Chapter 26
“Mrs. Farrow wanted to know about the pheasant,” Mrs. Holt said, appearing in the breakfast room, not looking entirely too pleased about relaying this information. “For Thursday.”
“The pheasant,” Isadora repeated.
“Whether you wished to continue with it or whether you had preferences about the preparation.” Mrs. Holt stepped further into the room and set a small list on the table beside the coffee pot. “Mrs. Farrow has opinions about the sauce.”
“Mrs. Farrow has quite the array of options, doesn’t she?”
“She does, Your Grace. They are generally correct, which makes them easier to accommodate.” Mrs. Holt folded her hands. “I told her you would likely defer to her judgment. Was I right?”
Isadora had been in the breakfast room since seven, which was earlier than she usually came down, but sleep had been an unreliable companion for the past several days, and the bed had at some point ceased to feel like a solution and begun to feel like the problem.
“Pheasant is fine. Reserve them,” she instructed. “If His Grace’s plans change, we can always decide otherwise, but the sauce is Mrs. Farrow’s decision entirely.”
“Very good, Your Grace.” Mrs. Holt made a small note.
Isadora reached for Letitia’s letter, which she had read twice already and had left on the table for the company of it, and smiled at the part about the last ball she had attended.
“Oh, Letitia.”
“Is there anything else, Your Grace?”
“Not that I—” She stopped.
She thought about James in his study the morning he had left. His coat, the papers, the focused absence. His mind had already been in London before the carriage had been brought around.
She had been managing not to think about this with reasonable success.
She had noticed, with resigned honesty, how much larger the table felt without him present. How the morning arrangements—the coffee, the correspondence, even the way the light came through the east windows at this hour—remained the same and yet registered differently.
She missed him.
She had been missing him for four days with increasing intensity—not the abstract awareness of an absent household member, but the inconvenient ache for a person whose voice she kept expecting to hear in the corridor and whose chair she kept glancing at for reasons she had stopped justifying to herself.
“Oh dear, this is dreadful.” She shook her head at herself, though she was unable to stop the smile from spreading.
“Your Grace?”
“Nothing,” she said. “No, nothing else. Thank you, Mrs. Holt.”
Mrs. Holt turned to leave, then paused. “Will you want a fresh pot? That one has been sitting for a while.”
Isadora looked at her cup. “Yes,” she said. “Please.”
Mrs. Holt went to arrange it, and the breakfast room settled back into its morning quiet.
Isadora sorted through the remaining correspondence. Two estate matters. A note from Lady Eversleigh about a county meeting she was invited to attend. The morning papers, which Briggs delivered daily regardless of whether anyone read them.
She unfolded the paper and read the agricultural report because it reminded her of James and the steward and their ongoing disagreement about the north field drainage. She allowed herself this small, private indulgence without commentary.
She turned the page.
She almost turned past it.
The column was on the third page, which was where the gossip lived—the devastating observations that London society produced and consumed with the cheerful appetite of people who found other people’s business the most nourishing diet.
Miss Caroline Pembley was observed entering the townhouse of a recently titled duke on Grosvenor Square during the late evening hours of Tuesday last, unchaperoned.
The visit, which lasted approximately one hour, has naturally sparked considerable interest among those acquainted with all parties.
The duke in question, whose recent marriage was itself a matter of surprise to society, was understood to be in London on private business.
Whether the business was of a professional nature remains, one understands, a matter of some debate.
Isadora read it twice. Then she reached for her coffee. She missed the cup entirely and put her hand in the liquid.
“Oh!” She pushed back from the table as the coffee sloshed, catching the cup before it toppled over, and sat there with her hand wet and the paper in her other hand and the words still legible.
Miss Caroline Pembley was observed entering the townhouse of a recently titled duke on Grosvenor Square during the late evening hours of Tuesday last, unchaperoned.
“Your Grace?” Mrs. Holt had reappeared in the doorway with the fresh pot and was looking at the small disaster at the breakfast table with contained alarm.
“I put my hand in the coffee,” Isadora explained.
“I see that, Your Grace.” Mrs. Holt set down the pot, produced a cloth from her pocket, and came forward. “Did you burn your hand?”
“No. It wasn’t hot enough.” Isadora set the paper down and turned it slightly so the words were no longer visible.
Mrs. Holt mopped the spilled coffee. “The cup is fine,” she said, examining it. “No harm done.”
“Good,” Isadora said. “Thank you.”
Mrs. Holt glanced at her. She was too professional to do it twice, but it was there.
“Will there be anything else, Your Grace?”
Isadora looked at the paper.
Unchaperoned. Late evening hours.
“No,” she replied. “Thank you, Mrs. Holt.”
The door closed.
She read the column a third time. She did not know why she did. It did not say anything different on the third reading. It said exactly what it had said the first time.
Her hands shook as she put the paper down. So she folded them in her lap and looked at the window.
She was aware of her own heartbeat. It was quick, erratic, and not entirely comfortable.
Miss Caroline Pembley.
