Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Isadora fluttered her eyes open.
A dark world greeted her, the deep satin blue of night, moonlight shimmering against the curtains. It felt… it felt as though there was something wrapped around her skull.
Her thoughts stuttered, but she forced them through, forced herself into focusing, and found she could. Unlike before, when everything had felt confused and blurry, like fog over glass.
She twisted her head, wincing, and went still. Nicholas lay beside her, quiet and peaceful, asleep. His breaths were enormous, his chest rising and falling with each deep breath. He was… sleeping in her bed.
Slowly she reached up a fuzzy hand and found the cloth bound about her head. She… she wished she could remember the last few hours. How long had she lain here?
Her bladder announced itself, and she eased the covers back, careful not to wake him. Her head ached, but it was the ache of a wound, nothing worse—a small price to pay.
Nicholas had said Sophia was all right. She was all right.
The relief that flooded her now was out of all proportion; she wanted to laugh and weep at once.
Her feet sank into the carpet, and she padded across the dark room.
Returning from the bathing chamber, she felt a piece of thread clinging to her damp feet and lowered to free it, but when she raised her head, it was only to find Nicholas half sitting up.
His eyes were heavy-lidded, and he looked exactly as though he truly had risen from sleep a handful of seconds before.
His hair stuck up at all angles, and there was an openness to his face that she was not accustomed to seeing.
“Dora?” he breathed tiredly. He moved, suddenly, all at once. One moment, he was still in the bed, and the next, he was on the floor, crouching beside her, holding her face in his hands. “Are you all right? Does anything hurt?”
She could only stare at him. Was this the man she remembered, who told her that his business was none of her concern? Who chose to keep his secrets from her and not allow her in—not because he had no choice, but because leaving her behind was his choice.
There was desperation in his voice now. And he had stayed with her.
She reached up a hand to touch her head again. “What… happened?”
“Best I can understand is Sherborne pushed you. You kept trying to get to Sophia, but I was able to stumble across you and make you sit down. I carried you to bed and summoned a physician, who bound your wound and prescribed some medicine.” He gestured to the side table and its bottle of tincture and silver spoon.
“And I’ve been at your side ever since… mostly. ”
Isadora caught his wrist, unsure whether she wanted to push his hand away or hold it so he’d never turn back into his old self. “I don’t understand.”
“Which part, sweetheart?”
“Every part.” She drew a breath. “Who is this Sherborne, and why did he try to steal Sophia? He said she was his daughter, but…” She searched his face for the truth. “Surely that can’t be true?”
“Not exactly.” He sighed and took her hand. “Come to bed, and I’ll explain everything.”
“Everything?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. Learning of it made me question things I never should have—things that never mattered in the grand scheme.” He carried her in a bridal swing and settled her tenderly against the pillows. “There. Comfortable? Shall I fetch you anything?”
“I just want you to tell me, Nicholas.”
“Very well.” He lit a lamp, setting the room aglow, and sat beside her, taking her limp hand. “The man who tried to take Sophia is Sherborne. He was Grace’s lover.”
Isadora gasped. “Her lover?”
“So far as I can tell. I believe him that much.”
“But—she was unfaithful? Or was this before you married?”
“Oh no,” Nicholas said grimly. “This was after. And I never knew until recently. I thought our marriage flawed, yes, but not so fundamentally. I believed in her, and she took that trust and shattered it. But that’s not the heart of it.
Sherborne loved Grace—more than I did, perhaps—and he blamed me for her death. ”
“Why?”
“The same reason I blamed myself, until you taught me why I shouldn’t.” He stroked her cheek tenderly. “He had no one to guide him, and so he was lost. He wanted Sophia not because he wanted her, but because he wanted to hurt me.”
Such a terrible way to cause pain—and so effective. Isadora could only imagine what Nicholas would have gone through if Sophia had gone missing. He would have torn apart the entire country to get her back.
“So all this time,” she said slowly, “when you were shutting yourself away from me, it was because you were worried about Sophia?”
He hesitated, then gathered her in his arms. “In… part. The other part, I have no excuse for. I was coming to terms with the fact that Grace betrayed me in the worst way I could imagine, and I knew if you did something similar, I would be broken beyond repair. Grace was one thing, but you were entirely another. I got in my head about it.”
Isadora wiggled free, shuffling back to the other side of the bed and staring at him. “You thought I would take a lover?”
