Chapter 9
She had assumed he was joking. She told him she was already married.
He raised an eyebrow.
“That’s fine. I like married women too. Get divorced and then marry me.”
She said nothing.
He slipped a jade pendant into her hand and his expression turned unexpectedly serious.
“You had a fever and nearly pulled my shirt off in your sleep. My honor is ruined. You have to take responsibility.”
Despite everything, Katherine had almost smiled.
He leaned back against the cave wall and said, “I’m Elijah Grant. I’m from the South. I’ll give you a few days. Once you’re divorced, bring that pendant and come find me.”
She had no idea what he really wanted. A man like him—wealthy, refined, impossibly handsome—could have married anyone. Why would he want a woman who had already been married and broken?
But by then her heart had already died for Nicholas.
Leaving him, leaving that city, leaving that life—that was exactly what she wanted.
So she took the pendant.
“All right,” she said.
The first thing Katherine did after returning to the Padilla estate was dig out a piece of paper Nicholas had once written while drunk three years earlier.
That night, after hearing Samantha was miserable in her marriage, he had gotten drunk and scribbled it carelessly in his study, ink pressed so hard into the page it had almost torn through.
If feelings are gone and hearts have parted, then let Katherine Calhoun return home. Let us part in peace and live our separate lives.
He had probably forgotten it the next morning. Or maybe he had never cared enough to remember. He had tossed it aside carelessly.
Katherine had found it later and hidden it away like a wound she could never let anyone see.
Now that wound had become the key to her freedom.