see the faint outline of his beard along his chiselled jaw. ‘This isn’t how it’s going to end, Katie.’
Her chest caught at the nearness of him. If things were different, if he hadn’t left, she might have risen up on her feet and touched her lips to his, fallen into his arms and known the bliss they’d once experienced together on the Downs, away from everyone and everything except each other, but things weren’t different and the time for discussion had passed.
‘Goodnight, Conrad.’ Katie slipped into the room and closed the door behind her.
* * *
Conrad frowned as the lock clicked shut.
Matilda scurried up behind him, moving so quickly the candle flame danced and nearly went out before she raised her hand to protect it. ‘Conrad, we must speak.’
‘Whatever it is, it can wait until morning.’ He made for the stairs, rolling his stiff shoulders. He needed to eat and sleep in a real bed, not endure his cousin’s company. Hopefully the groaning of the ship’s timbers and the far-off thunder of breaking ice wouldn’t haunt his dreams. Too much was already cracking up around him for him to face tomorrow exhausted.
‘It