Chapter 12 #3
Not crowded, it was not a crush, but there was no mistaking the draw.
Young women gravitated toward Isla in ones and twos, drawn by her ready smile and unguarded curiosity.
They laughed together at something she said about a disastrous quadrille.
Older ladies, initially inclined to frost, thawed visibly after speaking with her, as if reassured this Scottish element was not wholly barbarous. And the men. That was what pricked.
Jealousy stabbed sharp and clean. It was absurd.
He had no claim on Isla beyond a contract he meant to keep as tidily as any other duty.
He had resolved not to want more. And yet the sight of another man seeking her attention, her laughter, burned.
He told himself it was merely concern for propriety.
Isla’s reputation was fragile in a room that still whispered about stables and ballrooms.
My displeasure is purely protective. Not personal.
The lie did not hold. He turned away deliberately and sought the company of men who could be of use.
Discussions of rents and roads, of harvest prospects and shipping routes.
If he found his eyes drifting across the room, he forced them back.
It was almost an hour before he realized he could no longer see Isla anywhere.
She was not near the musicians, where young ladies hovered. Not near the card room, where older ladies retreated. Not beside Victoria Melrose, who was currently pinned in conversation by a bore with an unfortunate voice. Not at the buffet, not on the terrace.
He told himself she had merely gone to the retiring room.
He told himself he did not care. He lasted precisely three minutes before giving up the pretense.
Edward slipped from the ballroom by one of the side doors, letting the murmur of music and talk close behind him.
The corridor felt cooler, lit by fewer lamps, the air touched by night leaking in around old windows.
He checked the small parlor, the antechamber, even the shadowed corner near the back stair where young couples occasionally thought themselves invisible.
No Isla. The library came to mind without his choosing it.
That’s where he found her. The room was lit only by two lamps, one on the central table, one beside a worn leather chair near the fire.
Shelves rose to the ceiling, the old volumes absorbing sound.
It smelled of paper, polish and the faint ghost of pipe-smoke from his grandfather’s time.
Isla sat cross-legged on the carpet before one of the lower shelves, a book open on her lap.
She had removed her shoes, her stockinged feet tucked neatly beneath her.
The lines of her gown were softened by the posture, as if she had shed a layer of formality with the slippers.
She looked up when he opened the door and, for a moment, did not move to rise.
“Have I lost my duchess?” he asked, closing the door behind him.
“I escaped,” she said. “There is a difference.”
He stepped further in. “From what?”
“From smiling,” she said simply. “From nodding at people who wish to weigh my accent. From saying the same three sentences about Scotland to those who have never crossed the Tweed and think it a foreign country with better scenery.” She shrugged.
“I like some of them. I do not like all of them at once.”
“You left your own ball.”
“I left your mother’s ball,” she said, and then added with a twist of her mouth, “and your ball. And London’s. They seem to share custody.”
He almost smiled. “You are neglecting your duties.”
“I am tending to my sanity.” She tapped the book. “Mr. Wordsworth is more comforting than Lady Beecham’s opinion of sheep.”
He blinked. “Wordsworth.”
“You are astonished?”
“Yes. It is … unexpected.”
She tilted her head. “Because you believe me a barbarian with no acquaintance with ink? Or because you do not expect a woman to read anything longer than a fashion plate?”
“Because I did not expect you to seek him out in a room full of music,” he said honestly.
“And you?”
He hesitated. She smiled, eyes glinting. “You cannot pretend you have not read him. This book falls open at certain places. I think it is an old friend.”
“Some would not call a book of verse, a friend,” he said dryly, “so much as an accomplice in wasted time.”
“Do you waste much time with them?”
He thought of the slim hidden notebook in his desk drawer, the lines written on sleepless nights at sea. “Enough to know you might have chosen worse company.”
“Oh,” she said lightly, “I have. Lady Beecham, for instance.”
Against his will, a laugh escaped him, brief and real. She shut the book with a soft thump, keeping one finger between the pages.
“Very well. A test.” Her eyes brightened. “I quote, you name the author. Then you quote, I identify. If you fail, you must dance with me when I return to the ballroom. If I fail, I must endure an entire conversation with Lady Beecham without once making a face.”
He considered. “It is not a fair exchange. Dancing with you is not a punishment.”
Color touched her cheek. “Then consider it an inducement.” She lifted her chin, daring. “Unless you are afraid to lose.”
His pride, as ever, accepted any challenge presented neatly. “Proceed.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, searching memory. When she spoke, her voice altered becoming lighter, carrying the cadence of lines learned not from duty but from fondness.
“‘She walks in beauty, like the night …’” She opened one eye at him. “We shall stop there. Any further and I will exceed propriety.”
