Chapter 7
She had refused him. She had refused him because he was charming and reckless and had looked her in the eye and told her plainly that he was not capable of love and did not intend to pretend otherwise.
Those were excellent reasons, comprehensive reasons, the kind of reasons that did not require supplementing.
And yet here she was, walking circles around a rose garden because the thought of James proposing to Caroline Pembley had stirred a feeling in her chest that she could not attribute entirely to concern for Violet’s welfare, no matter how she tried.
The rosebush she was passing was extremely large. She walked faster.
He is a rake, she told herself firmly. He is charming and emotionally unavailable, and has spent all his years treating commitment as something that happened to other people. You were right to refuse him, and Caroline Pembley is welcome to have him.
“You cannot do this.”
She stopped walking.
She had said that. At the dinner table. In front of her brother, Cecily, and James. She pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose.
She was not embarrassed. She had meant what she said about Violet, and she would say it again if given the opportunity.
Caroline Pembley was cold—she had observed it on five separate occasions with the clarity of a woman who knew how to read other women in rooms. That was the reason she had spoken up.
That was the only reason.
You were right, she repeated inwardly, with slightly more force.
She sat down on the low stone bench in the first alcove, the one with the white climber growing above it, and looked out through the open end of the wall at the darkening parkland beyond.
Somewhere in the distance, a bird was chirping.
The last of the daylight sat on the horizon with a stubborn, golden patience.
You refused him. The voice in her head had become slightly pained, as though it too were growing tired of this particular circuit. You refused him, and you were right. Whether he proposes to Caroline Pembley or Lady Hastings is entirely none of your concern.
She did not have feelings for James.
She had several reservations about him, which were different.
She had years of opinions, cataloged and well-evidenced, and a thorough understanding of his character and its limitations, and a memory of him standing in a nursery at midnight with his cravat undone, asking her to marry him as though it were a business proposal—which it was.
That was the problem. He had not asked because he wanted her. He had asked because she was convenient.
That was the thing she needed to hold onto.
“I thought I might find you here.”
Cecily appeared from the direction of the back door, a light shawl draped over her shoulders and another on her arm.
“I needed air,” Isadora said.
“Yes.” Cecily sat down beside her without invitation, entirely unruffled. “The dining room was rather… warm.” She held out the shawl. “Here.”
Isadora took it and draped it over her shoulders without argument, because the evening had cooled and she had not brought her own, and accepting a shawl was not the same thing as inviting a conversation.
“The air is very pleasant,” she murmured.
“It is.” Cecily looked out at the parkland. “Are you going to tell me what happened at the dinner table, or shall we discuss the air for a while first?”
Isadora didn’t say anything, so they sat in silence for a moment. She looked at Cecily sideways, but Cecily merely waited.
“He asked me to marry him,” she admitted.
Cecily turned slowly, the surprise evident on her face. “James asked—”
“Before the announcement at dinner. Before all of that. The night before, in the nursery.” Isadora kept her gaze on the parkland. “He had just come from a meeting with the solicitor. He asked at an unreasonable hour.”
“He asked you,” Cecily repeated, sounding dazed.
“He had a very practical explanation for it.”
Another silence.
“What did he say?” Cecily asked carefully.
Isadora looked at her then. Cecily’s expression was no longer shocked.
“He said that an unmarried guardian with his reputation was a liability for Violet. That a guardian with a wife of good family and character would make it far more difficult for anyone to challenge the guardianship,” she revealed.
“That the household would appear stable, and society would stop interfering.” A pause.
“He also offered to build me a library larger than Blackmoor’s. ”
A beat.
“Did he?” Cecily said.
“He was entirely serious about the library.” Something entered Isadora’s voice that she had not quite intended. She smoothed it flat. “He was very clear about it. The arrangement would be practical. There would be no romance involved—no love. He made certain I understood that before I answered.”
“And you said no,” Cecily concluded quietly.
“Of course, I said no.”
“You said no, and yet at dinner tonight, when he announced his intention to propose to Caroline Pembley, you looked as though someone had—”
“I set it down too quickly.”
“Isadora.”
“I was concerned about Violet,” Isadora said with conviction, because she was concerned about Violet, and the conviction carried her through for approximately four seconds before Cecily’s expression made it clear that four seconds were not sufficient. “I am concerned about Violet.”
“I know you are,” Cecily assured her. “I also know that concern for Violet is not the only thing currently sitting in your chest.” She paused.
“If the whole matter is truly practical… if you refused on practical grounds and there are no feelings involved, then why does the thought of James marrying someone else upset you this much?”
Isadora did not answer immediately.
Because…
The thought began and failed to form, which was deeply inconvenient.
Because he—Because she is—Because—
“She might like Violet,” Cecily added, breaking the silence.
Isadora blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Caroline.” Cecily turned slightly. “You said she was cold and she would treat Violet as an inconvenience. But you could be wrong about that.” She pressed her lips together.
“Caroline Pembley might walk through the nursery door and immediately love that child. She might be genuinely wonderful with her. She might be exactly what Violet needs, and you would never know it from five polite conversations in various drawing rooms.”
She watched her carefully.
Isadora adjusted her shawl uncomfortably. “If that were true, if Caroline grew genuinely attached to Violet and Violet to her, then… my speaking at dinner was not a principled concern for the child.” She stopped. “It was simply—” She stopped again.
“It was simply what?” Cecily prompted softly.
