Was life a game? Was she a puppet?
Forgetting was like starting over, like erasing all those bad decisions and things she’d wished she could have changed, like rewriting it all.
For a moment, she wondered if that was all she really wanted. To forget.
Chapter 14
There was no possible way that the clock, situated on the mantle across the room, highlighted by the faint light streaming in, was accurate.
And yet, the drapes were pulled closed, and Isabelle felt refreshed in a way she hadn’t felt in a very long time. Or at least, in her memory, which admittedly did not go back very far.
She stretched, awakening her muscles which fought back against the cold that clung to the air. Despite the chill, she felt very much rested. She hadn’t realized just how much she missed sleeping in a comfortable bed, instead of the rather lumpy one upon which many a traveler had slept on at the Crooked Candlestick Inn back in Hollyfield.
She also hadn’t realized just how much she missed sleep.
For as much time as she had spent bed bound in the past five days, she hadn’t actually slept nearly as much as it felt she had at the time. But in this bed, in this house, she had slept, and she had slept well.
Isabelle stood and walked slowly to the window, pulling open the drapes that didn’t entirely serve their purpose in the way they were meant to—the light from beyond more than apparent. And when she had opened them, she found the clock to be correct in its time.
She had slept through the entire afternoon and night.
She hadn’t even meant to sleep. She’d barely laid down upon her pillow, trying to summon more memories to the surface to no avail, before her mind shut down, too exhausted to maintain the torture any longer.
Now she was awake again, and she couldn’t stop the wheel from turning around and round. She might have been well rested, but mentally she was still wrecked.
The hour had barely broken dawn, the golden sun a beacon on the horizon, blinding her thoughts and her eyes, calling her to come, like the light at the end of a long and dark tunnel.
Her gown was dreadfully wrinkled, which really wasn’t such a surprise. It was the same dress she had worn the day before, the garment she had fallen asleep wearing.
No, make that two days. She had been wearing this dress the day they’d departed the inn and then traveled through the night to arrive here. For two days she had been wearing this dress.
She really ought to change. She really ought to bathe. But the hour was early still and the servants would just barely be waking, breaking their bread and starting about their chores, and she didn’t wish to disturb them. Besides, it wasn’t as though she had anything to change into. The only other frock in her possession was just as hopelessly in need of washing as the one she wore.
She supposed she did have other garments to choose from now, but the choice had already been made not to don them.
She eyed the dresses left neatly on the chair, and noticed a small brown package sitting on the table. Her breath caught as her stomach dropped and her heart skipped beat after beat.
The tea. She’d nearly forgotten.
Isabelle picked up the package and closed her eyes, willing a decision to come to her, a voice of reason to tell her what was the right thing to do. But the only voices she heard were her own, and their guidance was contradictory. She walked to the bureau and, opening the top drawer, she pushed the package to the back, tucking it beneath the folds of fabric stored within. Then she turned away quickly, long strides taking her to the door.
She needed to be out of the room before the pressures of indecision pressed inward, suffocating her.
Not a single thought occurred to Isabelle as she left the house, in favor of the outdoors—none other than a need for fresh air. Not until the chill of the air hit her in the face, and the arms, all over her uncovered skin, biting through the thin fabric of her muslin gown. She could use a coat, but a walk in the brisk air never hurt anyone.
And it was refreshing, she told herself as she marched through the untamed grass. Even as the cold nearly stole her breath, as it made her teeth chatter, nearly paralyzing her, forcing her to wrap her arms about herself to try and preserve her warmth.
The cold air made everything crisper, clearer. Well, not everything. Mist rose from the ground as the morning forced the earth to sweat, the moisture seeping through the leather of her boots, dampening the bottom six inches of her gown.
Despite the fog, her thoughts, her emotions, her overall senses, all peaked.
Isabelle breathed in deep, the feeling of being frozen urging her to march swiftly. It was laborious with her healing injuries, but she refused to slow down. She needed the quick pace; it was the only thing that made her mind stop moving backwards as she crossed the expansive field that the mist made seem would never end.
Until it did and she was deposited along a stream that appeared as if out of nowhere, its cold water trickling down between the rocky banks. Isabelle considered it, finding a few suitable rocks to step upon and get herself safe and dry on the other side. The farther she was from civilization, the easier it was to lose herself.
She moved to advance upon her plotted course, when a voice resounded. “I wouldn’t recommend that.”
Isabelle spun around. Literally spun. On her heels, her skirts fanning out around her, permitting the cold air to brush generously up her legs.
“I beg your pardon?” she wheezed. She couldn’t possibly put full force behind her words, for her heart had stopped in her chest and was simultaneously fluttering like the beat of tiny, flapping wings, making her feel lightheaded.
She found Lord Thornton seated on a small bench made for two, looking studious with a book in his lap—studious, and completely out of place. His large frame, unruly dark hair, and calloused hands didn’t exactly allude to the existence of a scholar beneath.
Yet, he was. Out here. In the middle of… Well, in the middle of wherever it was that they were. He was more than just his appearances.
