Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
I sabella had been dancing for an hour. Her feet hurt, and her heart was heavy. Rowan… nowhere she could see. Neither were the Haws. Both should have arrived already. The music strummed to an end, and Isabella curtsied to her partner, then sought the stairs. Gertrude haunted the balcony above, had all night. But she’d found a friend during the last dance.
Rather, an enemy.
The young Earl of Avelford leaned against the balcony scowling, his light-brown hair hanging partially over his forehead.
“Good evening, Alex,” Isabella said as she reached the top step. “You should be downstairs.”
“It’s dreadfully dull, Issy. Besides, who can dance when Lady Glum is up here, bursting every champagne bubble with a single glance.”
“I am not,” Gertrude mumbled into a flute of champagne she’d not possessed before the dance had begun. “The colors are gorgeous. Lottie is a sorceress. Where is Mr. Trent?”
Where was Mr. Trent? The question of the night.
Below, Samuel circled the dance floor like a predator, his face drawn tight and pale, his hands clasped behind his back. Like her, he waited and watched. Mr. Haws would surely arrive soon as well .
Isabella hated being so in the dark. She turned her back to the dancing crowd below.
“Who’s that?” Alex asked.
As Isabella spun around once more, she followed the line Alex drew across the ballroom to the entrance.
Gertrude stood at the balustrade on the other side of Alex. “I’ve never seen him before.”
“He looks like he’s been in a fight with a puddle of mud and lost,” Alex said.
“Rowan,” Isabella breathed. It was Rowan, dressed in ill-fitted, dirty clothes and pushing through the crowd of dancers, his head swinging wildly about, searching. Those around him moved away, and a rumble began about the ballroom comprised of whispers and laughs. “Gertrude, I think you should retire for the evening.”
There must have been something like stone in her voice because her sister did not argue. “Would you like to escort me, Lord Lazy?” she asked Alex. “Cook has made the best treats for us upstairs in the nursery.”
“Nursery,” the young man scoffed. “Are there… lemon tarts?”
“Of course.”
Alex followed Gertrude away from the ballroom, and Isabella made her way downstairs, pushing a path through the standing crowd around the dance floor toward Rowan.
Samuel reached him first, every ounce of arrogance he possessed written into the lines of his face. “This event is invitation only.”
Isabella grabbed his arm. “He has one. Brother, this is Mr. Rowan Trent, Admiral Garrison’s son.”
“Garrison.” Samuel’s gaze raked down Rowan’s mud-splattered body. “Truly? I didn’t quite think you existed.”
“If you don’t believe me,” Rowan growled, “I’ll take what’s in my pocket elsewhere.”
Isabella leapt across the space between her brother and her lover. “What do you have?” But she knew.
“What you need. But not here.” Rowan looked over her head at Samuel. “We must speak someplace private.”
“Samuel.” She grasped his arm. “Listen to him. Please. ”
The other sisters were floating across the ballroom toward them now, Lottie dragging Quinton and Tristan tall at Andromeda’s side. Prudence and Ben reached them first.
“What’s going on?” Ben asked, his face clean-shaven, and his arm lightly around Prudence’s waist.
“You’re all making a scene,” Lottie said between clenched teeth before Isabella could answer.
“This is Rowan. Mr. Trent. Mrs. Garrison’s son. He needs to speak with Samuel. He has something with him of great importance to us all.”
Lottie nodded. “Everyone back to dancing. Except Samuel. And Mr. Trent.”
“And me,” Isabella said.
Lottie nodded again, and everyone dispersed, Samuel cutting a hard line toward the double doors at the back of the ballroom beneath the balcony. They led to a series of rooms, and when they reached the far one at the back of the house, Samuel ushered them inside and slammed the doors shut.
“You had better explain, Mr. Trent, why you’ve shown up to my sister’s ball looking like that. The admiral’s son should know better. And while you’re at it, explain why you appear to know Lady Isabella. When I’m only just meeting you.”
