Chapter Twenty-Six
Helena did not sleep at all that night.
She lay awake in the small attic room and stared up at the ceiling, her mind turning Isaac's proposal over and over again from every possible angle.
The longer she examined it, the more she wished to believe that it had come from anywhere beyond guilt and obligation. But what man of honour, faced with such a spectacle, would not feel compelled to offer some grand gesture of protection, whatever his true feelings underneath it?
By morning she had convinced herself of this theory, and rose with a heavy, resolved certainty that she owed him the release from whatever obligation had prompted such an extraordinary declaration.
As soon as she was dressed, she went to find Isaac.
He was not, as she expected, in his study reviewing ledgers.
"One of the stable boys said he went down to the western paddock," Mary informed her when Helena stepped into the kitchen.
She headed outside and found Isaac where Mary had said.
She saw that he had discarded his coat over a nearby post. His sleeves were rolled back and he was working alongside two of the stable hands to repair a length of fencing that had evidently given way sometime in the night.
He looked up as she approached, and something in his face eased at the sight of her, though the expression only strengthened her resolve rather than softening it.
"Isaac." She waited until she was close enough to speak without being overheard by the stable hands working a short distance off. “I need to speak with you."
He set down the mallet he'd been using and dismissed the men with a brief word, wiping his hands on a rag before giving her his full attention.
"What's troubling you?"
"The proposal," she said. "I've thought of nothing else since you spoke of it, and I can't allow it to stand, Isaac.
I won't let you sacrifice your future because of pity, or obligation, or whatever sense of honour compelled you to say what you said in front of my father and the whole household.
I can leave quietly. Begin again somewhere else, under some new name, and you can go on with your life exactly as you'd intended before any of this happened to complicate it. "
Isaac's expression shifted rapidly from surprise into something sharper.
"Is that truly what you believe? That I stood in that hall and offered marriage to an earl's daughter, in front of half my own household, out of pity?"
"I think you're an honourable man who felt cornered into defending someone who'd brought scandal to your door, and I think—"
"I think you're wrong."
His voice had risen, frustration breaking through the careful composure he generally maintained.
"Do you truly imagine I'd humiliate myself in front of an earl, who could make considerable trouble for me besides, over nothing more than obligation?
I've spent my whole life avoiding exactly that sort of grand, foolish gesture, Helena.
I don't make promises I don't intend to keep, and I certainly don't make them in front of witnesses unless I mean every word. "
"You deserve someone respectable."
Helena pressed on despite the heat rising in his voice. She had rehearsed this argument through the whole of a sleepless night and could not abandon it now simply because he'd raised his own voice against it.
"Someone society will actually accept, Isaac—a woman who won't bring scandal trailing behind her wherever she goes, who won't cost you whatever fragile respect you've spent months building among people who already looked for any excuse to dismiss you.
You've fought too hard for what little standing you've earned.
I won't be the reason it's taken from you. "
"Have you been blind these past months?"
The question arrived sharp enough that Helena stopped, startled by the raw edge in his voice. Isaac crossed the remaining distance between them until barely a foot separated them, his eyes holding hers with an intensity that left no room for retreat.
"I don't want someone respectable, Helena. I don't want a woman society approves of, or a match that makes my life simpler, or any of the sensible, cautious things you seem so determined to convince me I ought to want instead."
His voice had dropped now, rough with something he'd plainly been holding back far longer than she'd realised.
"I've been in love with you for longer than I've been willing to admit, even to myself.
Since before the ball, if I'm honest—since that ridiculous dance lesson when I couldn't stop watching your hands instead of my own feet, since the barn, since every evening you sat across from me in that study teaching me which fork belonged where and making me laugh harder than I'd laughed in years.
I didn't choose it, and God knows I tried talking myself out of it more times than I can properly count, given every sensible reason standing between us.
But it happened regardless, and I'm done pretending otherwise, whatever your father or society or anyone else has to say about it. "
Helena stood still, the whole of her carefully rehearsed argument dissolving into silence, unable to summon a single word in response.
"Say something," Isaac said, quieter now, some of the fierceness draining from his voice as he studied her stunned expression.
She could not. Instead, the tears she had been fighting through the whole of the previous sleepless night finally broke free, spilling down her face.
Isaac's own expression shifted at once into something gentler, his hand rising to brush the tears from her cheek with a tenderness that only made them fall faster.
"Titles don't matter to me," he said softly.
"Scandal doesn't matter. Whatever gossip follows us through every drawing room in England—none of it matters, Helena, not if the alternative is losing you.
I'd rather face every closed door in the whole of society with you beside me than live safely and respectably without you.
I've made my choice. I only need to know whether you're willing to make yours. "
Helena, through her tears, found she could not have imagined, in all her months of careful hiding and careful lying and careful guarding of her own heart against exactly this kind of surrender, a truer answer than the one that finally, simply, rose up in her.
"I am," she whispered. "I've been yours for longer than I dared admit, either."
The silence that followed stretched thin, vibrating with the confession. Even the crickets in the hedgerow seemed to pause.
Isaac stepped forward, closing the distance between them, and as he did, Helena reached up, wrapping her hands around his neck.
He responded by putting his own arms around her waist as his lips found hers.
As they kissed, Isaac guided her against the wooden fence, and she felt the cool wood against her back. His hands moved over her chest, cupping her breasts under the fabric of her dress. Helena tangled her fingers in his hair and pulled him closer, her tongue sweeping into his mouth.
She slid her hand down between his legs, cupping the heavy bulge straining against the front of his breeches.
Isaac groaned, his hips jerking forward involuntarily.
He then reached down, gathering her skirts in his fists, and the air rushed against her legs, cool and shocking.
Helena shivered, stepping out of her undergarments with clumsy haste, kicking them aside into the tall grass.
Isaac dropped to his knees and grasped her thighs, pulling them apart, and buried his face in the heat of her. Helena cried out, her head falling back against the fence, her fingers tangling in his hair, holding him to her.
Isaac thrust his tongue into her sex, his nose pressed against her clit. Helena's thigh trembled as her breath caught in her chest.
"Isaac," she moaned. "I want you inside me."
He pulled back and stood up, his breath coming in harsh gasps, as he fumbled with the falls of his breeches.
Helena watched him, her chest heaving. Then, with her back still pressed against the wooden post, she lifted one leg, hooking it around his waist, opening herself to him completely.
Isaac stepped forward, aligning himself with her entrance, and then he slid into her inch by inch.
Helena gasped, her nails digging into his shoulders through his shirt.
Isaac groaned, burying his face in the crook of her neck. He held himself there for a moment, and then he began to move.
He pulled out almost all the way, leaving just the tip inside, then pushed back in. The force of his thrust lifted Helena. Her leg tightened around his waist, pulling him in. She could feel herself tightening around him, her muscles fluttering and spasming.
Isaac then reached between them, his fingers finding the hard nub of her clit. He rubbed it in tight circles, matching the rhythm of his hips.
"Come for me," he commanded, his voice rough.
Helena shattered, her back arching as a silent scream tore from her throat.
Moments later, Isaac groaned, his hips jerking as he pushed into her one last time.
He came hard, collapsing against her, his head against her chest.
They stayed like that for a long moment, slumped against the fence, their hearts hammering against each other's ribs. The only sounds were their heavy breathing and the distant hoot of an owl in the woods.
Isaac rested his forehead against hers, but he did not pull out, and she did not want him to.
He let out a shaky laugh, his fingers tracing the line of his jaw.
"Well," he whispered, his voice hoarse. "That was certainly... improper."
Helena smiled as she kissed him softly. "I have no intention of being proper ever again," she murmured against his lips. "Not with you."