‘Was that your idea?’
‘One of them.’
‘And not too many more years later you are one of the wealthiest men in America. This deal with Josiah, is that going to allow you to corner another new market?’
‘I wouldn’t be doing it otherwise,’ Virgil said with a grin.
‘But you have other businesses than—what do you call it, stoneware?’
‘I sure do. I have real estate—that’s property, to you English. Homes to rent to the freed men coming north that are fit for human habitation. Rooming houses that aren’t flea pits. I have some interest in retail—shops to sell what we make at the factories. And some other investments too. As I said, I have a head for business.’
‘It must be a very ruthless one, to have achieved so much in such a relatively short time, with the odds stacked against you to boot. Your ambition knows no bounds. Tell me, do you still exist on two or three hours’ sleep a night?’
‘I prefer not to waste time sleeping if there’s something better I can be doing.’
Kate pursed her lips, her brows drawing together in a deep frown. ‘But why? Why not enjoy your success? Forgive me, but you sound almost like a man obsessed. What more can you possibly want? Aren’t you wealthy enough?’
‘I don’t care about being rich.’
Alerted by the change in his tone, Kate glanced sideways. The light had gone from his eyes. What had she said? ‘You’re so used to working twenty hours a day that you can’t stop, is that it?’ she ventured, trying to make a joke of it.
‘I’m not interested in money, Lady Kate. I’m interested in what money can buy.’
He had shifted in his seat again, to look straight ahead. His expression seemed to have hardened.
Kate’s brow cleared. ‘Oh, you mean schools? Your model village?’
He meant reparation, but it was the same thing. ‘Power,’ Virgil said. ‘The power to change.’
Kate nodded. ‘Yes. If I felt I could have that, I think I’d manage on two or three hours’ sleep a night too. Do you ever wish you could go back? To the plantation, I mean, to show them what you have become.’
He realised, from the casual way she slipped the question in, that this was the subject which interested her most. ‘No.’ It was baldly stated, making it clear, Virgil trusted, that neither did he ever discuss it. He could sense her eyeing him, calculating whether to press him or not.
‘I’m surprised,’ she said cautiously. ‘Were I in your position, I think I’d want to rub their noses in it a bit.’
‘There’s other ways of payback.’ This time, Virgil was relieved to see that she recognised the note of finality in his voice. He never talked about that part of his past, never consciously thought about it, for to do so would be to admit the tide of guilt he had spent the past eleven years holding back. It was one thing to talk around his history, quite another to paint its picture and admit to the pain which he had worked so hard to ignore. Yet there could be no denying that her choice of silence made him contrarily wish she had questioned him more.
The miles wore on. At the border between Staffordshire and Derbyshire they stopped at a village tavern, taking bread and the crumbling white local cheese on a bench outside. It was chilly, but there was no private parlour, and neither Kate nor Virgil wished to endure the curious eyes of the locals in the tap room who had greeted their appearance with a stunned silence.
As they continued on into Derbyshire the scenery changed. The land became softly undulating, the higher, rolling hills of the Peaks casting shadows over the valleys through which they drove. It seemed wetter and greener here. The limestone villages huddled into the creases and folds of the hills, or stretched out along the banks of the fast-flowing rivers such as the Dove, which they followed for some time, where the water mills turned.
It was beautiful, though incredibly isolated, each hamlet seeming to exist in its own world, unconnected and self-contained, Virgil thought. ‘Why aren’t you married, Lady Kate?’
The question startled her, for her hands jerked on the reins, pulling the horse to a walk. ‘Why do you ask?’
Why? He hadn’t realised, but now he thought about it he saw that her remarks over dinner last night had been niggling at him. He could not reconcile what she’d said of herself with the little he knew of her. ‘You said you were a social pariah, though I saw no evidence of it.’
‘Josiah’s guests are my friends but they are not what my father would consider high society. Were you to see me in that milieu you would have evidence aplenty.’
The horse took advantage of her lapse in attention to stop and crop at the grass verge. Virgil took the reins and looped them round the brake. ‘Why? I know I joked about you being a revolutionary, but …’
‘Oh, it is naught to do with that. I have always been outspoken, but the daughter of the influential Duke of Rothermere, you understand, is given rather more latitude than, say, a mere Miss Montague.’ Her voice dripped sarcasm. She threw her head back and glared at him, her eyes dark and bleak, the colour of a winter sea. ‘The fact is, I am a jilt.’
Virgil searched her face for some sign that she was joking, but could find no trace in her stern expression. ‘That’s it? You changed your mind about getting married?’
‘A mere two weeks before the ceremony, and the engagement was of very long standing. I had known Anthony all my life. I did not quite leave him at the altar, but I may as well have, according to my aunt.’
The husky tones of her voice were clipped. There was hurt buried deep there. Had she loved this Anthony? Virgil didn’t like to think so. ‘What made you change your mind so late in the day?’
‘We didn’t suit.’
‘But …’
‘I know what you’re going to say, if I knew him so well why did it take me so long to change my mind? I knew him as a friend of the family. I thought we would suit, and when I tried to think of him as a husband I found I could not.’
The anger in her voice was raw, fresh. ‘How long ago did this happen?’ Virgil asked.
‘Five years.’
‘Did you love him?’ He should not have asked such a deeply personal question. He could not understand why he had done so, for he was usually at pains to keep any conversation, especially with a woman, in neutral channels. But he knew all about the pain of loss.
He covered her tightly clasped hands with one of his own, but Kate shook him off. ‘Don’t feel sorry for me, there is no need. I am not wearing the willow for Lord Anthony Featherstone.’
Rebuffed and baffled, Virgil said nothing. All his instincts told him to drop the subject, which was obviously extremely sensitive and extremely painful, but there was something in her voice, in the way she had closed herself off, that he recognised and could not ignore. She was hurt and determined not to show it. He gently unfolded her fingers and took one of her hands between his. ‘Then tell me,’ he said. ‘What happened?’
She hesitated. He could see the words of refusal forming, but for some reason she swallowed them. ‘Do you really want to know?’
When he nodded, she took a deep breath. ‘Anthony was—is—the son of one of my father’s close friends. His family has a bloodline which can be traced back to the Norman Conquest, according