He couldn’t look at her. “I thought if you did, it would crush my soul.”
“Then you might have spoken to me about it!”
He sighed, then murmured, “To do that, I would have to confess that Sophia may not be mine, and to do that, I would have to admit to another soul that such a thing were possible. Already, I could not help looking at her slightly differently, trying to find reasons to believe she was mine, all the while hating myself for needing to.”
“What makes a family is not blood,” Isadora said heatedly. “I am her stepmother, and I love her as though she were my own. If you wanted support or encouragement, you could have come to me. I might have helped.”
“You would have,” he breathed. “I know it. I have no excuse, Dora. No justification. If I could go back, I would change my actions, but I cannot. All I can do is apologize and swear to you—I swear—that I will never do it again.”
Isadora desperately wanted to believe him.
And sitting there, such sincerity in his voice, she believed he truly did mean it.
But what about the next time something devastating happened?
Would he face it alone and shut her out again?
If she kept her distance from him, she could survive it, but if she allowed him to get too close, then—
“I’m not asking for forgiveness right now,” he murmured, as though reading her thoughts.
“I know that is far too much to give, and heaven knows I don’t deserve it.
” He budged closer, taking her hand and pressing it with what almost felt like desperation.
“It’s my fault you were hurt protecting my child when you didn’t even know there was a need to, and I will never forgive myself for that.
Just let me be by your side. Let me prove to you that I mean everything I say. ”
“Our child,” she corrected. “I was protecting our child. The moment you wed me, she became mine, and you keep forgetting, Nicholas. You keep assuming she’s your responsibility alone, but she isn’t.”
“Our child,” he repeated, and a soft smile crept across his face. “Yes.”
“I can’t forgive you right now,” she sighed, and swallowed, pressing a hand to her head. Everything still hurt, and having Nicholas here made the world seem both clearer and less defined. All the things she had taken as certainties over the last few weeks had come crumbling down.
“That’s all right. Can I stay? I can be in the chair beside you if you need.”
She nodded mutely as she climbed under the covers. She didn’t forgive him yet, but that didn’t mean she didn’t crave his closeness. When he held her, she could believe everything would turn out well after all. And it had been so long since he’d last visited her bed.
He slipped under the covers and drew her into the warmth of his body. “Sleep,” he murmured. “I’ll be here when you wake. Tomorrow and all the days after. Nothing but your will can keep me from your side.”
“My… will?”
His nose nuzzled her cheek, then, as though remembering he had not yet been given the right to do that, he retreated again. “If you command me to leave, I will.”
For a moment, she toyed with doing just that.
Just to see if he would keep his word and obey.
But in the end, she wanted him to stay more than she wanted to assert control.
So she allowed him to slide his arm around her waist, sealing her in place.
Warmth surrounded her, and she finally felt at peace.
“Is Sophia yours?” she whispered. “By blood, I mean.”
“I don’t know. I think so, but I suppose I doubt I ever will.
And for a time, I struggled with it… but now I realize how little it matters.
I love her not because she is of my blood, but because she’s my daughter and I have seen her grow and change every day of her life.
” He paused, considering. “And as much as she sometimes feels as though she comes from another planet, I think she feels more like me with every passing year. I think if she were from Sherborne, she would feel different.”
Isadora nodded sleepily. She’d only seen Sherborne for a minute or two, but already she felt certain that Sophia—sweet, gentle Sophia, who loved her kittens and her atlas and her family—could not belong to someone whose soul was so dark and corrupted.
“I’m sorry Grace betrayed you,” she said with a yawn.
He huffed a laugh. “It’s all right, Dora. For a time, it wasn’t, but her actions were never mine to control.”
“I would never betray you in that way,” she said, her voice so soft, it was barely there. “Even when I half-hated you, I never wanted to look elsewhere.” Especially not Mr. Windham, who had so consistently attempted to step between them.
“Half—hated?” he asked with a chuckle. His arms tightened around her. “I know. I trust you. Now sleep.”
I trust you. How easily those words had come to him, and how much that meant, given everything he had faced over the last few weeks. “Why?” she mumbled, sleep almost taking her. “Why now, after you spent so long not trusting me?”
He made a little humming sound in the back of his throat as he kissed her hair, and as she drifted off into dreamland, she almost missed his answer.
“Because I love you.”