Chapter 32
“You are taking my sister,” Letitia said, appearing in the entrance hall with her arms folded. “I want it noted that I am deeply unbothered by this turn of events.”
“You look very unbothered,” Isadora drawled.
“I am. I am completely at peace with returning to an empty wing and a desolate window and no one to discuss books with.” Letitia waved a hand. “Take her. I don’t need her.”
“You cried last night,” Isadora reminded her.
“I did not cry. I had something in my eyes.”
“Both eyes?”
“It was a very pervasive thing.” Letitia lifted her chin with great dignity, then abandoned it entirely and stepped forward to embrace her sister. “Visit soon,” she murmured into her shoulder. “And write. Properly, not just notes.”
“I will write properly,” Isadora promised.
“With details.”
“With details.”
“All of them.” Letitia pulled back and looked at her with bright eyes.
William stepped forward, Cecily beside him. He shook James’s hand, which lasted slightly longer, and communicated in the specific pressure of it everything the past two days had contained and everything that did not need to be said.
“James,” he said.
“Thank you. For coming to me. For—” James took a deep breath. “I needed to hear it.”
“I know you did.” William nodded. “I am glad you came.”
They looked at each other for a moment, with all the history and the difficulty and the friendship that had survived both.
“Look after her,” William said.
“Every day,” James vowed.
William looked at him. Whatever he found there satisfied him, because he nodded once and stepped back. Then he turned to Isadora and hugged her.
Cecily was last. She held Isadora’s hands and looked at her warmly.
“Well?” she prompted softly.
“Well,” Isadora said.
Cecily smiled. “Good. That’s all. Just good.” She squeezed her hands once and then released them.
The carriage was warm, and the roads were wet from the storm. James sat beside Isadora rather than across from her. Every few minutes, his gaze would find her, rest there, and then flicker away again with a small smile.
“What?” she asked.
“What what?”
“You are looking at me.”
“I am allowed to look at my wife.”
“You have been doing it every four minutes since we left Blackmoor.” She blushed.
He smirked. “I spent days not being able to look at you. I am making up for them.”
She looked out the window, feeling warm in a way that had nothing to do with the carriage.
Briggs met them at the door. “Your Grace,” he greeted James, then turned and bowed his head to Isadora with warmth that made her stare. “Your Grace.”
“How is she?” Isadora recovered quickly.
“In high spirits, Your Grace. She has been conducting experiments with her breakfast.”
“Successful ones?”
“Largely on the floor, Your Grace.”
“I’ll go up shortly,” she said, feeling relief wash over her.
They were barely through the door when James said, “Come with me. There is something I want to show you first. Before anything else.”
“James, I should see Violet.”
“Five minutes.” He held out his hand. It was becoming impossible to ignore the flutter in her stomach every time she looked at him. “Please.”
She looked at his hand, then took it.
He led her toward the west wing, towards the incomplete library.
James stopped in front of it. He looked at her once and then opened it.
Isadora peeked inside.
The room was now completed, running the full length of the west wing, with windows at both ends that looked out over the grounds on one side and the kitchen garden on the other.
The shelves ran from floor to ceiling on three walls, solid and dark-wooded and built with the care of something made to last. A reading chair sat at an angle that would catch the morning light, and a small, uncluttered desk stood near the south window.
The shelves were full. Not partially full, not arranged with the sparse optimism of a room waiting for its contents to accumulate, but full, properly full, carrying the weight of books collected with attention.
Her feet carried her toward the nearest wall, her hand lifting to run along the spines, and she found that they were arranged not randomly, not alphabetically, but by something else, something that required a moment to decode.
By what she had mentioned.
She could see it. The poets she had quoted, the historians she had referenced in passing, the novels she had described, the philosophers she had mentioned at the supper table during a conversation that had gone in seventeen directions before landing on nothing in particular.
All of it was here, gathered and given space.
She turned.
James was leaning against the doorframe with his arms folded, watching her with quiet amusement. Her heart immediately forgot how to behave.
“Oh, this is more beautiful than I imagined,” she whispered.
“I started it when I told you I would,” he said. “I finished it when you were at Blackmoor.” He paused. “I had a great deal of time in the evenings.”
“The books,” she said. “These are…”
“From the shops on Charing Cross Road, mostly. Some from a dealer Henderson knows.” He looked at the shelves. “I may have been… thorough.”
“James.” She looked at the room. At the window seats. At the chair placed at exactly the angle she would have placed it. “This is…”
“I know it’s not what you had at Blackmoor. The collection there is older and—”
“It’s better than Blackmoor,” she gushed. “It’s better than Blackmoor because someone built it thinking about me.” She turned back to him, looking at him as though seeing him anew. “You built this thinking about me.”
“Yes, there wasn’t much else on my mind.” He smiled.
Her lips curved, and he looked at her with the steady, smitten, entirely unguarded attention he had been giving her since the carriage.
Her smile softened with every passing second.
“Come here.”
James did not ask why. He crossed the room without hesitation until only a breath separated them.
“What is it?”
She reached up and rested a hand against his cheek. “Nothing.” Her thumb brushed lightly across his skin. “I simply wished to look at you a little more closely.”
“Somewhere along the way,” he said quietly, “you stopped being my responsibility, Isadora.”
Her eyes stung again, and a tear spilled down her cheek. He caught it with his thumb, gently. His expression softened with aching tenderness.
“Don’t cry. I’ve seen enough of your tears to last me a lifetime,” he murmured.
“I’m not crying,” she protested.
“You are.”
“It’s only one tear.”
“It is,” he agreed, entirely serious. “A very small and entirely unnecessary tear.”
“It is your fault.” She tapped his chest.
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re not sorry.”
“I’m not sorry,” he agreed, the corner of his mouth lifting.
She pressed her hand against his chest and felt his heartbeat, steady and warm and entirely real, and looked at him with everything she had stopped trying to contain.
“I love you,” she breathed.
“I love you too.” He placed one hand over hers. “I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure you never have reason to doubt it.”
“That is a very big promise.”
“I am aware.” He held her gaze. “I intend to keep it.”
She looked at him, at the face she was falling in love with all over again, and kissed him.
He kissed her back, with one hand on her face and the other on her waist, drawing her closer.
She pressed closer, letting him cherish her in the morning light of the room he had built thinking about her, and she felt, for the first time since this had all begun, at home.