CHAPTER SEVENTEEN #2
“Did not mean what, precisely?” she demanded, proud of how steady her voice remained.
“Did not mean to make it abundantly clear that I am nothing more than a convenient solution to your domestic difficulties? Or did not mean to dismiss every attempt I make at genuine connection as though I were some impertinent servant overstepping her bounds?”
Edmund flinched as though she’d struck him. His hand dropped from her arm, falling to his side with visible effort. She watched emotions chase across his face—guilt, regret, frustration, something that looked almost like longing before being ruthlessly suppressed.
“Do not call me ‘Your Grace’,” he said finally, the words emerging rough as though dragged from somewhere deep.
The request was so unexpected that Isadora froze.
She stared at him, trying to comprehend what he was asking.
After spending hours at the Fairfax dinner performing devotion they didn’t feel, after his brutal reminder last night that their marriage held no genuine feeling, he was objecting to formal address?
“I beg your pardon?” she managed.
“My name.” Edmund stepped closer, close enough that she had to tilt her head to maintain eye contact. “Use my name, not my title. Not when we’re alone.”
“But this is not a real marriage, is it?” The question escaped before wisdom could stop it, carrying all the hurt she’d been trying to contain since last night. “You made that abundantly clear when you dismissed my presumption that we might be anything beyond a practical arrangement.”
She watched his throat work as he swallowed hard.
His eyes held storms she desperately wanted to understand—conflict and desire and fear all warring for dominance.
For one wild moment, she thought he might actually answer honestly.
Might confess whatever truths he kept locked behind those impenetrable walls.
“Isadora—” Her name on his lips sent heat flooding through her despite every effort to remain detached. “I wanted to say—”
But whatever confession trembled on his tongue remained unspoken. She watched the walls rise again, saw the exact moment when fear won over honesty. His expression shuttered, becoming carefully neutral in that infuriating way that revealed nothing of the man beneath.
“We both agreed to that,” he said, the words emerging flat and final. “A practical arrangement. Nothing more.”
The confirmation shouldn’t have hurt. They had indeed agreed to exactly those terms. But somewhere between his hand at her back during the Fairfax dinner and his lips on her glove, somewhere in the space between performance and reality, she’d started believing their arrangement might evolve into something genuine.
What a spectacular fool she’d been.
Isadora lifted her chin, pulling together every scrap of dignity she possessed. She would not let him see how deeply his words cut. Would not give him the satisfaction of knowing she’d made the catastrophic mistake of caring about a man who’d explicitly promised her nothing beyond duty and respect.
“Then I must call you Your Grace,” she said, her voice steady as stone despite the chaos roiling in her chest. “After all, we wouldn’t want to blur the careful boundaries you’ve established between us. Heaven forbid I presume we might be anything approaching actual husband and wife.”
She turned before he could respond, before the tears threatening behind her eyes could betray her. Her footsteps echoed off marble and ancient stone, carrying her away from the man who’d just confirmed every fear she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge.
Behind her, she heard Edmund’s sharp intake of breath. Sensed him reaching toward her—
But she didn’t look back.
The corridor stretched endlessly before her, each step carrying her further from the library where Lillian still sat surrounded by books, further from the man who inspired such contradictory emotions she couldn’t begin to untangle them.
Isadora climbed the stairs toward her chambers with movements that felt mechanical, her entire being focused on maintaining composure until she reached the safety of privacy.
Christmas decorations mocked her with their festive cheer. Holly and ivy, evergreen and ribbon, candles burning warm against winter’s darkness—all of it designed to celebrate joy and connection and the warmth of family gathered against the cold.
She had none of those things. Had married to escape one trap only to find herself in another, this one gilded with a duchess’s coronet and baited with a lonely girl who needed her.
And complicated beyond measure by a husband who looked at her with hunger he refused to acknowledge, who kissed her hand with tenderness that felt genuine, then dismissed their entire connection as nothing more than practical arrangement.
Isadora reached her chambers and closed the door with a soft click that sounded somehow final. She leaned against carved oak, pressing her palm against the cool surface while her breathing slowly steadied.
This was impossible. All of it. She couldn’t continue like this—couldn’t keep pretending indifference while her treacherous heart insisted on developing feelings for a man who’d made it abundantly clear he had nothing to offer beyond honesty and respect.
The question was what to do about it. Accept the boundaries Edmund had established and focus entirely on helping Lillian?
Retreat into the sort of cordial distance that characterized most aristocratic marriages?
Or continue pushing against his walls in hopes that eventually he might let her see the man he kept hidden beneath layers of control and isolation?
Outside her windows, snow had begun falling again—thick flakes that would soon bury the estate beneath white that made everything appear clean and new.
But Isadora knew better than to trust that charitable covering.
Beneath the snow, the same frozen ground remained.
The same ruins and failures and carefully tended graves of hope.
Nothing had changed except her foolish belief that it might.
She moved to her dressing table and caught sight of her reflection in the mirror.
The woman staring back looked composed, dignified, every inch the duchess society expected her to be.
But her eyes told a different story—they held confusion and hurt and the dangerous beginnings of something that felt uncomfortably like heartbreak.
“You are a foolish girl,” she told her reflection quietly. “A spectacular, unprecedented foolish girl who somehow convinced herself that a man who explicitly promised nothing might offer everything.”
The admission should have brought clarity. Instead, it only made the ache in her chest intensify.
Because the truth—the terrible, inconvenient truth she could no longer avoid—was that somewhere between accepting Edmund’s proposal and this moment of brutal honesty, she’d started falling in love with her husband.
And he’d just made it abundantly clear that he would never allow himself to reciprocate those feelings.