“Byron,” he said at once. “Written after seeing his cousin in black with spangles, if the story is true.”
“You know the gossip as well as the line,” she said. “Impressive.”
His turn. He cast about for something that would not betray too much. “‘The world is too much with us; late and soon,’” he quoted. “‘Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.’”
“Wordsworth,” she answered. “And very apt for your mother’s friends.”
He inclined his head, conceding the point.
She smiled and tried another, this time in a softened Scots accent: “‘My love is like a red, red rose …’”
“Burns,” he said, and for a moment saw her as she must have been younger, reciting those lines by another hearth. The room seemed smaller, more intimate.
His turn. He chose a line from Coleridge, careful to keep it short. “‘Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread.’”
She frowned in concentration, eyes narrowing, then brightened. “The Ancient Mariner. I suppose a seaman could not help but like that one, eh?”
They traded lines like that for some time.
Short bursts of words, recognition, shared amusement.
He felt the distance between them shrinking.
At some point he sat beside her. On the floor of all places.
He had recovered a couple of volumes that he particularly liked, lay them open on the ground between them.
She knew more than he had credited, he knew more than he had ever let most people suspect. The discovery was disarming.
“Your turn,” she said at last. “A good one. Something difficult.”
He hesitated, then surrendered to temptation and to a fondness he rarely indulged aloud. “‘Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art,’” he said softly. “‘Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night …’”
“Keats,” she said without pause. “You chose a love sonnet for your wife. Brave, Your Grace.”
He realized what he had said, what she had heard, at the same instant. Heat climbed his neck. He looked away.
“Another from me,” Isla said, and when she spoke this time, her voice dropped a note, warm at the edges.
“‘Stolen kisses are always sweetest …’” She broke off, mouth quirking. “Can you place it?”
He knew the line, it had floated about in circulating volumes of minor verse but the source escaped him. “Some forgettable anthology,” he said. “Anonymously foolish.”
She laughed, low. “Perhaps. Or perhaps you focus on the wrong word.”
Their eyes met. The air between them felt different now. It had become denser, charged the way a ship’s mast glowed with St Elmo’s fire.
“Kisses,” she said quietly. “That is the word I like.”
He could have stepped back. He could have made a joke. He could have reminded them both of the dance waiting elsewhere in the house. Instead he found himself moving forward, as if drawn by the same force that had pulled him toward her in the chapel.
“You are owed one that is not stolen,” he heard himself say, voice rougher than he liked.
“Are you certain,” she murmured, “this is not theft?”
He did not answer. He reached for her, slow enough that she might turn away.
She did not. Her lips parted, a fraction.
His hand found her jaw, thumb resting just below her ear.
He kissed her. It began as caution. The taste of her flooded him, wine from the supper, the faint tang of apple, something purely her.
She made a small sound in her throat, answering rather than protesting, and the kiss deepened of its own accord.
Her hand came up to brace against his chest and he felt the quick staccato of her pulse under his palm and knew with a strange certainty that his own matched it.
The room narrowed to lamplight and her mouth.
He did not know who broke away first. One moment they were joined, the next they were not. Isla’s eyes were dark, pupils wide. Shock rippled across her features, something like desire still pulsed there, too, before she shuttered it.
“That,” she said, after a heartbeat, “was remarkably ill-advised.”
“Yes,” he agreed hoarsely.
“We are meant to be dancing,” she said.
“We are meant to be sensible,” he said.
“How are you at pretending nothing has happened?” she asked.
“Practiced,” he said. “You?”
“Talented,” she replied, though her voice wobbled on the last syllable.
He stepped back fully, forcing himself to drop his hand. “We should return before my mother decides you have eloped with an unsuitable volume of verse.”
At the door he held it open for her. She paused as she passed him. For a fraction of a moment, her fingers brushed his. The touch could have been accidental.
“Edward,” she said softly, without title, just once.
He swallowed. “Isla.”
They looked at each other, two people who had shared more in ten minutes than they had in seven days, and then wrapped that knowledge in politeness like paper around something fragile.
Together they walked back toward the music.
By the time they reentered the ballroom, their faces were composed, their steps measured.
From the gallery, the Dowager’s gaze tracked them like a cannon. Edward guided Isla to the edge of the floor, released her hand, and bowed. “Will you dance, Your Grace?” he asked, for all the world as if the answer did not already live in his chest.
“Yes,” she said. “I believe I owe you one.”
They stepped into the set. The music swept them into movement, but the echo of the library clung to him.
He felt the weight of his doubts still there, lodged like flint.
He did not know yet whether they would strike sparks or be worn down by the current.
For now, he held his frame, watched his wife, and tried not to think of bright stars or stolen kisses.