“I do not know.” The admission came out quietly. “I thought I did. I thought it was about Violet, and I believe that sincerely, but you are asking me why it upsets me, and I cannot answer you honestly and say it is only the child.” Isadora paused. “And that is precisely the problem.”
The words settled between them.
Cecily was quiet. The bird in the distance had gone silent now. The light on the horizon had deepened to amber.
“What is the difference between you and Caroline, in your mind?” Cecily asked eventually.
Isadora’s jaw tightened slightly. “What do you mean?”
“He asked you to marry him. You said no. He is now proposing to someone else.” Cecily tilted her head.
“What is the difference between you and her, as far as this arrangement is concerned? If it is only practical—if there are truly no feelings in it—then one convenient wife is as good as another. You said no. You did not think about Violet. She will presumably say yes.” She met Isadora’s eyes. “So what is the difference?”
Isadora looked at the path.
What is the difference?
She turned the question over in her mind, looking for the thing underneath the thing.
“I know Violet,” she replied. “I know what she needs. I know how she sleeps and what settles her when nothing else will. I know which sounds frighten her and which do not.” She paused. “Caroline Pembley does not know any of that.”
“No,” Cecily agreed. “She does not.” A pause. “Is that the whole of it?”
“No,” Isadora sighed.
Cecily remained silent.
“I cannot tell you the whole of it,” Isadora said, “because I cannot tell it to myself yet. I only know that the thought of it—” She stopped and folded her hands tightly in her lap.
“He told me it would not be romantic. He said it plainly. Any arrangement between us would be practical. Nothing more.”
“Yes,” Cecily said carefully. “That sounds like something he would say.”
“It was honest.”
“It was.”
“And I refused him on entirely reasonable grounds.” Isadora looked at her.
“He is a rake. He is charming and careless with people’s hearts, and he has spent his entire adult life avoiding anything resembling real attachment.
He only asked me to marry him because a solicitor told him he needed a duchess and I happened to be the most convenient candidate in the room.
” She paused. “Those are not romantic grounds. Those are not any kind of grounds. I was right to say no based on what I wanted.”
“You were,” Cecily agreed.
“Then why—” Isadora broke off. “I do not understand why it matters,” she said more quietly. “I do not understand why the thought of him marrying Caroline Pembley…” She pressed her lips together. “I refused him. I should not care who he marries. I do not care.”
“Isadora.”
“I do not.”
“You are sitting in a garden in the dark,” Cecily said gently, “because you care.”
The words landed with the accuracy of something that had been waiting to be said by someone willing to say it.
Isadora said nothing. She looked at the roses instead.
A long silence settled between them. Somewhere in the parkland beyond the wall, something rustled.
Cecily was quiet for a moment. Then, she took Isadora’s hands in her own. “Can I tell you something?”
“I suspect you’re going to.”
“When William proposed to me,” Cecily said with a smile, “I was entirely convinced it would be a loveless arrangement. I knew his reputation. I knew he was not—I knew he kept people at a distance. I knew he was not the kind of man who loved easily or said things he did not mean.” She paused.
“I married him believing that what we had was practical. That it would remain practical. That I was sensible enough and realistic enough not to expect anything more from a man who had made it clear there was nothing more on offer.”
“Cecily.” Isadora turned to her, searching for the right words.
“I am glad for it, truly. But William was guarded. James is…” She paused.
“James is not guarded in the way a locked room is guarded. James dismantles the room entirely. He does not allow the attachment to form in the first place. It is not the same architecture. William—”
“Is not James. I know.” Cecily nodded.
Isadora blinked. She had expected an argument.
“They are different men with different characters. James is…” Cecily seemed to be choosing her words carefully.
“James has spent a great deal of effort becoming very difficult to reach. That is not the same as being unreachable.” She met Isadora’s eyes.
“People do not build walls around things that do not matter to them.”
“That is a very generous interpretation.”
“It is an honest one,” she countered. “The question is not whether James is capable of feeling. It is whether he is ever going to stop being afraid of it long enough to admit that he does.”
Isadora looked away. She thought about the nursery. About James standing in the center of the room with a crying baby against his shoulder and his cravat undone and every layer of his usual performance simply… gone.
She thought about the way he had stood in the doorway afterward, watching Violet sleep with an expression that had nothing performative in it whatsoever.
“He told me it would not be romantic,” she repeated, but it came out differently this time. Less a reason and more a question.
“Yes,” Cecily said. “He did.”
“He meant it.”
“Probably.” She paused. “Or he meant that he does not know how to be romantic, which is not the same thing, and he told you the truest version of it he was capable of at the time.” She tilted her head. “James is not a man who says things he does not believe. You know that.”
Isadora did know that.
She opened her mouth to say something. She wasn’t certain what. Perhaps something composed and reasonable that would steer the conversation in a different direction. The back door burst open.
A young maid ran toward them, her cap askew as though she had run the length of the house and not paused to right it. Her face was pale, and her hands were clasped together at her waist as if she were trying hard to hold herself steady.
“My Lady.” Her eyes darted between them and landed on Cecily with the instinct of someone seeking the most useful person in a room. “Your Grace—forgive me—it’s the baby—”
Isadora was already on her feet.
“What’s happened?” she asked.
“She’s… the nurse says she cannot—” The maid swallowed visibly. “She’s struggling to breathe, My Lady. We cannot… She cannot seem to catch it. Mr. Briggs has sent for the physician, but he has not arrived yet, and the nurse is—”
“Where is she?”
“The nursery, My Lady. His Grace is already there, but he… The nurse does not know what to—”
Neither of them waited for her to finish.