Chapter 28
She had managed four hours.
That was what she concentrated on—managing the journey. The four hours of it, the rhythm of the wheels and the passing countryside and the gradual shift from Ashbourne’s grounds to the roads she had known all her life.
She looked out the window and breathed, perfectly composed. She did not think about the entrance hall or the silence or the tear she had felt fall before she could stop it.
She was perfectly composed all the way through Blackmoor’s gate and up the drive, and when the house appeared, she looked at it with the steady eyes of a woman who had simply come home for a visit and nothing more.
The carriage stopped, and the door opened.
She saw William first. He stood on the steps, with Cecily beside him. Letitia was half a step behind, still pulling her shawl around her shoulders as though she had come out quickly.
They were all looking at her.
She got out of the carriage.
William came down the steps and said her name, and that was all it took. She burst into tears right there on the drive.
“Izzy…”
William didn’t move to stop her. No one did. For a long moment, they simply stood there and let her cry.
“Oh, darling,” Letitia whispered.
“It’s all right,” Cecily said quietly. “Let it all out.”
Isadora scarcely heard either of them. She could not have answered even if she had tried. Her mind had already fled back to Ashbourne. To James standing before her, his lips parting as though he wanted to say the words she had needed him to say. But he had simply stood there.
She heard herself saying goodbye. She remembered the look in his eyes, the look that had seemed to promise everything, and the unbearable silence that had followed instead.
“I’m here,” William soothed. “Take your time.”
She cried harder.
He looked helplessly at Cecily. “Should we… ?” he trailed off.
Cecily gave the smallest shake of her head. “Not yet.”
Letitia rubbed slow circles over Isadora’s back. “Just breathe, Izzy,” she whispered. “No one is asking anything of you.”
They waited. No one rushed her. No one filled the silence with well-meant reassurances. They simply remained where they were, surrounding her with the quiet compassion reserved for her heart that had finally reached the point of breaking.
William looked away as though every tear was a personal affront. Letitia’s own eyes had filled.
At last, Isadora’s sobs ebbed enough for her to draw a proper breath. Only then did Cecily step forward.
“Here.” She slipped an arm around her shoulders before she had fully understood she was being moved. “Come inside. We’ll get you warm.”
“I’m fine,” Isadora managed, which was so obviously untrue that she couldn’t even finish the sentence.
“Of course you are,” Cecily replied in the tone she used when agreeing with something she entirely disagreed with. “Come in out of the cold.”
William held the door open. “I’ll have tea brought immediately.”
“And something to eat,” Letitia added firmly.
William nodded at once. “Yes. Something to eat.”
Letitia appeared at Isadora’s other side without another word and slipped her hand into hers. Together, they went into the morning room.
Someone produced a blanket. Someone else served tea.
Isadora sat on the settee and pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, fresh tears streaming down her face.
“Right,” she said. “I am going to stop doing this.”
“You don’t have to stop,” Letitia said, sitting beside her. “You can do it for as long as you need.”
“I have been doing it for hours.”
“You have been composing yourself for hours,” Cecily said from the chair opposite. “I can understand how you feel.”
Isadora looked at her. Then she looked at William, who had stationed himself by the fireplace, not hovering, but present, close enough to be useful.
“Tell us,” Cecily demanded.
Isadora looked at her hands. “I read the morning paper.”
“And…?” Letitia prompted.
“Caroline Pembley was seen entering James’s London townhouse,” Isadora said flatly. “Alone. In the evening.”
The room was very quiet.
“While he was there?” Letitia asked, raising her eyebrows.
“While he was there.”
William made a sound. It was a short, contained sound that communicated a great deal about what he was currently thinking about his closest friend, none of which he had apparently decided was appropriate to say aloud.
“What did James say?” Cecily pressed.
“He said she came uninvited.” Isadora looked at the fire. “He said he sent her away. He said there was nothing between them.”
“Then perhaps—”
“He has spent years being exactly who society has always said he was,” Isadora cut in.
“Charming and careless and… It is not a secret. It was never a secret. I knew it before I came to Ashbourne, and I decided—” She pressed her lips together.
“I decided that it had changed. That he had changed. That I was—” She broke off.
“Izzy,” Letitia said softly.
“I am in love with him,” Isadora admitted.
She said it the same way she had said it on the terrace to Violet—plainly, because saying it any other way would not make it more or less true. But this time, there were people in the room to hear it, and it landed differently.
Her eyes filled again, which she had specifically decided was not going to happen anymore.
“I am in love with my husband.” Her voice broke. “And I am sitting here crying about it, which is… exactly the thing I spent years trying to prevent. I have managed it spectacularly.”
“Oh, Izzy.” Letitia put her arm around her.
Isadora let her, because the alternative was sitting up straight and being composed, and she had used everything she had on the carriage.
“There is a misunderstanding,” Letitia said into her hair. “There has to be. James is not… I watched him at Ashbourne. I watched what he said and did. He cannot have another woman somewhere, Izzy. He cannot. He looked at you the way—”
“How he looks at me does not mean what I thought it meant,” Isadora argued.
“I think it means exactly what you thought it meant.”
