Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Nicholas had felt the pressure of Isadora’s gaze long before he left the house.
His first impulse had been irritation, but fairness soon overcame it.
There was no malice in her curiosity. She watched him because she hoped that, someday, he might trust her with the things he kept locked inside himself.
Grace was not a secret, however.
She was a shame.
And that was infinitely worse.
Isadora stepped into the spill of lamplight, hair tumbling loose and a simple robe drawn over her nightdress. He fixed his attention on her face. Anywhere but the lush contours beneath the thin fabric.
The sash cinched around her waist made a mockery of modesty.
It flaunted the opulent sweep of her hips, the heavy softness of her breasts.
Hunger struck him low and hard. He wanted his mouth buried there, both hands grasping her splendid bottom, spreading her thighs and driving into her until neither of them remembered how to speak.
She would welcome him, he was sure.
What a terrible thing to be thinking of in front of his wife.
“Why did you come at night?” Isadora asked, coming to stand beside him. Her feet were bare.
“Because I couldn’t sleep,” he said honestly. “And because today made me think of her.”
“Do you miss her?” she asked.
How did he answer a question like that? She was the mother of his child—his child—and therefore of course he ought to miss her. He had loved her, despite her faults and their incompatibility, and he ought to miss her for that reason, too.
But the words wouldn’t come. Because despite his shame, despite all the reasons he knew he ought to love her, there was blessed peace in his life where once there had been anger and frustration and hurt.
They had fought like wildcats, and all the love in the world could not make up for the tension that had lingered between them.
“For Sophia’s sake, I used to,” he murmured. “We shared a portion of our lives together, and for that, I will always remember.”
“At her graveside at night?”
He chuckled, the sound devoid of humor. “I suppose I had hoped to find answers here.”
She quirked a thin brow. “To which questions?”
He couldn’t tell her the truth—or at least, not all of it. “I… wonder what she would want for Sophia.”
Isadora crouched beside him. “Do you think she would want something different for her?”
“I don’t know. I suppose that’s why I’m here. There are so many things I don’t know.” He glanced at Isadora. “Why did you come here?”
“Truthfully, I’m not sure either. I suppose I, too, want a family,” she said simply, and the words struck that chord of guilt. “And I’m tired of secrets.”
Some secrets were designed to protect her. But when he saw her like this, it was abundantly clear they were doing anything but.
In her eyes, he merely saw his own desire reflected in her gaze.
Holding her at arm’s length had not eradicated this need in him.
If anything, it had just grown stronger with every subsequent glimpse of her.
The forbidden always tasted sweeter. Perhaps the solution was for him to have her, to give her the sense of family she said she wanted, and to ease his lust piece by piece.
If she were no longer out of bounds, would he want her as much?
Keeping all this inside was proving impossible, regardless.
“You’re cold,” he murmured when she shivered. “The night air is no place for you to linger. Come on.” He held out a hand. “Let’s return to the house.”
She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “If this is the only place you will speak to me, then I’d rather stay.”
Stubborn woman. His chest warmed with affection as he took her hand, linking her fingers through his. The press of her palm against his own sent a rush of fire through him. “We can talk when we return to the house, Isadora. But I’d rather you didn’t catch a cold from the breeze by then.”
“Have you spent all the time here you wanted?” she asked.
“It’s just a grave.” He looked back at the tombstone. He had visited on occasion, sometimes with Sophia, but no matter what he wanted to pretend, it was just a chunk of stone. Pretty words that meant nothing.
Wherever Grace had gone, it was not here.
“There’s nothing more I want here,” he sighed.
No, the things he wanted did not reside in any one place—except perhaps his home. The things he wanted were a certain golden-haired daughter and this reddish-brown-haired beauty by his side.
The things he wanted were not tangible, but when he looked into Isadora’s face, he wondered if he might be able to have them, after all.
They returned to the house together. Nicholas had only let her go a few steps before sweeping her up into his arms and striding back to the house with her held against his chest. She had clung on for dear life, not wanting to complain.
His arms were strong bands of steel behind her back, and his breath had brushed her cheek.
Incredibly, he contrived to carry her without any overt sign of strain, save for his elevated breathing.
“Are you in the habit of carrying ladies over the threshold of your house?” she asked teasingly as he opened the door with one hand, supporting her easily.
He smiled, the curve of it pressing against her hair. She felt it as though it pressed against her heart. “Only my wives.”
“Then I am not the first?”
He hesitated, standing in a pool of darkness so complete, she couldn’t see his face. Even though they were indoors again, he did not relinquish his hold on her. “You are,” he said at last. “For better or worse.”
“Well, I think it’s better,” she whispered, leaning against him. When he looked at her next, their faces were too close. “Tell me what you’re hiding in your heart, Nicholas.”
He carried her onward, to the stairs, climbing them slowly with her still cradled in his arms. Instead of her bedchamber, however, he brought her to his and laid her gently down on the bed.
“My secrets,” he murmured. “Do you know what you ask of me?”
“I think so. I want to.”
Still, she thought he wouldn’t confide in her, but eventually he sat beside her, his thigh pressing against her knee. If he noticed, he showed no signs of it. Nor did he move.
“You know Grace died,” he began, the words abrupt, almost shocking in the darkness—though she certainly knew Grace had passed.
Needing to see him, she fumbled for a light, finally igniting a candle and holding it up to reveal Nicholas’s face.
