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are you doing?” she asked.
    “Don’t worry, your brother won’t notice.”
    True to his word, the jangle of bells dimmed between the thick, snow-laden trees. Geoffrey would be too focused on Catherine to glance back, and even if he noticed them gone, he trusted them. Ruefully, she acknowledged he’d always trusted them.
    Hale slowed the sleigh but continued on the path. “You may not recall this, but I brought a cat with me when I left. One of the barn cats, a black one.”
    “Of course I remember,” she said softly. “Bailey was your favorite.”
    “They’re supposed to be good luck. And good mousers. Unfortunately Bailey was neither.”
    They rode in silence for a few minutes before he began speaking again.
    “On our second week at sea, we were attacked. Bailey was supposed to stay in my cabin, or at least below deck. We never found him after that night.” He spoke emotionlessly, but she knew what that had cost him.
    “Hale, I’m so sorry.”
    “At the time, a cat was the least of our worries. We lost three men, including the captain. A fire in the aft hold destroyed half the food supplies.”
    His cold recitation brought tears to her eyes. Her chest felt tight. Where was his emotion? Buried. She heard the subtext—how very clearly he didn’t have time to sit at his desk and jot down a love letter. She heard what he didn’t say—the soul-deep disappointment, the fear. His every hope dashed and last pound lost.
    And she had been angry about a letter? Surely, he could have found a spare moment in three years, but that wasn’t the point. She hadn’t understood the harsh reality of living and working aboard a ship. Thinking back on the hopeful light in his eyes before he left, neither had he.
    He continued his list of things that went wrong. The mainsail tearing. An illness that claimed two lives. A storm that took them two months off course. He described this unending string of unfortunate events until she was forced to conclude that life at sea was, basically, hell. No wonder he didn’t plan to go back. Of course he would stay in London, acting as investor and advisor. If he tried to get back on that ship again, she would tie him down to her bed.
    She could not possibly express all of her sympathy, her horror for what he described. So she asked the question that sat first and foremost in her mind. “Why on earth did you not come back to England?”
    He stared straight ahead. A muscle in his jaw twitched. The horses chose that moment to rear up slightly before settling again.
    Finally, he looked at her. “You know why.”
    “I do not.”
    “For the same reason I left.”
    She dreaded the memory. It came anyway. Sweet hay that tickled her nose. Smooth skin over muscle, a luxurious pillow beneath her cheek. A few stolen hours to add to the pile. I have to do this, Sidony. It’s the only way I’ll offer for you. I’m not going to marry the sister of a gentleman with only a few thousand pounds to my name.
    For her. He’d gone through hell for her , and she wanted to cry. She was already crying. An intense and biting cold swept through, completely separate from the wintry afternoon. She’d wanted him to love her, but this was so much more. So much worse. How could she be responsible for his suffering? She couldn’t.
    “Don’t be upset. Are you crying? No, don’t.” He seemed to have pulled from his flat desert of emotion. He was normal Hale again, concerned and kind, but she was too far gone to be reasonable.
    She put up a hand to warn him off. He pulled the sleigh to a halt. “Sidony? I’m sorry. I should have written you. Even a small note, once.”
    “Yes,” she choked out. “You should have.” Because she had worried about him constantly until Geoffrey had received word— a letter , so he could write them—that he was back in England. The worst part was that all her worries had come true. He’d been hurt and threatened and, if she’d understood the pirate story correctly, shot at.