Isabelle bit the inside of her lip.
Despite the shock at his apparition, she had to think that it was a blessing that she had so coincidentally stumbled upon him. It wasn’t that she would have become too terribly lost, but it did stand to reason that she easily could have done.
“You really shouldn’t be walking, much less leaping across streams.” His always-hardened tone had her relief disappearing and she rushed in to defend herself.
“I wasn’t—” she began to deny, but stopped herself before the lie fully formed. She had been about to do just that, and she wasn’t exactly in the best condition to be leaping.
Though her limp was almost no longer apparent, it was still undeniably there. It wasn’t that her hip hurt any great deal. She was merely sore. Getting struck by a carriage had a tendency to have that effect on a person.
Isabelle eyed the leather-bound book in his hands, but it snapped shut as her eyes fell upon the carefully scrawled pages. It looked suspiciously like a journal. Her eyes widened at the thought of what it might say—what it might say about her. She looked away. He deserved his privacy, even as it piqued her curiosity.
“I apologize, my lord. I am intruding,” she said quickly, turning immediately to return to the house.
“I do not mind,” and his tone softened just enough to cause her to believe the words. “Come. Sit,” he motioned, easing over to afford her a greater portion of the bench than was necessary. “You should rest.”
The problem was that she didn’t particularly want to sit. As though her thoughts hadn’t already been a tumultuous tumble, how was she supposed to sit still next to the source of such thoughts and act normal? She couldn’t possibly sit. Not now. Not with her heart racing so and her body itching to move, to run away from this man, from this house, from this life, from the memories she didn’t have.
Was that another trait of hers? Did she run away from everything?
“Thank you, my lord,” she said simply, accepting the offere
d seat.
She couldn’t pick up her skirts and run away. Not now. If she did that, he would surely follow and demand to know what it was that she was running from. And she wasn’t quite sure.
“Call me Desmond. I insist. If you’re comfortable with that,” he added. The sentences were short and broken but far from being clipped in manner, merely more hesitant in thought. “After all, we are to be married.”
“Right,” she said gloomily. It wasn’t that she meant to be gloomy, but trying to hold herself still and contain her thoughts and emotions was rather difficult. She couldn’t possibly control the tenor of her voice as well.
“Right?” he mimicked, adding a question to the word.
“I hadn’t forgotten is all.”
“I hadn’t thought you had,” Desmond, Lord Thornton, said cautiously. She wasn’t looking at him, but if she were, she was certain she would have seen his eyes narrow.
Isabelle continued, keeping her eyes straight ahead on the scenery that had partially disappeared in the mist. She plowed through the barrier she felt she had been trapped behind for the whole of her memory, her thoughts bursting forth as she stared at the stream, not the man. She might have been the one to trap him into marriage—even if not purposefully—but she felt trapped too. “I’ve forgotten a lot—a lot that I may never recover—but not this. I have not forgotten that I do not know who I am. And I have not forgotten that I know hardly anything about you, aside from your name and your title and the circumstances of your return.”
“Are you having doubts?” His tone was no more revealing than his expression when she briefly cast her eyes in his direction. It was more than frustrating.
He deserved his privacy, yes, and she should give it to him. She had stolen his life from him, how much more must she take? However, she was lost inside herself and she needed comfort. Was that too much to ask? Could he not make himself more appeasing?
She spared him but a momentary hard look before returning her gaze to the cold water trickling over nearly black rocks. “Doubts? No. I know that it is necessary that we wed, that Society, and my father—whoever he is—will demand it. However, that does not mean that I like being in the dark.” Softening, she added, “Just because I don’t remember my past does not mean that I am not interested in knowing yours.”
There were no tears and she neither expected them nor wanted their kinship. Tears were of no comfort, because they could resolve nothing.
She wanted him. That is, she wanted to know him. She needed to know something.
Her heart twisted.
“I am sorry,” he said, sounding sincere, yet offering no insight to his past.
“That is very kind of you to say, but an apology is not what I desired.” By his lack of response, despite the movement of his lips, Isabelle filled the silence with, “I merely desire to know you better. So that at least I have something. I don’t have a memory of my own; I was hoping you would be willing to share yours.”
You don’t deserve it, rattled in her brain.
You’ve taken enough from this man.
Isabelle had shifted in her seat, and Lord Thornton—Desmond—had shifted too so that they would not have to crane their necks to look at each other. It made her very aware of the size of the stone bench upon which they were sitting and the size of the man. Their knees were nearly brushing, and his face was so close to hers that if they each leaned in mere inches, their lips would be pressed together in a kiss.
She found herself staring at his lips, hoping that he would move, hoping that he would kiss her.
He didn’t. And she didn’t want him to, she told herself. It was an insane notion. She had enough to worry about besides that. But his eyes explored hers with an intensity she surely had never felt. It was like he was opening her up, taking a peek inside her soul. Perhaps he would see something in her eyes that she herself could not.
And then he smiled. It was small at first. Very much so. And then it grew wide, even as his lips still touched. How she wished she could read his thoughts.