She stood. She sat back down.
She was being… She was being reasonable.
She was looking at a newspaper that employed people specifically to observe and record things that would produce exactly this response in exactly the people most susceptible to it, and she was being entirely reasonable about what she was feeling right now, which was not…
She was not going to think of the word.
She picked up the paper again, then put it back down.
He said it was better if you stayed, she thought, tears already threatening to spill. He was already thinking about London.
That was the thought she had been managing for four days. The quiet, persistent thought she had been embarrassed about, had decided was paranoid and foolish and entirely unworthy of a woman of her intelligence and composure. And now here it was in the morning papers.
She thought about the kiss.
She had been holding the kiss carefully for two weeks, turning it over in the private, unmanaged part of her that she rarely let anyone see. She had kissed him back on the terrace with everything she had.
The warmth that had been sitting in her chest for weeks—the warmth she had finally, reluctantly acknowledged did not disappear. She wished it would. It would have been considerably easier if it had simply packed its things and left.
It remained, and it hurt, which was considerably worse than if it had not been there at all.
Perhaps the kiss was the kind of thing that happened in a charged moment, with the right lighting, and that a man with James’s history did not necessarily carry with him into London the following week.
She opened her eyes and looked at the paper. Then she stood up, this time with finality, and rang for Briggs.
“Briggs,” she said when he appeared.
“Your Grace?”
“Please tell Mrs. Holt to come back up.” She looked at the window. Anywhere except the paper. “Tell her I’ll need my trunks brought down.”
Briggs looked at her for just a moment and then inclined his head. “Yes, Your Grace,” he said. “Of course.”
Mrs. Holt came in, assessed the situation, and asked no questions. The trunks were brought down. The maids came and went with the quiet efficiency of people who had been given a clear task and were executing it without editorializing.
Isadora went through her room and realized that she had not noticed, until this moment, how thoroughly she had stopped being a guest. She went to the dressing table and began collecting her things with brisk movements.
“Your Grace?” Mrs. Holt appeared in the doorway. “The green trunk will be brought shortly. Will you be wanting—”
“I’ll need the carriage brought around,” Isadora cut in. “As soon as possible.”
“Of course.” Mrs. Holt paused briefly. “Shall I send word to Blackmoor?”
“Please.”
“Very good, Your Grace,” she said, before leaving.
Isadora stood in the middle of her room, with a folded dress in her hands and the sound of the maids moving quietly around her. She was perfectly calm.
The tears that arrived were, therefore, unexpected. She pressed the back of her wrist against her face and looked at the ceiling.
She was not going to cry. She was simply making a sensible decision based on available information. She was going to Blackmoor, and she was going to be perfectly fine, and none of this would—
“Your Grace,” Mary called from the doorway, her voice gentle. “The first trunk is ready. Shall we—”
“Yes,” Isadora said evenly. “Yes, go ahead.”
She put the folded dress in the second trunk.
Mrs. Plum appeared in the nursery doorway when Isadora came to collect the few things she had brought from Blackmoor and left there in the early weeks.
“Your Grace?” she asked, her tone hesitant.
“Everything is fine,” Isadora assured her. “I am going to Blackmoor for a short while. You have everything you need?”
“Yes, Your Grace. Shall I—Will you say goodbye to her before you go?”
Isadora stopped and turned.
Violet was in the cradle, awake, looking at the ceiling.
Isadora crossed to the cradle and picked her up. Violet immediately found her face and smiled.
Something in her chest did something complicated and unwelcome.
“Hello,” she said quietly.
Violet grabbed her collar. “Mama.”
Isadora froze, for one suspended heartbeat; she could only stare. Her eyes softened, the tears falling afresh.
“Oh my darling,” Isadora whispered. “I’m coming back. I am—I will be back.”
Violet looked at her with large, trusting eyes.
Isadora held her for a moment, pressing a kiss to her curls and then placed her back in the cradle.
“I’ll be back,” she said again. To the baby, or to herself. Possibly both.
Then she went downstairs.
She was directing the arrangement of the second trunk when she heard the carriage. Not hers. Hers was being brought from the stable and had not yet appeared on the drive. This sound was coming from outside, from the direction of the gate.
She went still. Beside her, Briggs looked at the door.
The door opened, and James came in. He was travel-worn, his coat slightly creased. He handed his hat to the footman with the distracted look of a man whose attention was already somewhere else.
He looked up as he stepped into the entrance hall, and when he spotted her, his face… It lit up. Those were the only words for it. Whatever he had been carrying for four days, all of it simply vanished and was replaced with relief.
It was the most unguarded she had ever seen him.
Then his eyes moved. Past her face to the trunks by the door. To the maids standing by her trunks. To Briggs’s expression, to her buttoned coat, to her gloves.
The expression on his face did not change. It simply… froze, somewhere between the warmth of arriving and the uncertainty of understanding while he read the room.
“What’s happening?” he croaked.
She looked at him across the entrance hall, her chin lifting.
“I am going to Blackmoor,” she announced.