Chapter 18
James had been waiting for it.
He had known it was coming from the moment William’s carriage rolled down the drive. He had seen it in the quiet of his best friend’s arrival, the way he had assessed Ashbourne.
He had given it two hours. William had given it ninety minutes, which was either impressive restraint or evidence that the drawing room had not provided an earlier opportunity.
“Drink?” James offered, moving to the decanter.
“It is three in the afternoon.”
“I’m aware. Drink?”
William sat. “Yes, fine.”
James poured, handed William a glass, and settled in the chair across from him with the ease of a man in his own study who had nothing on his conscience.
This was not entirely accurate, but he felt the presentation was solid.
William looked at his glass.
“How is it?” he asked. The light, casual register of a man beginning somewhere unintimidating before going where he actually intended to go.
James recognized this approach. He had been on the receiving end of it for fifteen years.
“Well,” he answered.
“The household.”
“Settling. The servants have found their feet. Henderson has the estate matters largely in hand.”
“And the child?”
“She is discovering her voice and using it well, especially against bath times,” James said, unable to keep the smile off his face. He looked at his glass. “Violet seems untroubled by the diplomatic consequences.”
William made a sound that was almost a laugh. “And Isadora?”
A pause.
“She is well,” James said. “She has—she has taken to it. The household, Violet. She is—” He stopped. “She is well.”
William glanced up at him. “Right.”
“She has reorganized the nursery, which the nurse says has improved considerably, and she has plans for the kitchen garden in spring. She hosted a dinner last week that Lady Eversleigh apparently described to half the county as the best evening Ashbourne has produced in a decade. So, well.”
William continued looking at him with the expression he had been wearing for approximately thirty seconds.
“James.”
“William.”
“How is it, really?”
James looked at the fire. “It is more—The arrangement is working. Everything is as expected.” He said it with conviction.
William did not respond. He simply sat there with the silence that did not press but did not leave, the silence that said, I am not going anywhere and I have excellent patience, and you know it.
James had hated this silence since he was seventeen.
“There is something that you are not saying,” William remarked.
“I have said everything relevant.”
“You have said everything true. That is different from everything relevant.”
James looked at him.
William met the look without flinching.
“Have you started to feel something? For my sister?” William asked, choosing his words in a way that made each one carry its full weight.
The room was very quiet.
James held his gaze for precisely one beat too long before he said, “No.”
William’s expression did not change.
“Nothing has changed,” James continued. “The arrangement is exactly what it is—practical. She understands it, and so do I, and it is… it is working.”
“You paused,” William noted.
“I was considering the question.”
“You paused,” William repeated in the same tone. “You, who have never needed more than half a second to give an answer to anything in fifteen years of friendship, paused.”
James looked at the fire. “The arrangement,” he said, “is practical.”
“You have said the word ‘practical’ two times in two minutes.” William leaned forward, his forearms on his knees. “James, look at me.”
He did.
“She is my sister, not a solution or a convenient arrangement. My sister, who grew up watching love become something painful and who has spent every year since building walls around herself because of it.” William held his gaze.
“If something has changed, if you are feeling things that you are not saying, you need to be honest about them. Not with me, but with her.” A pause.
“Because I will not have her living in a house with a man who knows he feels something and says nothing, and I will not have her being the last person to find out.”
The words hung heavily in the air.
James said nothing. He looked at the glass in his hand. At the fire. At the middle distance between them, where the conversation was currently residing, and where he would rather leave it.
“Has she said anything to Cecily?” he asked.
“No.” William shook his head. “She has said almost nothing about the marriage.” A pause.
“Which is, if I’m being honest, what worries me most.” He sat back.
“Isadora becomes very quiet and very competent when she is unhappy. She manages everything around her perfectly and says nothing about herself.” He looked at James.
“You know her well enough to know that I’m right. ”
James ran a hand through his hair.
He did know. He knew it with a precision that was in itself an answer to the question William had asked four minutes ago, and they both knew it, and neither of them said so.
