Eyes burning from the thick smoke released in the explosion, Charlotte hadn’t been able to get to her feet. As people had tripped over her in the ensuing panic, her dress had been torn and she’d sustained several bruises, but that was nothing. She was alive when so many people were not.

  And Alec too. The relief she’d felt as he’d appeared through the panicked crowd was indescribable. And he’d felt the same, taking her into his arms and holding her against him. But after he’d escorted them off the ship, he hadn’t even spared her a glance before he’d run for his doctor’s bag. A frisson of unease had skittered down her back as she’d watched him go.

  Which was absurd. He was under duress, his skills indispensable during such need. Charlotte couldn’t even imagine the horrors Alec had seen. So many wounded. So many dead. It pained her to think of all he’d endured.

  She knelt beside him now, putting down the basket she carried, placing a tentative hand on his shoulder. “Alec?”

  He jerked up, recoiling from her touch. His eyes were bloodshot.

  “You must be hungry,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “You should eat.” She opened the basket, pulling out a thick slice of bread and an apple.

  “I don’t need to eat.”

  “Do you want—”

  “No.” His voice was rough. “Charlotte, I’m sorry. But I can’t.”

  Her forehead wrinkled. “You can’t what?” He looked ill. She was tempted to set a hand to his brow to see if he was feverish.

  “I can’t . . . do this. Do us.”

  The hopelessness in his voice knifed through her. He was usually stoic and calm under duress. To see him so rattled unnerved her. His hands were shaking, his expression bleak. Best not to talk now, when he was suffering from exhaustion and sights so horrific, they would likely remain with him for years. “Shh. There’s no reason to discuss it now.”

  “I’m sorry for the hurt I’ve caused you, but there’s nothing more to discuss.”

  “Alec, help me understand—”

  “You want to understand?” Bitterness tinged his words. “Today, as I worked, everything became clear. I’m a doctor. And I’ve lived my entire life in Pittsburgh. You are a future duchess.” His jaw was tense, not an ounce of give in his expression. “For a time, I thought perhaps . . . but I was wrong. I belong here.”

  There was an awful finality in his words. “What about last night, Alec? You said—you said you loved me.”

  “I know what I said. And I meant it. I do care for you. And I almost let myself get carried away in those feelings. But . . . I don’t—”

  “You don’t love me enough,” she finished for him. She wanted to shout, to cry.

  His mouth was a thin line. “I can’t leave all of this, all that I am. Not even for you.”

  “You can’t give up on us, Alec. You can’t. I won’t let you.” A tear leaked out of her eye, and she batted it away. “I love you.”

  “You’ll go back to Scotland,” he said, voice hoarse, “and find someone worthy of loving you. Because that man is not me.” His words were so cold and unfeeling, they sent a chill through her.

  “We can find a way through this.” She was desperate for even a scrap of hope. “Perhaps if I stayed—”

  Alec gave a vicious shake of his head.

  “Please,” she whispered, her eyes burning with unshed tears. “Won’t you fight for us?”

  “Forgive me,” he returned, his gaze straight ahead. He wouldn’t even look at her.

  Charlotte felt as if her heart were made of paper being torn into a hundred pieces. The ripped-up pieces were messy and jagged, and as she sat there, she grew numb, the pieces scattering in the wind and floating away.

  She tried to stand. Her limbs were awkward and clumsy, and she tripped on the ripped hem of her dress, the grass cold beneath her palms as she threw out her hands to catch herself.

  Alec didn’t try to help her, and when she rose, he didn’t try to stop her.

  The only thing that kept her moving, rather than curling into a ball of despair, was a sense of disbelief. Nothing that had happened today felt real. The explosion. The chaos and pandemonium. And, least of all, Alec’s goodbye. He couldn’t be letting her go.

  Not when the declaration of his love still echoed in her heart.

  He was tired and in pain. He needed some time alone, some rest. Then, perhaps, he would be able to see clearly. Then he’d realize that, despite what it might cost them both, they’d found something worth holding on to.

  * * *

  Alec sat with his back to the door, where he’d collapsed the moment he’d stepped inside his cabin. He was still trying to calm his thundering heart and pry himself free from the jangle of nerves that had him by the throat. He didn’t feel hunger or thirst. He wasn’t thinking about the aftermath of the explosion—the thick smoke, the pleas of the wounded, or the smell of burning flesh.

  He was thinking of Charlotte.

  Remembering the all-consuming fear that had coursed through him when he’d thought something might have happened to her. The feeling that he’d been underwater, his limbs weighted and slow, as he’d tried to reach her.

  It didn’t matter that he’d found her unharmed. Didn’t matter that she was safe.

  Because of her, Alec’s heart was anything but safe.

  He hadn’t loved Nellie, yet her death had sent him into three years of wretched despair.

  But Charlotte, whom he loved with a terrifying fierceness . . .

  Losing her would destroy him.

  Staring that down this morning had been enough to metaphorically send him running out the back door. To end things with Charlotte even as it broke him in two.

