Chapter 27
“What do you mean you’re going to Blackmoor?”
The excitement running through him quickly fizzled out.
He had been absurdly pleased by the thought of surprising Isadora by arriving earlier. He had even found himself smiling as the carriage turned beneath the familiar stone archway.
Hearing her say those words felt like icy water poured over his warm heart.
“I mean,” Isadora said coldly, “that I am returning to Blackmoor.”
He searched her face for a sign that this was a dreadful joke. There was none.
“What did you say?”
“You heard me.”
“I must have misunderstood.”
“You did not.”
He stared at her. The hall suddenly felt impossibly warm. The maids and footmen scurried away.
“Why?” He looked at the trunks. At her face.
He had come home from London with a letter in his breast pocket that he had written and revised and nearly sent three times before deciding the words needed to be said in person.
He had left the reverend’s house at four in the morning because waiting until a reasonable hour felt suddenly impossible. He had spent four hours in a carriage thinking about what he was going to say when he walked through the door.
He had not prepared for this.
“I’ve been gone four days. Everything between us was… What could possibly have—”
He took a step toward her.
“What has happened?” he asked.
It was not a question exactly, more a statement that asked for the room to explain itself.
“You truly do not know?”
“No.”
Her lips parted slightly before closing again. For a moment, she seemed almost disappointed that he had asked.
Without another word, she reached for the newspaper lying on the table. She folded it open with deliberate care before holding it out to him. “Read.”
James frowned and took it. His eyes fell on the gossip column.
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.
He felt the blood drain from his face. “Oh.”
His eyes skimmed over the rest of the article. By the time he reached the end, he already understood.
He looked up. “Isadora—”
“You don’t need to explain. I wondered how long it would take before I found your name in one of the gossip columns again.”
“It isn’t what it sounds like.”
“Isn’t it?” she hissed.
“No.” He dropped the newspaper on the table. “I need to explain immediately. She arrived without—”
“James.” Her voice was so level that it was almost frightening. “Please don’t.”
“She arrived without warning.”
She laughed quietly. It was not a pleasant sound.
“How unfortunate.”
“I did not invite her.”
“So she simply wandered into your townhouse?”
“I was staying there.”
“And she happened to call.”
“She arrived without an invitation,” he insisted. “Fenwick told me she was in the drawing room when I came home. I had not asked her to be there, and I did not want her there. I spent twenty minutes making that entirely clear, and then she left. That is everything that occurred.”
“Twenty minutes,” Isadora said.
“Yes.”
“Alone without a chaperone.”
“Yes, but—”
“In your drawing room.” A pause. “In the evening. Do you understand how this sounds, James?”
“I understand how it appears.”
“I imagine congratulations are in order,” she scoffed.
He frowned. “For what?”
“Your freedom.” She said it lightly.
He stared at her. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
She gave a laugh. The sound of it did something to him he was not prepared for.
“No,” she said quietly. “I suppose you wouldn’t.”
“Isadora—”
“I should have remembered what this marriage was.” She clasped her hands together in front of her. He could see the slight tension in them, the effort of keeping them still. “An arrangement, nothing more. I should have… I should have held onto that more carefully.”
“You think I went to London to see Caroline Pembley.”
“I think you went to London, and she was there the following evening.” She looked at a point past his shoulder. “What I think beyond that is irrelevant.”
“It is entirely relevant.”
“Please don’t insult us both by denying it.”
“I am not denying anything because there is nothing to deny.” He took another step towards her. “She came. I sent her away. That is the complete and accurate account, and I need you to look at me while I say it.”
She did not look at him.
“Look at me,” he pressed.
She shook her head.
“Isadora.” He took another step forward.
He was close enough now that he could see what the composed expression was costing her, the slight color across the bridge of her nose, the sheen in her eyes.
“I did not invite her. I do not want her. I have not wanted her or anyone else since—” He broke off.
The words were right there. He had been carrying them for hours.
“Since before you would be comfortable hearing.”
She looked at him then.
“You have spent years wanting women like Caroline Pembley, so forgive me if I find it difficult to believe that this occasion was somehow different.”
“It was.”
“Why?”
Because I have not been the same man since you became my wife. You are the only woman who matters to me.
The words struck him with such force that he almost spoke them aloud. His heart pounded against his ribs.
He looked at her. She was waiting.
He only had to say it. He only had to tell her the truth.
“I…” His voice faltered.
She watched him for another moment before looking away.
“I told myself I understood what this was.” Her voice was still even.
It was the evenness of something held with great effort.
“I told myself I expected nothing beyond… beyond the arrangement. Beyond what we agreed on.” Something moved through her expression.
