Chapter 6
The carriage lurched through another rut in the road, and Edmund tightened his grip on the leather strap beside the window, using the motion as an excuse to look anywhere but at the woman seated across from him.
His wife. The word still felt foreign in his mind, like a coat that didn’t quite fit despite being tailored to his measurements.
They had been traveling for three hours, and though they had attempted to make conversation at first, the better part of the ride had been spent in a thick, choking silence.
Outside the windows, London’s sprawl had given way to countryside dusted with December snow, bare trees stretching skeletal fingers toward a pewter sky that promised more weather to come.
The landscape was familiar yet somehow transformed—as though marriage had altered not just his circumstances but his very perception of the world around him.
Isadora sat with her hands folded in her lap, her traveling dress a sensible wool in deep green that brought out the warm tones in her chestnut hair.
She had removed her gloves somewhere outside the city limits, and Edmund found his attention drawn repeatedly to her fingers—long and elegant, with ink stains on her right hand that spoke of correspondence or perhaps charitable accounting.
The sort of practical marks that most ladies of her station would hide beneath gloves and careful grooming.
She was nothing like the wives of his acquaintance.
Nothing like the pale, simpering creatures who graced London drawing rooms, content to discuss fashion and weather while their husbands managed the serious business of life.
Even in repose, there was an alertness about her, an intelligence that seemed to take in every detail of their journey and file it away for future consideration.
The memory of catching her on the church steps refused to leave him alone.
The feel of her waist beneath his hands, the way she had looked up at him with those remarkable hazel eyes wide with surprise and something else—something that had made his carefully controlled pulse stutter like a schoolboy’s.
For one unguarded moment, she had felt real in his arms, warm and alive and utterly present in a way that had shaken him more than he cared to admit.
She was different. Different from any woman he’d ever met, and quite frankly... it unsettled him. Not that he cared, per se. He was just... unsure of her. In many ways.
The thought was unsettling enough to make him shift uncomfortably on the padded seat, the movement drawing her attention.
She glanced up from whatever she had been contemplating outside her window, and for a brief moment their eyes met.
Edmund felt that same jolt of recognition, that same dangerous pull that had nearly undone him on the church steps.
“Are we making good time?” she asked. It was the first direct question she had asked in over an hour, and he seized upon it like a drowning man grasping driftwood.
“Well enough. We should reach the Abbey before full darkness if the weather holds.” He gestured toward the clouds gathering on the horizon. “Though Yorkshire weather is notoriously unpredictable this time of year.”
“I see.” She returned her attention to the window, but Edmund could sense a new tension in her posture. “And how does Lillian fare in such isolation? It must be difficult for a young lady to be so far from society.”
The question carried layers of meaning he wasn’t prepared to examine.
Was she worried about Lillian’s welfare, or was she beginning to understand the magnitude of her own exile from the world she had known?
Rothwell Abbey was magnificent, certainly, but it was also remote in ways that London ladies rarely experienced.
“She finds ways to occupy herself,” he said carefully. “Reading, music, walks in the gardens when weather permits. Mrs. Hale ensures she maintains her studies.”
“Studies.” Isadora’s tone suggested she found something lacking in this arrangement. “What manner of studies? Languages? History? Household management?”
“The usual accomplishments. French, deportment, watercolors.” Even as he spoke the words, Edmund could hear their inadequacy.
Lillian was intelligent, quick-witted, hungry for knowledge that went beyond the narrow confines of feminine education.
But what else could he offer her? What did he know of preparing a young woman for life in society?
“I see,” Isadora said again, and this time her tone carried a note of disapproval that made his jaw tighten defensively.
“She has everything she requires,” he said, the words coming out sharper than he had intended. “Books, teachers, proper supervision. What more could she need?”
Isadora turned from the window to fix him with a direct stare that was anything but properly submissive. “Companionship. Challenge. The opportunity to discover her own interests rather than simply following a prescribed curriculum designed to make her marriageable.”
