Page 4 of Go, Rogue

“We can’t all be as lucky as you have been, cousin.”

Violet furrows her brow. “I am lucky,” she says. “And to be certain, I am aware of it. But you’ll recall as well as I that it wasn’t always so. I didn’t know Alistair and I fit right away. In fact, I was certain we didn’t.” She pauses, as if deciding what to say next. “And by most measures, we still don’t. But most measures don’t matter. They are nothing more than window dressing. We fit because he makes me light. And because I make him steady. And together, we are the best of ourselves. That’s what matters. That’s all that matters. Everything else, titles and dowries and society and what have you, is nothing but nonsense. A match made of those things is not what’s best, only what is easiest.”

“Then what’s best?” Catherine asks against her better judgment. She knows what Violet will say, just as she knows the kind of bond Violet has with her husband, made of love and respect and a deep mutual attraction, isn’t in her future.

“Best is best.” Violet gives a little shrug. “True fit is best. Love is best.”

“And if you don’t have those things?”

“That is up to you, dearest. As I said, you will always have my support, financially or otherwise.”

“I’ll never take your money, Violet. Your husband won’t even take your money for his company! You need it for your medical clinic.”

Violet, a nurse and heiress to a timber fortune, is well on her way to achieving her dream of opening a medical clinic in London. One that will serve her patients—rich and poor, men and women—with the dignity and medical excellence all people deserve.

Catherine’s mother pokes her head into the vestibule before Violet can argue.

“It’s time,” she says. “Violet, I’ll help you to your seat. Catherine, are you sure you wish to walk alone? I will escort you. Or Chester will. He came all this way.”

“I’m sure,” Catherine answers.

The last thing she wants is to be walked down the aisle by her cousin, the Earl of Chester. His decree she marry before the season ends is the reason she’s standing in this church vestibule in Surrey. “I’ll be there in just a moment.”

After Violet and her mother leave, Catherine walks to the entryway of the small church and watches the mid-morning sun fight to be seen through cracks in the cloud cover. The drizzle has let up for the moment, but the gray and dismal coloring remains.

To begin a gray and dismal marriage, she thinks but then shakes her head.

It needn’t be so.

Somewhere, a few hours away, Andrew McGann is putting the finishing touches on his ship, The Elphame.

Her betrothed is at the altar waiting for her.

Her mother has enough money to provide for her future.

Violet is pregnant and building her hospital.

All is well.

She closes her eyes in the cold, December air.

This is what’s right, she tells herself, and not for the first time. Pembrooke and I fit in our own way. We don’t have a love match, to be sure, but I think we’ll have a friendship one day. This is the life I was born into and the one I will continue.

The sun breaks through the cloud cover and reaches its rosy fingers across the landscape. She turns her face to it, freckles be damned, and lets the warmth soak into her eyelids and cheeks.

And then she opens her eyes, squinting into the suddenly bright light. Just one moment more, and she’ll head back into the church and her wedding.

A flicker of movement catches at the edge of her vision—more clouds, perhaps, or the shifting morning light on frost.

But—wait a moment—

Is that…McGann?

She sees him. Or she thinks she sees him, just for a moment.

But it’s impossible. Andrew McGann is far away in Kent, readying his ship. The man she sees now on horseback, outside the church, only resembles him.

He’s just an outline, backlit by the sun.