Chapter Twenty-One
The next day they were due back at Rowan Hall. And although the storm had passed, in its place low clouds had settled along with a constant drizzle.
On their way home, Isaac and Tom in the front carriage with Mary and Nell following behind, Isaac could not get his mind off the day before.
He had stopped things in time, before either of them had gone as far as the moment's heat had seemed to promise. Yet, part of Isaac still didn't know how he had managed to do it. It had taken every inch of willpower he possessed to walk away from her.
It was the right thing.
He'd been repeating this to himself like a mantra. Hoping that if he thought it enough, he might believe it. And part of him did.
Nell had asked for no promises and no tomorrows. But even through his burning desire for her, he hadn't been able to let go of the fact there was a tomorrow, and that when that day arrived, they would be left with the consequences.
He hated disappointing her, and he hated himself for allowing himself to get swept up in her. But what he hated the most was that he did not know how to explain. Because he had wanted her then, and he wanted her now, but not like that.
There had been very few people in Isaac's life who saw him the way Nell did. Few people who had ever seen the worth in him outside a boxing ring. He cared about her too much to treat her as though she were owed nothing better than a single night with no promises.
Nell was not a tavern girl, nor some passing amusement to be enjoyed and set aside once the storm broke and the ordinary world came rushing back in.
Whatever she was to him, she deserved to be wanted for more than the taking of her. And he would never have forgiven himself if she woke up the next day believing herself merely used.
But Isaac did not know how to say any of that aloud, and so he had said nothing. Even though he knew his silence would likely cost him more than any explanation would have.
***
Whitby and Mrs Ellis were waiting on the front steps by the time their small, muddy party finally came up the drive.
"My Lord," Whitby said. "We had word of the storm from a rider out of the village yesterday, and feared the roads might delay you."
"They were slippery," Isaac replied. "But we managed."
"Thank heaven for that."
Mrs Ellis was already bustling forward, her attention shifting briskly from Isaac to the two young women behind him, her housekeeper's eye taking in mud-spattered hems and shadowed, weary faces.
"Look at the state of you both. Go on up and wash the worst of the journey off before you catch your deaths—Mary, see that Nell gets something hot into her first, she looks fair worn through."
"Yes, Mrs Ellis."
Mary's voice carried its usual warmth, though she cast a brief, searching glance toward Nell that suggested she had noticed more than the simple exhaustion of a night's storm.
Nell murmured something too quiet for Isaac to catch, then turned to follow Mary up the front steps and into the house without once letting her eyes find his.
He watched her disappear through the doorway, her shoulders held very straight, her pace just quick enough to look unhurried without actually being so, and felt something twist uncomfortably in his chest.
It was a stab of hurt that he knew he had no earthly right to feel, given that he was the one who'd drawn back the night before. And yet, he felt it keenly all the same.
"My Lord?" Whitby's voice recalled him to himself. "Mr Fletcher called twice yesterday while you were away and left word he'd return again this afternoon, should you be back in time to receive him."
"Send him up to the study when he arrives," Isaac said as he made his own way inside.
***
The afternoon proved no better. Isaac retreated to the study intending to make some genuine progress through the week's accumulated correspondence and estate ledgers and instead found himself staring at the same column of figures for the better part of an hour without once managing to make sense of a single line.
His mind returned, again and again, to the Dowager's house, to the look on Nell's face when he had stopped them.
I should just go and explain, he reasoned with himself. Tell her that I respect her too much to take something so important from her without something in return.
And yet as much as he willed his legs to pick him up and carry him to her, they did not.
Tom found him there sometime past three o'clock, still staring at the same open ledger.
"How long have you been standing there?" Isaac grumbled.
"Long enough to know that either the numbers have grown considerably more fascinating than usual, or something's troubling you rather more than a ledger's got any business troubling a man."
Isaac said nothing as he leaned back in his chair, running his hands down his face.
"So?" Tom pressed, settling into the chair across the desk. "Which is it?"
Isaac closed the ledger, exhaling heavily.
"I need to tell you something," he said finally. "And I'd ask you not to interrupt until I've finished, because I'm not certain I'll manage to say the whole of it if you do."
Tom's expression sobered, and he nodded once, settling back in his chair with an attentiveness that told Isaac his old friend understood, even before a word of it had been spoken, that this was not a conversation to be taken lightly.
Isaac told him everything leading up to exactly what had happened in the Dowager's cottage the day before.
"I don't know what to do, Tom."
The admission came out rougher than he intended, and he found himself unable to sit still a moment longer, rising to pace the length of the study rather than remain seated beneath his friend's steady, considering gaze.
"She's a servant in my household and I'm a baron—whatever poor fit I make for the title most days. The difference in our stations makes the entire business inappropriate, whatever I happen to feel, and I feel—"
He stopped, exhaled again.
"I feel a great deal more than I've any right to feel, if I'm honest with myself."
Tom was quiet for a long moment after Isaac finally fell silent, turning the whole confession over with a seriousness that carried none of his usual easy humour.