“The dinner went well,” he said as a diversion.
“I heard.”
“Lady Ashfield—”
“I heard that too.” William picked up his glass. “James.”
“I know,” James exhaled. “I know.”
William held his gaze for a long moment. Then he released a breath, sat back, and looked at the fire, saying nothing.
* * *
Violet had been settled into the basket by the fire, one small fist curled near her cheek, and Mrs. Plum had been dispatched to find Eleanor and Thomas something that would keep them occupied and, ideally, silent.
The result was a drawing room that contained, for the first time in two hours, only the three of them.
“Tell me about James,” Cecily demanded, the moment Mrs. Plum had gone and the door had clicked shut behind her.
“There is nothing to tell.”
“There is clearly something to tell. You’ve gone a particular shade of pink.” Letitia tucked her feet beneath her on the settee.
“It’s warm in here.”
“It is not warm in here.” Letitia looked at Cecily. “Is it warm in here?”
“Not especially,” Cecily replied, watching Isadora over her cup.
Isadora looked at the fire instead of either of them.
“Are you happy, Izzy?” Cecily asked, her voice gentle.
A lump suddenly formed in Isadora’s throat. She swallowed and forced a smile. “Yes.”
Isadora glanced at Violet, asleep in her basket, one fist curled by her cheek, entirely indifferent to the conversation being conducted above her.
“I’m happier than I expected to be,” she admitted.
“I did not think I would enjoy any of it. The household—all of it. I thought I would manage it, the way one manages an obligation.” She nodded toward the basket.
“I like looking after her more than I thought I would. I did not think I’d be any good at it. ”
“You’re wonderful at it.”
That coaxed a small smile from her, which Letitia seemed to take as encouragement, because she pressed on before Isadora had a chance to redirect the conversation.
“And James?”
Isadora hesitated.
“I enjoy his company,” she said finally. “Despite myself.”
“Despite yourself,” Letitia repeated, looking delighted.
“It was not meant to be a confession.”
“It was an excellent confession. I’m only sorry Cecily did not have anything to wager on it. She’d have won.”
Isadora set down her cup. “It’s foolish,” she said, half to herself.
“What is?”
“Lately, it feels as though something is… changing. Between us.” She shook her head, as if she could dislodge the thought by physical effort alone. “I know it should not. I know what this is. What it was always meant to be.”
Letitia and Cecily exchanged a glance that Isadora did not entirely catch, and was glad she did not.
“Do you want it to change?” Letitia asked.
The question landed with more weight than its size should have allowed. Isadora felt it settle somewhere beneath her ribs.
“No,” she said too quickly.
She heard herself speaking before she’d had a chance to actually consider the question. She pressed on regardless, as though saying it faster might make it truer.
“No. It’s safer this way. Whatever this is between us, it has to stay exactly as it began. Practical. Controlled. That was the agreement, and the agreement is what makes it bearable.”
“Bearable,” Cecily said quietly. It was not quite a question.
“Workable,” Isadora corrected, though she was no longer certain there was a meaningful difference between the two words, or why she had reached for the second one as though it were safer than the first.
Cecily turned her teacup slowly in its saucer, her lips pursed. “Feelings rarely remain controlled forever, Izzy,” she murmured.
“They can.”
“Can they?”
Isadora didn’t answer that.
“In my experience, they tend to do exactly as they like, regardless of what arrangement we’ve made with ourselves about them.”
Isadora did not answer that either. Instead, she looked at Violet, unaware that the woman watching over her was doing the same thing she had watched her own mother do for years—building something that looked like love from the outside and calling it anything else so that it could never be used against her.
She had seen what happened when a heart went unguarded in that house. She had spent years learning the precise architecture of how to keep her own from making the same mistake.
Trusting it now, after everything, still felt like the more dangerous thing by far.
The fire crackled in the grate. Letitia, sensing that this was not a thread to pull further just yet, reached over and refilled her cup without being asked.