Rowan strode toward him, pulling something out of his pocket. “This belongs to you, I’m told.” In the candlelight, his face was hard. Bruised.
“Rowan.” Two steps brought Isabella closer to him. “Your eye.” His cheek, too. Red and raw and swelling.
He brushed her hand away. “I’m fine. Mr. Haws fought back. Once he realized I wouldn’t shoot.”
Isabella gasped. Shoot? Fought back. “What did you do?” And why hadn’t she known? Why hadn’t he told her? They were partners . Supposed to be.
Samuel seemed mesmerized by the paper in his hand. He groped about for something to lean against, and when he found the back of a chair, he rounded it, dropped into it. “This is… how did you get this?”
“By getting muddy,” Rowan drawled. “I apologize for appearing as I do. I meant to change after I’d acquired the letter. Haws gave chase, and I had no time. You’re saved, nonetheless. You’re quite welcome.” He strode for the door.
“Wait.” Isabella raced after him. Forget that he had not told her his plans. She needed to know what he was thinking now, where he was going with such angry strides. “Wait.” She was breathless by the time she reached him just outside the ballroom doors. “Why are your legs so long?” She lunged and grabbed his wrist, pulled him to a stop only because he’d wanted to be stopped. He could have snapped his arm away from her hold as easily as breaking a bit of straw.
“Isabella.” Why did a low storm rumble through his voice?
“Thank you.” She cupped his cheek. “You are—”
“Leaving.”
“You promised me a dance.”
“I’m not dressed for it.”
“Return to the Hestia and change, then—”
“I’m not coming back.”
“Mrs. Garrison will want to see you.”
“She’ll understand.” He pushed through the doors and into the ballroom. This time, he kept to the edges of the room, head hung low.
Isabella followed, catching him once more. “Is it because you do not know how to dance?”
His eyes flashed. “Will our lives be like this? You constantly doubting how well I fit into your world?”
She reared back. “N-no. I was only. Of course you know how to dance. Mrs. Garrison would insist, and…”
Something tight and itchy buzzed between them as her words trailed off. And when the confident chords of a waltz strummed to life, he grasped her hand, her waist, and swept her onto the dancefloor. The heady twirl floated her skirts out, and she relaxed into his arms, trusted his expert movements as the candlelight blazed above.
It seemed as if the world paused for them, the string quartet wavering, the conversations hushing, the dancers falling away.
She smiled, only a moment, before catching sight of Rowan, rock jawed and stiff, his eyes blank. She was alone in heaven, then, and her floating skirts sank back around her ankles .
“Are you hurting?” she asked, squeezing his shoulder.
“Not especially.”
“I am glad. Can you tell me how you did it?”
“I’ve a safe. He’d been keeping the letter there. I told him the safe was broken.”
She could put the rest together. She should have thought of a safe herself. He’d known, then, for quite some time, where the letter was. And he’d not told her. Just as he’d failed to tell her of his plan. What if something had happened to him?
To their right, a high laugh clashed with the tremble of a violin. It seemed perfectly aimed at her and Rowan.
“See over there.” She jutted her chin across the ballroom, in the opposite direction of the laugh. “Do you see the woman sleeping upright against the pillar? She is my Aunt Millicent. Before his death, she was a great correspondent with Lord Byron.”
“You’re lying.”
“Not at all. Apparently, she possesses a wicked mind the poet found fascinating.”
“She’s mad, bad, and dangerous to know?”
Isabella laughed. “You’d not think it to look at her, would you? She has never let disapproving voices keep her from acquaintances she wished to foster.”
More laughter to their left, hissing whispers, too. The rapid flutter of fans hiding mouths blurred as he spun her around.
He didn’t notice, not while he gazed at her, his mouth softening into a sweet curve. “You’re wearing flowers in your hair. What are they?”
“I wanted an Irish rose. I could not find one, though. The gardener gave me pink and white roses instead.”