  He’d told her it was because he couldn’t bear to leave his life here—his doctoring, his patients, his home. That was a lie. For her, he’d been willing to give it all up.

  But this morning had brought an all too painful clarity.

  She couldn’t be his.

  Not now. Not in the future.

  Like the ringing strike of an anvil, this morning had made that clear. In opening himself up to love, he had opened himself up to loss.

  And he couldn’t do it.

  It was one thing to come to terms with Nellie’s death. It was quite another to hurl oneself back into a lifelong relationship where the only question to be determined about the loss of one’s companion was when.

  All day long while he’d treated burns, cleaned and sutured and bandaged wounds, watched patients die, he’d been reliving the darkest truth of Nellie’s death. The part he’d never told anyone.

  How Nellie had asked him, right after the cholera cases had begun mounting, if she could go back to Philadelphia for a visit. She hadn’t liked being alone when he was gone for long periods of time, out seeing patient after patient. He’d put her off. Told her they’d discuss it in a few days.

  In a few days, she’d been dead. He should have let her go and he hadn’t.

  Now he was doing the next best thing . . . letting Charlotte go.

  Alec hadn’t even been able to look at Charlotte this afternoon, for fear he’d fall into her arms and let her to soothe away his deepest fears and darkest memories. He couldn’t allow that. Not when he was a hair’s breadth away from crumbling.

  Not when what he truly needed was distance. Distance from the woman who had the power to break him all over again.

  How much easier it had been when he’d been a dispassionate observer of the theater of life, instead of an onstage actor.

  Hours passed. His legs lost feeling. But the thought of moving, of living without her was too much. Exhaustion had welded him to the floor.

  If it weren’t for Jambe de Bois’s indignant grunts and nudges, Alec might not have moved the whole night. But at the pig’s blasted insistence, he got to his feet, his limbs as heavy as sacks of grain. Scraping together what little food he could find, he let the pig eat from his hand while he sat at the table and stared at the wall, wondering what one of his medical texts would say about how to mend a Charlotte-sized hole in his heart.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  With everything in her, Charlotte wanted to protest.

  She wanted to run to Alec’s cabin and pound on the door. She wanted to rail against the unfairness of it all. She wanted to yell and scream at him for breaking her heart. She’d go hoarse if only it would convince him to change his mind. To change his heart.

  But something held her back.

  Deep down she knew his heart wasn’t hers for the changing.

  No matter how badly she wanted a future with Alec or how badly she wanted him to choose her, that choice belonged to him.

  One day passed into two.

  She prayed. With no other recourse, she poured out her soul, pleading for the wounded in the steamboat explosion, for the families who had lost loved ones. She prayed for Father, Mother, and Iseabel, back in Scotland. She prayed for Alec.

  And she prayed over the shattered pieces of her heart.

  She thought she’d known heartache in London, but it was nothing compared to the endless void that stretched before her, with no hope, no promise of relief.

  Her heart felt empty, the joyous weeks with Alec that had once filled its chambers long gone, a fleeting and distant memory. Like a hollow seashell on the beach, with only the echo of the ocean inside it.

  If she couldn’t have Alec, she wanted home. She longed for it. But since it was still a full week before they’d leave for Scotland, Charlotte picked up her father’s journal.

  She recalled what Harriet had said a few weeks before. “You might read things in your father’s journal that surprise you.” The warning didn’t frighten her; if anything, she welcomed pain. Anything to distract her from this seemingly eternal emptiness.

  When she opened to where she’d left off, she found the next page loose, it’s edges jagged. And there were fold marks creasing it as well, making her think it had been taken out and then tucked back in.

  September 16, 1812

  Today Katie and I stood in the kirk and spoke vows together. We are wed.

  There are parts I’d like to forget. Katie’s sadness at not having her grandfather with her. My overbearing father and the way he insulted the quaich Blair and Alene gifted us.

  But there is much more I want to remember. Dear neighbors and friends wishing us joy. Olivia giving Katie a bouquet. The wedding scramble. And the night we spent together.

  Katie is an enthralling mix of sweetness and spice. She brandished her hairbrush at me like a weapon but willingly let me take her in my arms, allowing my kisses and offering her own. I write these words with her sleeping beside me, and I am undone.

  I believe there is hope for a joyous future.

  Tears pricked Charlotte’s eyes at the beauty of her father’s words, the beginning of a love story that spanned decades. Her heart ached for the same. It ached with the loss of something she’d thought was hers.

  The next entry was dated roughly a month after her parents’ wedding.

  October 17, 1812

  When I arrived in Edinburgh today, I inquired about the first outgoing ship. The Warwick departs tomorrow morning, bound for Barbados. I booked my passage without a second thought. As long as I can be anywhere but Scotland, I will be content.

  Charlotte examined the dates carefully. There must be some mistake. No mention of her mother. And Father loved Scotland—why would he be so anxious to leave? There were no further explanations. The next entry made mention of Father’s terrible seasickness. She examined the binding, wondering if some other pages had been lost, but it didn’t appear so.

