“It was the girl’s first Season. Her family had scraped together the funds to sponsor her, and all their hopes were pinned on her marrying well. When I wouldn’t see her anymore”—he clenched his jaw and forced himself to say it, to relive it—“when I had tired of her, she grew increasingly upset. She confronted me at the theater, and I made a public spectacle of her. She was disgraced, and her family’s hopes shattered.”
“What happened to her?” Josie whispered.
Westman took a long breath. “She killed herself. Her mother found her hanging from a rope tied to a beam in the attic.”
“Oh, Stephen.” Josephine’s eyes were shiny with moisture.
He held his hand up. “Don’t pity me, Miss Hale. My suffering was nothing to what I’d caused.”
Josie stared at her white knuckles, then looked up at him, green eyes dry now and hard as emeralds. “I’m not that girl, you know. You haven’t ruined me. I’d never allow that to happen.”
“You’re so young. You think you’re invincible.”
She smiled. “I will be when we find the treasure.”
“The goddamn treasure again—”
A knock sounded on the door, and Stephen rose to answer it. Taking the food from the servant girl, he placed it on the table then gave her a half-shilling. When he turned from closing the door, Josephine had already dragged the table closer to the bed and was breaking off a piece of bread.
“I don’t want to argue,” she said.
He didn’t protest. Anything to forget his sins. “What was India like?” she asked.
“Hot. I was always so hot. Even when I was naked”—he grinned at her—“forgive me for mentioning that indelicacy—”
“Oh, no! I’m enjoying the image. Go on.”
Cheeky girl. He liked that. “Even when I was naked, I was still uncomfortably warm. I used to dream about the cold winters in England. I fantasized about snow and ice.”
“You dreamed about it?” She dipped her bread in her stew, and he lifted his own spoon for a taste. “Nothing romantic about red noses and shivering.”
“I’ll take the cold weather over the hot any day. Ask any Englishman who’s been to India, and he’ll tell you the same.”
She ate another bite of bread then reached for the wine. She bumped the bottle and almost toppled it. When she finally had it steadied, she fumbled with the cork and knocked her spoon on the floor. Before she could spill the entire bottle all over herself, Stephen took it from her and filled her glass halfway. “I’m thirsty,” she said, eyeing the glass with displeasure.
He corked the bottle.
With a shrug, she sipped her wine. “What else do you remember of India?”
He thought back and tried to decide how to arrange all the colors and smells and tastes that had been his life for all those years into something comprehensible to her. “It’s far more civilized than the reports will lead you to believe. The people there have their own customs and traditions. They have their own religion, older than ours, and just as developed. They have their own classes of Society, very much like ours, and—”
“Yes, but what about the adventures?” she asked eagerly, holding out her glass for more wine.
With reservation, he poured another sip into her glass. Already her face was flushed, and her eyes were too bright.
“Religion and class are all very interesting, but did you go on adventures?”
“You are incredibly single-minded.” He broke off a piece of the warm bread and took a bite. “Has anyone ever told you that?”
“You,” she answered. “Especially when you don’t want to talk about something.”
He inclined his head. “There were adventures, but none like what you imagine. I was there to protect His Majesty’s trading interests, not to seek my own fame and fortune. Mostly I sat behind a desk and wrote reports.”
“Oh.” Her face fell so quickly it was comic.
“I went to India, and I did my duty,” Stephen explained. He pushed away from his plate. “I had a lot of time to think when I was there. A lot of time to feel sorry for myself and wish I’d done things differently. And a lot of time to repent for all my sins.”
“With the girl?”
