Chapter 3 #3
The thought of anyone looking at Violet and seeing a problem to be managed rather than a child to be protected stirred within him a cold anger that had nothing to do with reputation and everything to do with something older and less manageable.
He moved, almost without thinking, toward the door and out into the corridor, which was dark and cool. The house settled around him in its deep nighttime quiet.
He did not know why he was walking. He walked anyway, because the study had become intolerable and the alternative was standing still.
He reached the foot of the stairs without deciding to and looked up. At the top, a strip of light shone beneath the nursery door, faint and warm.
He went up.
The door was ajar. He stopped at the threshold with his hand raised to knock, registered the quiet inside, and lowered it.
He slowly pushed the door open.
The room was dim—the lamp turned low, the fire a gentle glow, the kind of light that existed for warmth rather than purpose. The nurse’s chair sat empty by the door. The room smelled of milk and lavender and something faintly floral that he could not immediately place.
He found the source of it.
Isadora sat in the chair by the window. She had not heard him. She was entirely elsewhere, angled slightly toward the glass, the dark grounds beyond it invisible in the night, her attention focused on the child in her arms.
She was singing. Very quietly, barely above a breath, more melody than lyric, the kind of sound that was less a song than a texture.
Her dark blonde hair had come loose from its arrangement, the way it always did when she stopped paying attention to it, the soft strands brushing against her cheek and throat. She did not seem to notice.
In the firelight, she looked softer, the careful composure she wore in company entirely absent. What remained was simply her without architecture.
She is, James thought, with the involuntary honesty of a man who had caught himself off guard, quite extraordinarily lovely.
He had always thought her lovely in an abstract sense. He had known it in the peripheral, unexamined way one knew things about people seen too often to look at properly.
Yet tonight, there was something arresting about the sight of her in the firelight.
She had her brother’s dark coloring softened into something more her own with dark blonde hair, blue eyes that missed very little, and an elegance that had nothing to do with fashion and everything to do with the way she occupied a room.
James had simply never stood still long enough to notice.
She was looking at Violet, who was already sleeping, the way she looked at things she cared about—directly and without pretense, with the entirety of her attention.
James lingered in the doorway. He had come up to check on the baby. That was all. That was his intention.
He looked at the two of them, at Isadora’s bowed head, at the unselfconscious gentleness of her hands, at the sleeping weight of the baby who had no one in the world but the people willing to stand between her and it, and something suddenly shifted in the architecture of his thinking.
How did I not see it before?
The thought came with a kick to his pulse. He stood very still and let it return to normal.
Isadora was already here. She already knew the child, already held her with ease as if she had been doing it for years rather than hours.
She was William’s sister, steady, principled, impossible to rattle, and constitutionally incapable of doing anything with less than her whole attention.
She was of impeccable family, excellent character, and had no more appetite for the performance of society than he did on his best days.
He had known her almost all her life.
Isadora glanced up. He looked at her long enough that something shifted in her expression.
“James.”
His name, without the title, without the formality. She said it the way she said most things—directly, as though it were simply the most accurate word available.
“How did I not see it before?” he muttered to himself.
She frowned. “See what?”
He did not answer immediately. He was still looking at her—at the baby asleep against her shoulder, at the loose strands of hair against her cheek, at the steady, non-performative warmth of her in a room that had been cold for two weeks.
“I think,” he said slowly, his gaze fixed on her face, “I have just found the answer to all my problems.”
Silence ensued.
Isadora looked at him like she was not sure she had heard correctly.
“I beg your pardon?”
He crossed the room and stopped before her chair, close enough that she had to crane her neck to look him in the eye, close enough that he could see her lips part in confusion.
Her chin lifted slightly, and her arms tightened almost imperceptibly around Violet.
The lamp burned between them. The fire settled in the grate. Outside, Ashbourne was dark in every direction, and the only sound in the room was the soft breathing of a baby who had fallen asleep, trusting that the arms holding her would still be there when she woke.
The silence stretched.
“Will you marry me, Isadora?” he asked.