“The unfortunate thing about expectations is that the heart rarely consults them.”
The words landed hard.
He opened his mouth.
“I am not finished,” she cut him off, her voice cracking on the last word.
“I knew who you were. I have known who you were for years. Charming and careless and… and brilliant at making people feel as though they are the only thing in the room. I knew that. I had cataloged it.” Her jaw tightened.
“And I let myself believe that it was different. That I was…”
She smiled then. It was the saddest smile he had ever seen.
“That was my mistake. I am not… I am not blaming you for it. You told me plainly what this was. You told me that it would not be romantic, and I told you myself that the marriage was not real. You agreed with me, because it was true, and then I—” She looked away.
“And then I behaved as though none of it was true, which was foolish. I would simply like to go to Blackmoor now.”
“You are not foolish,” he protested.
“James…” Another tear slid down her cheek. She brushed it away with the back of her hand almost impatiently, as though annoyed by her own weakness.
He looked into her eyes. They were glistening with unshed tears.
Another tear escaped despite her efforts to stop it. Then another. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, blinking furiously.
His heart lurched painfully.
God, he wanted to hold her. To pull her against his chest until she ceased trembling, to run a hand through her hair, to whisper that she did not need to doubt him ever again, to cradle her face in his hands and wipe away every tear before it had the chance to fall
Yet he remained where he was, rooted to the spot by the terrible knowledge that she was crying because of him.
She turned her face away from him, not because she was angry, but because she did not want him to see her cry.
Something inside him unraveled.
Her nose, he noticed, was slightly red at the tip. She had been crying before he arrived. Alone in this house. And all of it, every bit of it, was because of him.
She was in pain because of him.
He felt it like something physical. Not guilt, exactly. It was older and more specific, the recognition of a man who had done the thing he was most afraid of doing, which was hurting the person he was least willing to hurt.
“It’s the nondeliberate hurting I’d watch out for. The slow one. The one where you do not decide anything at all…”
William’s voice echoed in his mind with cruel clarity.
Standing here now, watching Isadora struggle to contain tears he had caused, he could no longer dismiss it.
He had spent years building a reputation for faithlessness. Now, the woman he loved could not distinguish the truth from the lies others expected of him.
And why should she? He had given the world every reason to believe the worst of him.
“I am sorry,” he said quietly.
She laughed through her tears. “So am I.”
“No.”
She closed her eyes. “I cannot do this anymore, James.”
He stood perfectly still.
If he loved her, if he truly loved her, how could he ask her to spend the rest of her life doubting him? How could he ask her to carry the burden of a reputation he had earned long before she entered his life?
Perhaps William had been right. What if this was simply what he did? What if the man who had moved through his adult life without accumulating anything he couldn’t leave behind was not someone who had changed but had found a more expensive version of the same pattern?
Perhaps loving him would always require more pain than joy.
Perhaps Isadora deserved a man whose loyalty was never questioned. A man who had not spent years becoming the villain of every gossip column.
The confession died on his lips.
Isadora deserved the kind of love she had always believed in. Standing there, he did not know whether he was capable of offering it without eventually proving her worst fears correct.
The silence stretched.
Isadora looked at him for a long moment. Hope lingered in her eyes for just a heartbeat longer. Then it faded.
“I understand,” she said softly.
No, James thought desperately. You do not.
But he did not stop her.
She picked up her gloves and bonnet and turned toward the door.
“Isadora.” It came out rougher than he had intended.
She stopped but did not turn.
“Violet,” she said shakily. “Don’t let anyone take her. Whatever Mortimer does, whatever the letters say or the courts decide, don’t let anyone take her away.”
James closed his eyes. When he answered, his voice was scarcely more than a whisper. “Never.”
“She needs—” A pause. “She needs people who come back. Who stay.” She stopped. “Make sure she has that.”
He could not answer.
A single tear fell onto the polished floor between them. Then she walked out of the house.
James remained where he was, listening as the footman handed her into the carriage and closed the door behind her. He stood in the entrance hall and listened to the crunch of gravel and then the clip-clop of horses’ hooves and then silence.
Briggs materialized, his head deeply bowed. “Your Grace,” he said. “Shall I have your bags taken upstairs?”
James nodded once. “Yes. Thank you, Briggs.”
He went to the window and stared down the drive. It was full, the elms on either side of it blossoming now at the end of August, the gravel pale in the morning light.
He thought about the pain in Isadora’s eyes, about the tears she could not hold back. He thought about the letter in his breast pocket.
He ran a hand through his hair, his eyes stinging with tears.
He had let her go.
He stood at the window for a very long time, looking at the empty drive and feeling the heavy regret of having said nothing when he had everything to say.