He scowled. “No thorns?”
A couple dancing absentmindedly beside them backed away, their censorious attention a sledgehammer Isabella ignored.
“None.”
The hand around her waist disappeared, and his fingers gently grazed her temple before diving into her hair, stealing a pink rose. He put it in his jacket pocket .
More laughter.
This time he did notice, and he inspected the ballroom meticulously, likely noting every sneer and raised brow.
They danced alone now, every couple having dropped to the sides of the room. Every eye was on them, the women’s mouths hidden behind fans, the men’s eyebrows arched skyward.
Rowan’s gaze settled on her, something broken in it. He released her and stepped back. “I should not be here. God, you are beautiful, and you are—” He swallowed. “I will go.” He fled.
Isabella followed, running once she passed through the ballroom doors. Down the hall, down the stairs, out the front doors. A line of coaches stretched to the end of the street on both sides in front of Clearford House.
Rowan passed straight through them to the other side of the street, a heavy shadow in the dark. He would have kept going all the way to the Hestia, no doubt, all the way to the sea, and down to the very bottom if he could, but Isabella sprinted and jumped in front of him.
He didn’t seem shocked, as if he’d expected her to follow. “Go home, Lady Isabella. You should not be seen with a man like me.”
“I do not care what they think.”
He stepped around her and continued into the night.
She ran to catch up. “At least let me thank you.”
“You already have.”
“Not well enough. You have saved my brother. And hurt yourself in the process. I never wanted that. I’ll come with you back to the Hestia and tend your wounds.”
He leaned in close, their foreheads almost touching, a shadow consuming her. “If you return to Hestia with me, I’m not letting you go. You will stay there until we wed by special license. You and me. No crowded St. George’s. No wedding breakfast with a duke. Nothing but you and me and the life we’ll live after that. I’ll not be laughed at again.”
“That’s not fair. I want—”
“What I cannot give you, Lady Isabella Merriweather. I cannot join your world of polish and gold and delicate blooms. I am rough and scarred. I am the mud on your brother’s boot. And you are a damned Irish rose. Too good for me. I will marry you, but I cannot be some pathetic hanger on, forced to attend grand balls and musicales but pushed by scowls and whispers to the edges. I’m too proud for that. I stay at Hestia. And you do, too.”
“You are saying”—she took two steps backward, away from him—“you will not allow me to continue a relationship with my family?”
He cursed. “No. I would not deny you that. Even if I wanted to chain you up—and I don’t—you’d find a means of escape. Visit your family as you please, but I will not go with you.”
“You will miss christenings? And holidays? And dinner parties? When Gertrude makes her debut, my sisters will all have their husbands at their sides, but mine will be sulking at a hotel?”
“It’s my home. And if it’s not good enough for you—”
“I did not say that.”
He scrubbed his hands down his face. “You should return. I’m sure your family will worry over you.”
“You said you didn’t care who I am. You said you did not care if I was a duke’s sister.”
“I do care. I cannot stop caring. You were already too good for me. As Miss Crewe, you were miles above me. But not high enough I could not live comfortably alongside you. As Lady Isabella, I will never feel at home with you. I will feel like some street thief who’s robbed the duke of one of his precious possessions.”
“I am no possession.” She spoke low to keep her rage contained.
“We do not fit, Isabella. We do not fit unless you can simply be Mrs. Trent.”
“I will be Mrs. Trent, whether I’m in there”—she pointed at her family’s home—“or at the Hestia. It matters not.”
“To you. Because you are a… changeling, becoming whomever you need to become to fit in anywhere you please. I do not have that talent. Can you give up being a duke’s sister to be my wife? Because I am not made for your world.”
“You truly mean this? You will truly let me leave your side alone, every day. You will abandon me… or have me”—she swallowed a lump in her throat—“abandon them?”
He turned from her. “The decision is yours. You are not with child, and… and I will not blame you if you decide you cannot be Mrs. Trent.”
