Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Later that night, long after Isla had retired to the master suite and the Ealdwick townhouse had settled into its nighttime stillness, Benedict was awake.
He had dismissed his papers and his claret, finding neither provided the distraction he sought.
He paced the length of his private study, lost in his spiraling thoughts.
He stopped at the window, staring out at the London streetlights below. He thought of Isla’s quick response when he had frozen, her immediate deflection to save appearances. There had been a tenderness between them lately, an unexpected, fiery connection even he could not deny.
How can this arrangement work for a man like me? Can we truly build a family, one that is not cold and transactional? How can I give something that I never received myself?
The idea sickened him, and not because he disliked Isla.
Quite the contrary, he was impossibly conflicted by the way he was drawn to her.
Against his better judgment, he grabbed his decanter from the study bar and poured a small glass of brandy.
He swirled the contents, holding up the amber glass as he sniffed it.
Isla’s wit, resilience, and genuine warmth were attractive. He sipped the brandy, trying to organize his thoughts when they drifted once more.
Cecelia…
He remembered his first wife. A delicate woman, she had been delighted when she learned she was expecting their first child.
It was a marriage he used to his social advantage, to pick up the pieces of the duchy his father had ruined with his drinking and squandering.
While it was not a tender marriage, there was mutual respect.
With the child, Benedict had allowed himself a flicker of hope then for his life. Even in spite of it all.
That hope had been extinguished with brutal force when she died shortly after childbirth, as if in response to a curse that was placed on his household.
Mother.
The real wound, the one that never scabbed over and healed, was his mother.
Benedict was worn down by the constant cruelty of his father, if he could even call him that.
The former Duke made it clear that love was a weakness, and children were only instruments of succession. Nothing more. Nothing less.
“You will fail, boy,” his father’s ghost seemed to snarl inside his head. “You are weak. You will destroy her, just as you destroyed the last one.”
Benedict closed his eyes, his knuckles white against the cold glass of the windowpane as he leaned into it. He could not fail his house, and to do so, he must ignore his heart.
I will protect her… even if it is from me.
He would not doom anyone who dared to love him, especially not Isla.
Isla, also unable to sleep, put on her heaviest dressing gown and left the master suite. She grabbed a taper and walked down the empty hall, her bare feet silent on the cold marble floor. She knew exactly where Benedict would be.
His private study was dark, save for a single lamp casting a circle of gold over the polished desk and the smoldering fire.
An unmistakable figure stood rigidly by the window, looking out into the dark night.
He had not changed from his daytime attire, except that his greatcoat and waistcoat had been discarded.
He was left in a crisp white shirt that looked stark against the darkness, accentuating his impossibly broad shoulders.
There was a glass of dark liquor, though it remained untouched on the sill.
“You should be asleep, Isla,” Benedict said, his voice flat, not bothering to turn around. “Go back to bed.”
“And ye should be restin’ as well,” she said softly, walking toward the fireplace to warm her cold hands. “Come to bed, Ben, where it is warm and comfortable. Let me hold ye.”
“I am busy,” he said quietly.
“Busy?”
“Yes, busy, Isla,” he barked. “We cannot all pay social calls and play house whenever we want. Some of us have business to attend to--if you would leave me.”
“Nay! Ye have been pacin’ about the room since we returned from the Arrowfells’. Ye are goin’ to bore a hole in the floor. Somethin’ is botherin ye, and I ken what it is.”
He finally turned as he took up his glass. “It is not your concern.”
“Of course it is me concern,” she said, her voice rising. “Ye have been walkin’ around the house like a ghost! I willnae let ye do this to yerself…”
“Oh, and haunted I am,” he rasped as he drained the brandy in a single sip.
“Oliver only asked a simple, innocent question. There is nae need for ye to react this way. We can talk about it-”
“It is not that,” he said as he shook his head, walking to the small bar cart to refill his glass. “I am busy, Isla.”
“Aye… but it is just that.”
“Isla… Do not push me,” Benedict whispered. “You will not like what you hear.”
“Is that why ye pulled away from me tonight at dinner, and when we came home? We need to be able to talk to each other… I am yer wife!”
Benedict stared at her for a long moment, the silence thick with unspoken history that hung in every corner of the hallowed halls of Ealdwick like cobwebs. He looked impossibly tired and worn, a man defeated by the past. He took a long, slow breath.