"I don't know what advice to give you," he finally admitted.
"I'll say that plainly, because I don't think you'd believe me if I pretended otherwise.
I've never once in my life had to weigh a woman against a title, seeing as I've never held one, and I won't insult you by claiming I understand the whole of what you're wrestling with. "
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his expression more serious than Isaac had seen it in some while.
"But I'll tell you this much. Neither of our lives has ever followed the rules other men live by, Isaac.
You were meant to die in some London gutter, by every reasonable expectation, and instead you're sitting in the House of Lords arguing policy with men twice your birth.
Rules never had much use for either of us.
I don't see why they ought to start mattering now, if what you feel for that girl is real. "
"And if it isn't?"
Isaac stopped his pacing, turning to face his friend fully.
"If I'm only fooling myself, seeing something in her that isn't truly there, because I'm lonely, or because she's the first person in this whole business who's ever looked at me without either fear or contempt in her eyes?"
"That’s the risk every man must make when it comes to love. But that’s why it’s important to be sure. A man cannot undo a marriage, and I’d never suggest anything less with a woman like Nell."
Tom shrugged, though the gesture carried more weight than its casualness suggested.
"But pretending you don't feel what you feel won't make it smaller, Isaac.
It'll only make it worse, festering away under all that careful denial until it comes out sideways some day you're least prepared for it.
Better to know plainly what's in your own chest than spend years lying to yourself about it. "
He paused.
"That said—be careful. If you do wish to marry her and she doesn't feel the same, you'll have made a fool of yourself with a servant in your own household, and that's the kind of thing that follows a man.
And when society gets wind of this kind of union, you'll both find your lives more complicated than either wants.
There's a great deal that could go wrong here, whatever's true in your heart. "
"I know it."
Isaac dropped back into his chair, the whole weight of the past weeks settling over him with a fresh heaviness.
"I can't stop thinking about her, Tom. I've tried. God knows I've tried, and I don't trust my own judgment anymore where she's concerned—can't tell anymore whether I'm thinking clearly or simply telling myself whatever lets me keep her close."
"Then follow your conscience," Tom said simply. "Same as you've always done, whatever the ring or the House of Lords or anyone else expected of you instead. But go in with your eyes open, Isaac. Whatever happens next, be ready for it."
Isaac was still turning the advice over, no closer to any real resolution than he'd been at the start of the conversation, when a heavy knock sounded at the front door below, loud enough to carry clearly up through the study's open window.
He thought little of it at first. After all, callers arrived at Rowan Hall regularly enough these days, tenants and tradesmen and the occasional neighbouring landowner.
But the particular hurried quality of Whitby's footsteps in the corridor a few minutes later, followed by a knock at the study door itself, told him this caller was rather more urgent than the ordinary run of afternoon business.
"My Lord," Whitby said.
"What is it?" Just then a lean, weathered man in a plain travelling coat appeared behind Whitby. "This gentleman requests a private word, My Lord. He says the matter concerns a household affair of some delicacy."
Isaac exchanged a brief glance with Tom before nodding.
A moment later, Whitby withdrew, closing the door behind him with evident reluctance and leaving the stranger alone with the two of them.
"Forgive the intrusion, My Lord."
The man's voice carried a flat, professional courtesy that put Isaac immediately on guard.
"My name is of no particular consequence. But I've been engaged by certain interested parties in London to make inquiries throughout the northern counties, in connection with a reward offered for information."
"What sort of information?"
The man reached into his coat and withdrew a small, folded paper, unfolding it with careful, deliberate hands before laying it on the desk before them both.
"A young woman, My Lord. Lady Helena Winford, daughter of the Earl of Winford, has been missing from London for several months.
The reward for information leading to her discovery is considerable, and I've reason to believe she may have passed through this county, or perhaps taken up residence somewhere nearby, under an assumed name. "
Isaac looked down at the drawn portrait and felt the whole study tilt, slightly, around him.
The hair in the portrait fell longer, dressed in some elaborate style he had no name for, and the woman wore silk and pearls unlike anything he had ever seen on the servant he knew.
But the face beneath it all, the particular set of the eyes, the line of the jaw, the mouth that curved just so when something genuinely amused her, was unmistakable.
Memory after memory came rushing back at once, arriving with a force that left him briefly unable to speak: Her voice, too refined for any servant's, however carefully she flattened it.
Her flawless knowledge of etiquette, wines, ballroom customs, all of it explained now in a single devastating instant.
Her hands, soft beneath their new blisters, never once marked by real labour before she'd come to Rowan Hall.
Her terror in the market square, the colour draining from her face at a stranger's casual recognition.
He looked up slowly to find Tom already staring at the portrait himself, having taken it up from the desk to study it more closely. His own expression was moving through the same rapid progression of shock and dawning, undeniable recognition that Isaac felt working through him.
Tom lifted his eyes at last, and across the study, in the fading afternoon light, the two old friends held each other's gaze in a long, wordless silence of understanding.