Her choice. Her decision to rip herself in two.
“No,” she said very softly and sadly.
“You cannot control them, you know.” He glanced at her over his shoulder, the shadow so thick around him she could not see his expression. “You cannot monitor their every mood, gather every whisper about them all. Perhaps leaving them will help you live your own life instead of fretting about theirs.”
She blasted through the shadows to face him but found each explosive word she wished to hurl his way caught in her throat. Fear, yes. It lived in her always, a snarling thing.
But she was not its only victim.
She poked his chest, rocking him backward. “And you cannot hide away for the rest of your life! I may seek control, but so do you. I may fret about everyone, but you fret about no one but yourself. I may live tired and worried, but it is better than loneliness.” She stepped backward, clutching her hands to her belly. “But you are not truly concerned with that, are you? I could close my ears and fight my fears for you. What I cannot do is tear myself in two. I cannot be Mrs. Trent with you and Isabella Merriweather with everyone else. I have pretended to be your wife, and I will not pretend to be otherwise for the rest of my life. Can’t you face your fears, too?”
“Not fears. Truth.”
“You must know they will accept you.”
“Must I know that? How can I? When everything about the world proves otherwise? When the way everyone stared at me in the ballroom, how they whispered, proves otherwise?”
“Rowan, whispers cut but they are not knives. They cannot scar you unless you let them.”
“You’ve made your decision, then?” He sounded hollow, his voice echoing in the empty night. “It is likely the right one. Hestia is a place that exists between other places. It’s only there between the starting point and the destination. I am the same, Lady Isabella. I am not your destination. No matter what it felt like before. It was nothing more than a trick of the light.” He strode down the street, his tall, rigid frame shrinking with each step.
She ran after him, her heart breaking in two as she cried out, “You were my light. That’s the trick, isn’t it? Because now you’re gone.”
He did not turn around. He did not answer. Not even his steps hitched.
Still, she ran. “You’re ready to kill me off, then?”
Finally, he froze, as if her words had become an arrow hitting him right in the shoulder. “It was always the agreement.”
“You want to marry me.” Why couldn’t she take the yearning out of her voice? The pain? “You didn’t care about my snooping. You didn’t care about the books. You discover my brother is a duke, and that sends you running?”
The moon shone high above, shedding silver light over his dark hair and muddy coat. Not even his shoulders lifted with the efforts of breathing. He seemed to blend into the night; it swallowed every detail of him, draping him in the shadows she’d met him in. He’d retreated there, and she did not think she could follow.
“Your brother,” he said, “can do as he pleases. He could ruin Mr. Haws’s life. He has all the power, and the rest of us none. Mr. Haws was just trying to take some for himself. It is your brother’s world. We are all just travelers through it.”
“You do not know him. You know nothing of him. Samuel cannot have anything and everything. He could not have love if you had not brought him that letter. Everyone, duke or sailor’s son, everyone deserves love.”
“I should not have accosted a man like Mr. Haws for a man like your brother. Not even for you.” He stalked to the corner of the street, and still she followed, and this time, he turned when he stopped. “You’re the same as Clearford. You have a home and a family and a place in the world. Yet unlike him, you play at being other than you are.”
“You asked me to play. You demanded I pretend to be your wife.”
His shoulders were stiff and wide, and the thin dark shadow of his mouth was unmovable. A small woman like her could never move this mountain of a man, this stoney crag. But she’d been mistress of those shoulders, that mouth. That man. He’d once given himself freely to her, and it seemed impossible he would not do so again if she could only find a way through. Her arm floated up, fingers reaching, stretching, calling out, screaming out. So close. His warmth seared her. If she touched him, would his stoney face melt? Would he wrap her tight in his arms and nuzzle his face in her shoulder? Would he whisper in her ear, soft and low and sweet, that he didn’t care who her brother was, didn’t care about the lady in front of her name, that he knew her and wanted her and—
He stepped backward, rounded the corner, and disappeared into the night.