Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Isabel would have been appalled if anyone had accused her of flouncing. Nonetheless, she arrived back at the hall feeling uncharacteristically out of sorts and irritated.
She went straight up to her bedchamber and stood by the window, unbuttoning her gloves while she thought about Georgiana, Lady Kendall. Really, the woman just had to flutter her eyelashes and men fell helpless at her feet.
How did she do it?
Isabel tugged impatiently at a small pearl button, tearing the silk threads that held it to the fine kid. The button fell to the floor with a soft ping and rolled under a chair.
‘Oh, curse it!’ Isabel said aloud, consigning this small domestic inconvenience to the long list of grudges she held against Lady Kendall.
What concern was of it hers if Lord Somerton succumbed to the obvious charms of Lady Kendall?
Going down on her hands and knees, she searched around for the little button, retrieving it from behind her chest of drawers.
She sat back on her heels and caught her refection in the long mirror. Who was that woman with the haggard face and dark circled eyes that looked back at her?
‘Lucy!’ she summoned her maid who appeared at the door.
‘My lady?’
‘Find my riding habit and tell the stables to saddle Stella. I am going for a ride before dinner.’
Lucy’s eyes widened. ‘A ride, my lady?’
‘I need exercise and fresh air.’
‘But m’lady—’
‘Now, Lucy.’
Standing before her mirror, pleating the fine pleating the fine woollen skirt of her riding habit between her fingers, she understood her maid’s reluctance.
The deep bottle-green habit, fashionably trimmed with black frogging, had been her last purchase before William’s death and now it hung on her. When had she become so thin?
Experimentally, she pulled a few stray curls from the severe coil of hair on the back of her head, noting how they softened the hard angles of her face, a parody of the fashionable hairstyles she had once favoured.
Impatiently, she poked the unruly curls back.
Why was she indulging in such foolishness?
She had no one to impress and yet, if Sebastian could see her as she had once been, he might be pleasantly surprised.
No one had ever called her a beauty, but, in the right clothes and the right company, she had been known to turn heads.
The queen of the London drawing rooms had reduced herself to black rags and hideous caps.
Something unsettling was stirring in her heart, bringing her back to life, and it frightened her.
She stood up and reached for her hat, pinning it to her head and settling the veil over her face, pulling on her gloves, she left her room.
In the stable yard, her usual mount, the star-faced bay mare called Stella, stood saddled and ready.
With the boy’s help she mounted, kicking the mare into a trot and then a canter, clearing the stables and the house, her ride taking her more by instinct than design to the grand mausoleum on the hill.
Only when she reached the small grove of trees did she pause, slipping off the saddle and securing Stella’s reins to the nearest oak. Tripping over her skirts, she ran towards the mausoleum and flung herself down on the step, pressing her cheek against the cold marble.
With her finger, she traced the letters of the carved, gilded name.
WILLIAM ANTHONY CHARLES KINGSLEY
Born 3 August 1813 Died 29 May 1814 Suffer Little Children.
Below William’s name was that of her husband, but Isabel hadn’t come here to think about Anthony.
The death of her child sat heavily on her heart.
The horror of the morning they had found William dead in his crib, still twisted like a knife in her heart.
Every day she walked up this hill, and every day she wondered if the hurting ever became any easier.
She drew her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around them. A cold breeze stirred the dry grass around the crypt and the smell of freshly cut hay rose in the wind.
The grass should be scythed. Anthony would hate to have his tomb in such an untidy state.