She traced the now-familiar features, noting the tightness around his mouth and the lines around his eyes.
He looked like a man burdened, and she had this sudden, desperate need to ease the weight from his shoulders.
“I know,” she answered gently. “I think I heard… it was a carriage accident?”
“The carriage overturned around a corner against someone who had come speeding their way.” He spoke dispassionately, but his fingers were clenched into a fist. She took his hand, clasping it in both of hers.
If it pained him to tell this story, then she would do everything she could to ease that passage. This pain weighing him down would not simply disappear; for the wound to heal, the infection must be cut away.
“She was thrown, and she broke her neck. The physician says it would have happened instantly.”
“At least she didn’t suffer,” Isadora murmured.
His eyes found hers, blue and bleak. “The reason she was in that carriage, Isadora, is because we argued. Oh, we argued a great deal back then. She wanted a different life—more social from the one we lived, and I wanted a wife content with my home as I made it for her. We bickered constantly. In retrospect, I can accept that it was not a good marriage. I think we both entered it because it was what our families expected from us, and not because it was what we truly wanted.”
“But you loved her,” Isadora said, trying to understand, conflicting emotions clashing in her chest. Selfish relief that Grace was not a paragon of virtue, that he admitted that they should not have been married; sincere grief that he felt that way about the mother of his child. His tone spoke of disillusion.
Nicholas brought his other hand to rest over Isadora’s. “I did. But I think part of that love came because she was the mother of my daughter, and because I always expected it of myself, that I would love my wife.”
So why don’t you love me? Isadora clamped her mouth shut before she could say the damaging words.
“I pushed her too hard. In some ways, I think I loved her too much, and wanted too much from her. And in the end, I let my temper get the better of me. The way we argued—it was terrible. Dreadful. I shouted in a way I have never shouted before, and she screamed back. The… the fight was the reason she took the carriage out alone. There was nowhere for her to be, and we had no engagements. I pushed her into running away from me, and because of that, she died.”
“It was an accident, Nicholas.” Isadora hung on tighter.
Finally, some pieces of his character started making sense.
Of course he would not allow himself to love her, to feel things for her, if he blamed himself for Grace’s death.
If he believed that his emotional investment—in wanting things from her she could never give—was the reason she fell from her carriage, then why would he ever let himself give in to those feelings again?
“An accident that took place because of me,” Nicholas muttered. “Sophia is without a mother because of me.”
Isadora searched for the right words. “Anyone can get into an accident at any time. Perhaps you should not have argued, but she argued with you in return. You say you loved her too much and wanted too much from her—but what of her? What of the things she wanted, that she pushed you to provide? You said she wasn’t happy with the life you provided.
Is that also your fault? Is it hers? In blaming yourself, you rid her of her own agency.
She was a woman, fully grown, with a child, and she was capable of making her own decisions. Did you demand that she leave?”
The frown on his brows didn’t ease, but his eyes searched hers. “No, of course not.”
“Then she chose to. You said she had no engagements and that she left so she could get away, but you have been avoiding me in this very house for days on end, and there was very little I could do about it.
If she had wanted space, all she needed to do was be in a room you were not in, and there are plenty.
“No. She chose to leave, and what followed was tragic—and I am not saying you shouldn’t grieve her, Nicholas.
Of course you should. She was your wife, the mother of Sophia, and you loved her.
But you cannot let yourself carry the entire weight of the blame, when at most it ought to be equally shared.
You were both part of the marriage, and you were both dissatisfied with how it was progressing. ”
He scoffed lightly. “And I am the only one alive to tell the tale.”
“My parents are both dead.”
This was the first time Isadora had ever spoken about her parents’ deaths, and she felt the soft weight of grief pressing down her shoulders. Her throat tightened.
“They did not die together, but they are still dead, and sometimes, on my darker days, I would blame myself. What if I cried less as a child, was less of a burden? Would they have been happier? Would they have lived longer from that happiness?
“But in truth, I had nothing to do with their deaths. I think, sometimes, it’s more comforting to find faults, so we have something or someone to blame.
It is terrifying when a loved one dies if there is no one and nothing at fault, isn’t it?
That we could lose someone we love on a whim…
is frightening. And so, when they die, there is so much pain, so much resentment.
” She touched a hand against her chest, where her heart still ached.
“And where can it go if there’s nowhere to send it?
“But your grief, it… it’s poisoning you, Nicholas. Think of Sophia. She needs a father who knows how to love himself.” And others, she wished she could say.
In this moment, she didn’t think she cared if that other was her or not. To see him happy for himself, for his eight-year-old daughter, might have satiated her foolish heart for the rest of her life.
Nicholas’s hand moved in hers, turning so his palm pressed against hers and his fingers entwined with hers. “For Sophia’s sake?” he asked quietly. “What about you?”
There was much she wished to answer that with.
She only sighed instead. “I think I would be happy with a husband who merely sees me.”
He swallowed, the motion so great she found her attention drawn to it. “I see you, Isadora. The trouble is… The trouble is I keep seeing you, even when I think it would be best for us both if we lived our separate lives.”
“I don’t want to live separate lives,” she whispered. “I want to see the man who rescued me from humiliation and neglect. I want the man who looks at Sophia as though she holds the sun in her hands. Is that so wrong?”
He groaned, then took her face in his hands and kissed her.