“Letitia.” She pulled back slightly. Her nose was running.
She accepted the handkerchief Cecily produced and pressed it to her face.
“He stood in the entrance hall this morning, and I told him I was leaving, and he did not say anything. I gave him every opportunity to.” The entrance hall came back to her with vividness.
“He opened his mouth and said nothing. He just… stood there and let me leave.”
Silence fell over them.
“That is the most—” William began.
“William,” Cecily warned.
“I am not going to say anything unkind about him in front of—”
“William.”
He exhaled and looked at Isadora with the expression he had been wearing since she had arrived. His jaw tightened, and he paced, visibly livid.
“I told him,” he said very quietly. “I told him that if he felt something and said nothing, I would not forgive it.”
“You knew?” Isadora stared at him.
“I knew something had changed,” he admitted. “I didn’t know whether he would… I thought he would—” He pressed two fingers to his jaw. “I thought he was better than this.”
“He probably is,” she said wearily. “It is more likely that I have simply…” She looked at her hands. “That I misread it. That I saw what I wished to see because I was already…” She gestured vaguely to herself.
“You did not misread anything,” Letitia stated, with flat certainty.
“I was there. For three days. I watched him at dinner and at the card table and in the nursery, and I am telling you, Isadora Margaret Harcliffe, that man did not look at you the way he looked at you because he had someone else in London.”
“Then why did he let me leave?” Isadora sniffled, her voice cracking.
The room had no answer to that.
“Because he is an idiot,” Letitia said.
“Letitia—”
“I am sorry, but he is. He is a brilliant, complicated, emotionally avoidant idiot who has spent all this time convincing himself that keeping everyone at arm’s length is protection, when it is actually just—” She threw up her free hand.
“Cowardice dressed as wisdom. Which is the most infuriating kind.”
“You cannot call James Harcliffe a coward,” William interjected.
“I can call him whatever I think he is when he has made my sister cry,” Letitia declared, with a calm that was considerably more alarming than anger would have been.
“And what I think he is right now is a man who had something real in his hands and let it walk out the door because he was afraid of it. Which is cowardice, William, regardless of how many brave things he has done.”
William looked at his sister. Then he looked at his wife.
Cecily looked back at him with an expression that said, She is not wrong.
He plopped down into the armchair by the window and pressed his hands against his knees.
“Is he in love with you?” he asked without preamble.
Isadora looked at him.
“I thought—” She stopped. Started again.
“I thought he might be. I thought… There were things he said, and the way he… Yes, I thought he was. I thought something had changed.” She looked at the fire.
“But he let me leave, William. He stood there with the words hanging right in front of him. I could see them. I could see him deciding, and he said nothing. And I do not know how to reconcile…” Her voice failed her for a moment.
She pressed the handkerchief to her face.
“I do not know what to do with a man who looks at me as though I matter and then says nothing when it counts.”
“Isadora,” Cecily said, drawing her attention.
She was leaning forward in her chair, her elbows on her knees, her expression entirely unguarded.
“I married a man who was terrified of loving me,” she began quietly.
“Who was so certain that the feeling would eventually destroy something that he could not bring himself to name it for a very long time. Who let me believe more than once that what existed between us was merely…” She paused.
“Manageable. Contained. Nothing more than what we had agreed on.” She held Isadora’s gaze.
“And I nearly left. I nearly decided that what I saw in him was not real because he would not say it out loud.”
“And?”
“And he came after me,” Cecily said simply.
The room fell quiet.
Isadora looked at her. “See, William came after you.”
“Yes.”
“James—” Her bottom lip quivered. “James did not come after me.”
“He has had—” Cecily glanced at the clock on the mantel. “Approximately six hours.”
“What—”
“I am not telling you to wait indefinitely,” Cecily spoke over her. “I am not telling you that the pain is not real or that you are wrong to feel it. I am saying that sometimes men who are afraid of the right thing need to be more afraid of losing it. And sometimes losing it is what it takes.”
Letitia was very still beside Isadora.
William was looking at his wife like she had said something he could not argue with and had no interest in arguing with.
Isadora looked at all of them. At William, who was furious with James on her behalf.
At Letitia, who had called James a coward with absolute conviction.
At Cecily, who had married a frightened man and was sitting here as evidence of what frightened men could become when they finally stopped being afraid.
It doesn’t matter if they think he loves me. He let me leave, and that is all I know. He doesn’t love me.
She pressed the handkerchief to her face one more time and sat up.
“I need some tea,” she said. “And I need to stop crying. And I need…” She exhaled. “I need to think.”
“Tea first,” Letitia said immediately, reaching for the pot. “Thinking after.”
“Is there anything to eat?” Isadora asked. “I haven’t had anything since breakfast.”
“There is everything to eat,” William said, shifting with the energy of a man relieved to have something to do. “I’ll ring for—”
“William,” Isadora called.
He stopped.
She looked at him. At his clenched fists.
“Thank you for being here,” she said.
He looked at her tenderly. “Always,” he promised.
She picked up her tea and drank some.
All she could think about was the fact that the man she was completely in love with had never loved her.