“I do not want another child, Isla,” he whispered.
I ken it… I ken it and yet, I was unprepared to hear those words… just as he said I would…
Isla felt a sudden, sharp pain in her chest. She wanted to crawl away, to crouch down and disappear, but she pushed past it. She worked too hard in these weeks with Benedict to back down, to not speak her mind when she so desperately needed to.
“I do,” she countered, her gaze unwavering as her emerald eyes met his. “Ye have yer heir, aye. And what an heir he is. I love yer son. But I am also a young woman, and we have so much to give. Perhaps I am nae that young… but I have me own wants and needs, Benedict…”
“Isla-”
“I would like to have children of me own. A wee lass or lad that I carried in me belly, that I could raise alongside Oliver, like Matthew and Fiona…”
“I cannot give that to you,” he cut in, his voice hardening.
“Ye mean ye will nae give that to me,” Isla corrected, crossing her arms tightly across her chest, pulling her dressing down tight against her body to ward off his icy chill.
“I am not playing with you, Isla. I cannot do that. I cannot give you a child. You will have to be content with Oliver.”
“It is nae about him at all!”
“I will not risk it! There will be no more children!”
“I am nae made of porcelain, Benedict. Look at my scars!”
“I know you are not made of porcelain! Damn it, Isla! You do not know-”
“I ken enough! I understand what happened with yer first wife, and yer poor maither. Tragedies I wish I could wipe away and would in a heartbeat. Aye, I understand that ye fear losin’ another wife.”
She took a step toward him, her heart aching.
“I am not afraid,” he rasped. “It is something I simply cannot and will not do.”
“Love requires risk.”
Love.
The word hung in the air like a feather floating slowly to the ground. Isla watched Benedict flinch, freezing entirely. His blue eyes, already as dark as the ocean, became completely opaque. When he finally moved, it was to throw another log on the fire.
“No,” he ground out, the muscles in his neck straining. “I do not take risks. I am calculated, precise. If you thought otherwise, that is your mistake. Not mine. I never promised you this.”
“That is nae way to live! I ken ye feel for me!”
“I have lost too much already. I never knew my mother because she suffered and died… because of me. I watched Cecilia die trying to fulfill her duty… because of me. I will not put myself in the position of being responsible for that pain again. I cannot do it to Oliver. And I cannot do it…”
To me…
He slammed his hand down on the desk, the sound echoing through the house with a finality that sent a shiver through Isla.
So, this is it…
“Perhaps it is best we return to the arrangement that suits us both,” he continued, his tone formal as if a barrister presenting facts.
“I secured you a lofty title when you married me, along with wealth and security for the rest of your days. We also averted the scandal that would have befallen your sister. You provide the necessary presence for my son’s wellbeing and the appearance of family, which you will continue to do.
We do not require further children, Isla.
You are safe, and I am safe from the possibility of any more loss… if this ends. Now.”
Isla felt the blood drain from her face. His words were a wall, cold and unyielding. The fiery intimacy they shared was nothing but an asterisk to the main contract he outlined so well.
How could I have thought there was a chance for anythin’ more?
She had mistaken duty for feeling, companionship for affection.
Yet what of the fire that burns between us? Nae, he is wrong!
“Safe?” Isla cried, her voice trembling with hurt. “Would ye rather live a solitary life, starved of true affection and of passion? Even when I am right here for ye, Ben? After all we shared together? Do ye wish to live a lie?”
She felt the tears sting her eyes, but refused to let them fall as she blinked hard to keep them at bay.
I willnae cry in front of this emotional coward. I cannae give him the satisfaction.
“Tell me, Yer Grace,” she said finally, her voice dropping to a low, devastated whisper. “Did ye ever truly see me as a partner, a woman of worth? Or was I always just a convenient solution to a problem? A scarred spinster ye can easily ignore, resist entirely?”
Benedict opened his mouth, a raw, tormented sound catching in his throat. Yet, no actual words came out.
Isla looked at his frozen, tormented face one last time before she turned and walked out of the study, the silence of the townhouse swallowing her pain as she retreated to her private quarters.
A carefully outlined life, with parameters and duties, Isla thought as she pulled up her stockings to go for a morning stroll to clear her mind.