Gilt by Katherine Longshore Read Free Book Online Page B

self-assurance in his anatomy to his swaggering air as a self-proclaimed pirate. But there in the garden he looked like a lost little boy, crying for his mother.
    “Why do you think I’m wandering the gardens?” she admonished. “I asked you to meet me, remember?”
    Francis looked at me. I shifted from one foot to the other. I had spent several nights in bed with the two of them, but this was by far more uncomfortable.
    “Don’t look at Kitty,” Cat snapped. “She’s no use in this matter.”
    Francis turned his eyes back to her. I wanted to sink into the mud.
    “What about—?” Francis started to ask, but Cat cut him off.
    “I’m going to court and there’s an end to it.”
    She thrust out a hip and laid a hand upon it, the gesture of someone impatiently giving the appearance of waiting. She raised an eyebrow.
    Francis glanced at me again, his misery contagious. He licked his lips.
    “But you are my wife,” he whispered.
    A shock went through me, but before I could say anything, Cat slapped Francis with the quickness and ferocity of a striking snake. Francis flinched.
    “Don’t you dare say that to me again, Francis Dereham!”Cat hissed. “I never want those words to pass your lips. Ever. To anyone. Do you understand me?”
    Francis remained silent.
    “We were not married in a church,” Cat continued. “There were no witnesses. We never signed a contract.
We are not married
.”
    “In my eyes we are,” Francis said. “I love you. I have known you as a man knows his wife. If you leave me, I will go to sea to find my fortune, and when I come back, I will be able to grant you anything your heart desires.”
    “You can do what you like,” Cat said. “But I am going to court. And I will not wait for you.”
    Shadows fell across Francis’s face. I had always thought him a bit of a peacock, but he looked broken in the fading light. Cat could be hard and pitiless with her enemies, but I was shocked to see her treat someone she loved with such flinty disregard.
    Francis reached for his belt and brought up a small velvet bag.
    “Here,” he said, handing it to Cat, “take this.”
    She peered inside, then back at him, her mouth open.
    “There must be a hundred pounds in here,” she whispered. “Where did you get this?”
    “I’ve been saving it. For the day you and I might live together.” His voice broke. “I give it to you for safe keeping.”
    “No, Francis,” Cat said, her voice a warning.
    “I will not ask for anything from you,” he said. “I . . . I release you. If I do not return, the money is yours. If you are . . . taken when I come back, this money is all I will ask for.”
    It was perhaps the most honorable statement I’d ever heard him utter. Cat narrowed her eyes, obviously thinking the same thing and not trusting it.
    “Fine,” she said, and pocketed the velvet bag. It sounded a muffled clink.
    “Will you leave me with a kiss?” Francis asked.
    “No,” Cat said, but held out her hand. He seized it with both of his, as if he would take it with him.
    “Come, Kitty”—Cat drew away from his grasp—“or we will be late.”
    She walked back to the house, her head up and spine straight. She banged through the great oak door and disappeared into the gloom of the entrance hall. Only I looked back to see Francis watching her.
    Cat started talking as soon as the door obscured the light behind me.
    “That didn’t happen,” she said, her hand in her pocket jingling Francis’s gold angels. The cold stone walls echoed the sound back to her, and she stopped.
    “You’re married?” I asked. “Without permission?” We weren’t allowed to choose our own husbands. It was beyond imagining. Our families considered it contemptible. Despicable.
    Cat placed a hand on either side of my jaw and pulled medown until our noses touched. The fading light from the high, dirty windows barely illuminated her face, making her appear almost translucent against the dark.
    “I