“I suppose that is not so very much to ask,” he responded, his approval sounding in his tone. “Tell me, what would you like to know?”
“Everything,” she sighed. Then remitted, “Those clothes, you really don’t mind that I wear them?”
His grin faded to a smile that was not nearly as honest. “Not at all. You’re the lady of the house now—or you soon will be—they’re yours to do with as you wish. When we wed, we will see to getting you a proper wardrobe from London.”
“Perhaps when we find my family they will give me the remainder of my own wardrobe,” she suggested. If the house’s upkeep—or lack thereof—and the chill she had woken to within its walls were any indication, Lord Thornton’s coffers were not quite stuffed enough to be able to afford such frivolities as a new wardrobe for her. A new roof and wood for the fires were slightly more pressing than dresses, bonnets, shoes and gloves in the latest fashions.
“Perhaps. But that will be unnecessary as I will provide for you now.”
“Surely there are better ways that money can be spent,” she argued softly.
Lord Thornton turned away, facing the stream once more, leaving her to look upon his hardened profile and the rapid pulse in his neck. When he spoke, his voice was granite that knocked into her and knocked out her breath. “I am perfectly capable of affording a wardrobe for my wife,” he bit off.
“Of course,” she rushed in. “I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.” Though, they both knew that was exactly what she had done.
In retrospect, she realized that she could have approached the manner with a bit more delicacy. After all, she barely knew this man, didn’t know the state of his finances except for that which she could see. She had no right to presume.
She bit back a sigh as she turned to view the cold water trickling by in the stream.
Would she ever feel that she belonged here? With him?
Or would it be like this for always? Would she forever walk a line, second guessing herself at every turn?
Would she ever feel like his? Did she want to be his? Did she even want to stay here?
The unanswered questions were suffocating, and Isabelle fought against the urge to run.
She would stay. She had to. Right?
*****
He didn’t need there to be more to life. He didn’t need a wife. And while he was not quite content with the unexpected direction his life had been heading in, he had almost been able to accept it, accept that he would be nothing more than a poor man… until six days ago when he had met this woman. Or rather, stumbled upon her.
Or was it she who stumbled upon him?
She who stumbled upon him, which resulted in him stumbling upon her?
Whichever the case may be, she came, a flurry out of the forest, and crashed into his life with alarming efficiency, uprooting his life which was presently built on sand.
And she demanded things of him, things any person would expect, which was specifically why he did not engage people, and certainly didn’t become engaged to them. It was why he’d fled London at the first chance he got after returning to the country. He just wanted to be alone.
But what choice had he now?
From the moment she’d come running out of that wood, she had become his burden. And whether or not he had engaged in her scheme of a false marriage in order to allow her memory to return of its own volition—a rather naïve plan in retrospect—he would have been in closed company with her while waiting on word from her family. Marriage would still have been expected.
Marriage to her had been inevitable from the very moment he’d met her, unconscious in the middle of the road. And while it may no longer seem as terrifying as the prospect of marriage had once been, it was still not without its challenges.
For one, sharing.
He closed his eyes so as not to roll them back in his head.
It wasn’t as though aristocrats were expected to be the most forthcoming when it c
ame to their emotions, and indeed it was true that most gentlemen were in the habit of disregarding their wives altogether. However, all that being said, in either and both cases, the wife in question generally knew her husband.
Ladies were bred for the role of wife within a closed circle that the majority termed Society. Society knew everything and everyone. Before a couple even met, they knew all that needed to be known. They knew if the other had previously taken a wife, or when and where a person’s parents had died, or why one tended to stand in corners and glare. All because every personal detail of any person within their ranks became common knowledge by the way that gossip flooded sitting rooms and ballrooms across the country.
Gossip traveled faster than light. It was what kept hearts all across the country beating in what otherwise would have been a dull life. And it was a damned nuisance when you wanted to forget who you were, or what you had been forced to become.
He’d decided to shirk Society at every possible turn, to keep himself closed and secret.
His wife, however, had a right to answers, and there was no one around to answer them, save he.
But what would he say?
When one didn’t wish to share anything at all, it was difficult to choose.
“My lord. My lord? Lord Thornton?” There was a pause between each recitation of the beckon, and an increase in concern as well. “Lord Thornton, are you well?”
Desmond snapped out of the reverie he had fallen into, finding himself seated in his rose colored sitting room, a cup of tea—growing chilly in his hands—suspended halfway between the saucer and his mouth, unsure of how he had come to be here.
He blinked and stiffened his jaw.
“Have I not insisted that you call me Desmond?” he bit, and immediately felt like the beast that he hated being. He wasn’t supposed to be this way. He wasn’t this person. But for too long he had been surrounded by this person, and now he couldn’t help it.
He waited for her eyes to lower, her shoulders sag, taking on the demeanor of a kicked dog, his heart sinking at the thought of the pain his tone alone could inflict. But to his surprise, in the seconds it took for her to respond, she didn’t deflate like he expected she would. Instead, she met his gaze with eyes as honest and hard as they were clear.
Wherefore Art Thou. Page 12
