Chapter 27
Samantha screamed.
“You can’t! My father—”
“I don’t care.”
His face had gone dead.
“From this day forward, Samantha Lester has no connection to the Padilla family. If she comes near this estate again, throw her out.”
She was dragged away sobbing.
Nicholas stood in the empty room afterward and nearly vomited from the weight of what he had done.
Then he left.
He handed over what remained of the estate’s affairs and rode south with only a few men at his side, barely sleeping, burning through horses and roads and days.
When he finally reached Charleston, he was gaunt, exhausted, and half-mad with desperation.
A few days later, his men found the address.
Katherine had arrived ten days earlier.
She was staying at a private residence owned by Elijah Grant.
And in three days, she was getting married.
Nicholas went cold all over.
Elijah Grant.
That was the name on the pendant, the name Katherine had never spoken but had evidently chosen with her whole future.
He rode to the house at once.
And there, just outside the gate, he saw her.
Katherine stood beneath the winter sun wearing a soft pale yellow dress he had never seen before. Her skin looked brighter, her health better than it had in years. Beside her stood a man in a dark blue coat—tall, elegant, quietly powerful. Elijah lifted a white fur-trimmed shawl and settled it over Katherine’s shoulders with effortless care.
The gesture was so natural, so intimate, that Nicholas’s chest felt like it had been split open.
“Katherine!”
His voice came out rough and desperate.
She turned.
For one brief second, surprise flickered in her eyes.
Then it disappeared.
What remained was calm distance, as though she were looking at a stranger who had no claim on her life.