  Heart beginning to pound, she kept reading, though some of the writing was so sloppy it became difficult to decipher. There’d been a terrible storm a few weeks into his journey, making her father introspective.

  November 1, 1812

  . . . somehow, someway, we have made it through thus far. Only God knows if our good fortune will continue.

  It is moments like these that force a man to search his soul. If I’d done something different, would I be here now? Was there no other way? And yet every time I question, I see the strings my father held, bending me to his will like a puppet on a string.

  Words don’t feel adequate to describe the hatred that has anchored itself in my heart for my sire. Father feels too intimate, too cherished a word to use. If I believed it would do any good, I would have the ship’s surgeon bleed me and once and for all rid myself of any of his blood that runs in my veins.

  If I’d stayed, I would have forever been that puppet, bending this way and that. So I cut the strings. Cut every attachment to him—my mother, my uncle and his family, Scotland. My wife.

  Everything.

  That is what I had to give up in order to break free of his control. The cost was high, but I cannot regret it, for I am finally my own man. And yet I know I am not. It is not merely my blood that has been tainted by my sire but my very soul. It has become a twisted, crippled thing, incapable of love, and I doubt there is anyone capable of making it whole.

  I care for my mother. I care for my uncle and his family. I worry over Katie’s welfare. But love? No. The only love I have known is a weapon wielded by my father—to control and manipulate. And I’ll never allow it to hold such power over me again.

  Charlotte was fully crying now, tears coursing down her cheeks, as the truth became plain. Her father had left her mother. Left and not looked back because of a rift with Grandfather, his pain so great, he’d wounded everyone around him.

  She could feel the broad gulf of her mother’s hurt, as wide and deep as her own.

  Her stomach churned. She wanted to keep reading and find out she’d been wrong. That none of it was true. She knew how the story ended, but she could hardly fathom this.

  November 3, 1812

  I dreamt of Katie again last night. Sometimes, in moments of weakness, I allow myself to consider what might have been . . . what would have happened had I met her in a London ballroom. I have no doubt I would have wanted an introduction, and once I had it, I’d have asked for her supper set. And the very next day I’d have sent a bouquet of flowers to be delivered, or maybe I’d have taken them myself.

  If we’d not been forced to wed under the weightiness of my father’s machinations, might she have been the wife in my hazy imaginings—might we have created that happy family that grows more and more out of reach every day?

  Charlotte couldn’t help but look at the dates. They told her what she’d already suspected. That her mother had been pregnant when her father had left. And he hadn’t known.

  He hadn’t known about Charlotte.

  She sobbed then. At what her father had walked away from. At the love her mother had been denied. At the wretched look in Alec’s eyes that had told her he was giving up on him and her.

  Even with a headache born of her tears, her throat sore, Charlotte continued reading. Late into the night she was still turning pages, trying to understand the man her father had been and the choice he had made.

  She skimmed through entries that were full of his work. Ships and cargo. His business partner. Details of a hurricane. His faithful servants, Abisai and Carina. And interspersed through it all, brief mentions of Katie—her mother. He’d sent her letters, ones she’d never responded to. He’d given her a monthly allowance, making sure she was taken care of financially. But he’d stayed in Barbados.

  Charlotte’s eyes burned, her lids so heavy that each time she blinked it took tremendous effort to lift them back up. But she needed to know how and when and why her father had returned to his family.

  It wasn’t until December of 1816, when he’d received word of Grandfather’s apoplexy, that her father had sailed back to England in search of her mother, determined to take his place as the acting Duke of Edinbane.

  Four and a half years that her mother had been alone.

  And nearly four years that Charlotte had been without a father.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  It was late when Alec trudged up the hill to his cabin, wanting nothing more than his bed. It had been a long day, though not so long as the two before it. The worst of the burn victims had reached a degree of stability, and though they needed to be watched constantly for signs of infection, he’d handed the bulk of the responsibility over to another doctor, a man recently arrived from Virginia who was looking to start up a practice here. The timing was providential.

  Tonight Alec would sleep. If nothing else, sleeping would be a reprieve from thinking of Charlotte.

  But when his cabin came into view under the light of the full moon, he was surprised to find Martin sitting on the steps. The aging man offered a subtle smile. “I hoped to have a word.”

  Alec stiffened. “How long have you been waiting?”

  “Half an hour or so.”

  Alec sank down beside Martin, his back against the railing. He took in a deep breath, allowing the cool night air to wash away the fatigue of the day.

  “You’re exhausted. No doubt you’ve worked long hours, so I’ll get right to the point.” He turned to face Alec, the silver of his hair almost white in the moonlight. “Charlotte is hurting, son.” Martin paused, meeting Alec’s eyes. “And I don’t think I’m wrong in assuming you are as well.”

  Alec had been using every ounce of his strength not to think of Charlotte. To rebuild the wall that had kept him safe until she’d walked into his life. But with a single sentence, Martin had annihilated the entirety of his defenses.

  Without Charlotte there was a huge, gaping emptiness inside him. He’d been lonely before; he was no stranger to a single, solitary existence.

  So why did this feel so different?