The criticism stung because it was accurate. Edmund had provided for Lillian’s physical needs, had ensured she wanted for nothing material, but he had failed to consider what a bright, curious mind might require beyond the basics of genteel education.
“You seem to have strong opinions about matters of education,” he observed, deflecting rather than defending.
“I have strong opinions about many things, Your Grace. I thought you understood that when you proposed.”
The reminder of his proposal—and the practical motivations behind it—should have restored the emotional distance he was struggling to maintain.
Instead, it seemed to emphasize the strange intimacy of their situation.
Here they were, bound by law and custom, yet still fundamentally strangers to one another.
“Edmund,” he said abruptly.
She blinked in surprise. “I beg your pardon?”
“My name. We are married now. There seems little point in maintaining such formality when we are alone.”
Her face changed, breaking open into a sweet smile. “Edmund,” she repeated, testing the name on her tongue. “And you may call me Isadora, if you wish.”
He had heard her name spoken dozens of times over the past few days—by her father, by wedding guests, by servants making arrangements. But hearing it from her own lips, offered as a gift rather than simple courtesy, made it sound entirely different. More personal. More dangerous.
“Isadora.” The syllables felt unfamiliar in his mouth, intimate in a way that formal address never was.
The conversation lapsed again, but the silence felt different now—charged with possibilities neither of them seemed prepared to examine.
Edmund found himself stealing glances at her profile as she watched the countryside roll past, noting the determined set of her jaw, the way her fingers drummed against her knee when something outside caught her attention.
She was nervous, he realized. Trying to hide it behind composure and polite conversation, but nervous nonetheless.
The sensation of ‘having to protect’ suddenly took hold of him, an unwelcome reminder that whatever practical arrangements had brought them together, she was still a woman facing an uncertain future with a man she barely knew.
“The Abbey may seem rather austere after London,” he said, surprising himself with the gentle tone. “It was built for defense rather than comfort, and successive generations have been more concerned with maintaining its character than modernizing its conveniences.”
“I’m sure it will be perfectly adequate.” Her chin lifted slightly, and he recognized the gesture as one of defiance. She would not be intimidated by cold stones and ancient ghosts, it seemed.
“Adequate.” He almost smiled at her choice of words. “I believe that’s the most diplomatic description anyone has ever given of Rothwell Abbey.”
“And what would be a less diplomatic description?”
This time he did smile, a genuine expression that felt rusty from disuse. “Forbidding. Isolating. The sort of place where Gothic novelists would set their most melodramatic tales of madness and imprisonment.”
To his surprise, she laughed—a genuine sound of amusement rather than polite acknowledgment. “How perfectly dreadful. I’m beginning to understand why Lillian finds it confining.”
“She has never complained,” Edmund said, though even as he spoke the words he could hear their insufficiency.
Lillian might not have complained directly, but her restlessness had been evident in countless small ways—the way she stared out windows, the questions she asked about London, the books she chose from the library.
“Of course she hasn’t complained. She’s fifteen years old and entirely dependent on your goodwill. What choice does she have?” Isadora’s tone was matter-of-fact rather than accusatory, but it still stung.
“I have tried to provide what she needs,” he said stiffly.
“I’m sure you have. But perhaps what she needs is different from what you’ve been able to give her.”
The observation was delivered without judgment, but it forced Edmund to confront truths he had been avoiding for months.
He had taken Lillian in out of duty to her father’s memory, had provided for her material needs, had protected her from the worst of society’s whispers.
But he had never asked what she wanted, what she dreamed of, what future she envisioned for herself beyond the narrow confines of acceptable feminine behavior.
Perhaps it was because he had never learned to ask such questions of himself.
The carriage hit another rut, this one deep enough to jolt them both forward.
Isadora’s hand shot out to brace herself against the seat, and for a moment her fingers brushed against his where they rested on the leather bench.
The contact was brief, accidental, but it sent heat racing up his arm like lightning through a copper rod.