I was more exhausted than I had been on the previous trip, but I was wakeful, too conscious of the fact that every passing mile, every passing minute, brought me nearer to Stoker. I had not dared to think about what might befall him in my absence, but I was entirely certain Isabel MacGregor would not be pleased to find one of her birds had flown the coop.
I sat forwards on my seat, urging the train faster, while Harry sat opposite this time, watching me with an inscrutable expression on his face.
“What?” I demanded.
He shook his head. “I was merely wondering if I should be jealous. I don’t know that you would ever have cared so much if you thought I was in peril.” He attempted lightness, but there was a lash of bitterness in his tone.
“I did think you were in peril,” I reminded him.
“How did you . . . Never mind,” he said. “I do not think I want to know. No answer could possibly make me feel better. If you were destroyed by losing me, then I am the greatest monster imaginable. And if you were not, then I am the unworthiest.”
“You are determined to think poorly of yourself.”
His smile was mocking. “I have had years of practice, my dear. Believe me when I tell you, no matter what you think of me, my own opinion is always worse.”
“That is a cold comfort, Harry. Besides, I mourned you.”
“The more fool you, Veronica,” he said lightly.
“I did,” I insisted. “I might have regretted our marriage. I might have misjudged the man you were, but I never hated you. I never believed you beyond redemption.”
“Then why were you so content to let me leave?” he challenged.
“Because it was not my place to redeem you. The only person who can do that is you.”
He shook his head slowly, his eyes glittering. “No, my darling girl. Even I am not capable of that.”
“Of course you are!” I rolled my eyes in exasperation. “It takes courage to live a good life, Harry, but it also takes courage to live like a blackguard. Both require difficult choices. Both require hardship and endurance and patience. There is, in the end, little difference between the good and the bad. Only one of these lives requires you to look over your shoulder all the while and the other one makes it a little easier to sleep at night.”
He gave a short laugh. “God, I cannot imagine what it would be like to live without that constant worry. I embarked upon this life for security, you know.”
“No, I didn’t,” I reminded him. “You never told me much about your family, and I am not even certain if what you did tell me was the truth.”
“I have no idea which story I spun you,” he admitted.
“Then perhaps the truth this time?” I suggested.
He shrugged. “Why not?” He sighed. “If you want a story of great tragedy and pathos, I do not have one. I was born to a gentry family in Norfolk. On the coast. I grew up with the smell of the sea in my nose and I never lost the love for it. My mother died when I was a lad and my father was busy, a common enough story. My brothers were at school so I was left in the care of my grandmother. A formidable old dame,” he added with a fond smile.
“Like Lady Hathaway, you said,” I ventured.
“Very much. Call me a sentimentalist, but staying at Hathaway Hall, even for a short while, made me feel like a boy again. Someone to fuss over you and worry if you’ve eaten your vegetables or wrapped up warmly enough for your walk on the moor. It was nice.”
“What happened to your grandmother?” I asked.
“Dead,” was the succinct reply. “I was fourteen. I’d been sickly as a child, so my grandmother indulged me, kept me at home with her. I’d never been to school before. When she died and Father sent me away, it was like being transported to a penal colony.”
I choked a laugh.
“I am serious,” he protested. “Have you ever met boys of that age? Absolute savages, every one of them. It was vile. I made up my mind I wasn’t going to stay, so I left. I walked home—quite thirty miles. I thought Father would be glad to see me, or at least give me a little credit for my initiative and pluck. Instead, he packed me off to a wretched boys’ school in Ireland. And the only thing worse than adolescent boys are nuns,” he added with a shudder. “They were determined to beat the devil out of me, and they damn near succeeded. But I bided my time until Father sent me to London to read law, the dullest of all the occupations. He handed me my allowance for the quarter as well as money for my lodgings and expenses, and it was the most money I had ever seen in my life. It was enough for three months’ training to be a lawyer, or one great, magnificent gamble. I wanted to see the world, so that is what I did. I might have signed on as a deckhand, working the ships that haul freight, but it seemed like devilishly hard work. And terrible for the complexion,” he added with a grin. “So I used Father’s money and booked first-class passage on a ship bound for New York. And it was on that voyage that I discovered my true talent.”
“Cheating at cards?” I guessed.
He flapped a hand. “Anyone can do that. It is a skill, not a gift. No, my gift is an intuitive one. It is the ability to see what people want to believe and giving it to them.”
I stared at him across the narrow compartment and his gaze was unwavering. “That is indeed your talent,” I agreed.
“I ought never have used it against you, but believe me, Veronica, I was fooling myself far more than I was deceiving you.”
“How?”
“I believed, I hoped, I could be satisfied with normality. I wanted to be . . . content. It seemed a reasonable thing to want, but it has always eluded me.”
“Because your contentment so often comes at the expense of others,” I pointed out.
His mocking smile returned. “You see? I am right to think poorly of myself. But sometimes, occasionally, I think about that hope of normality, and I dream of it when all other dreams are lost to me.”
“What does it look like, this dream of normality?” I asked gently.
“A house, not a large one. Just a house, solid and plain. But facing the sea.”
“Which sea?”
“It does not matter. The sea is the sea wherever you go. I want only to sit and watch the wind on the waves and feel small for a while. I want to feel my own insignificance.”
“Then why do you not do that?” I pressed. “Surely you have possessed sufficient resources?”
“It has never been the right time,” he said. There was no evasion in his glance, but it would have meant nothing even if there had been. Harry was skilled enough in deception that he could squarely meet one’s gaze with a lie on his lips. “I have some money put aside. I have spent the last two years trying to retrieve my nest egg, such as it is. But one thing after another has interfered, and so I am still here, adrift as you see me.” He grinned suddenly. “Do not look so sad, sweet Veronica. Someday very soon, I will have my little nest egg once more in my grasp. And when I do, I shall be master of my own fate at last.”