by Liz Carlyle
They slept again, and when next he woke the house was freezing, though the sun was alarmingly high. He glanced at the ormolu clock to find it was a quarter past nine. Quietly throwing on most of his clothing, he went downstairs and built up last night’s fire in the kitchen, which ran along the back of the cottage. Then he carried up hot water and set the can by the bed.
When he perched himself on the edge, sinking into the mattress on a ponderous creak, she stirred, looked at him drowsily, and stretched like a sleek, black cat.
“We’ve slept late,” he said, tipping up her chin on one finger. “Have you plans for the rest of the day?”
The languor in her eyes melted and she scooted upright, pulling the covers with her. “Oh, yes.” She pushed a shock of inky hair from her face, her brow furrowed as if she struggled to remember. “Yes, good heavens. I have to be somewhere . . . Knightsbridge. At noon.”
Disappointment drained through him, but he leaned over the bed and kissed her, gently siding his fingers into the hair at her temple.
When he was finished, he drew away and looked at her. “Isabella, do I need to tell you what last night meant to me?” he said, his voice surprisingly hoarse. “I’m not a man much given to eloquence—and frankly, I’m not sure I could find words sufficient.”
She drew a deep, unsteady breath. “Thank you for last night,” she said on a rush, her face warming. “It was beyond anything . . . and I don’t know how to—” Her words fell away as quickly as they’d tumbled out. “Actually, do you know, I think you’re right.” She managed a feeble smile. “Some things are best left unsaid, are they not? Thank you. You are magnificent.”
He held her gaze for a long moment, certain there was more.
There was not.
Isabella merely looked at him, her gaze steady and earnest, but he was nonetheless struck again with the awful sense that she was waiting for him to leave. Oh, she did not curl up and turn away this time; there was no confusion or fear in her eyes.
Instead she merely looked at him with a gentle expectation, and beneath it, a hint of sadness in her eyes.
He still felt much as he had that morning at Greenwood—struck dumb with it, nearly. “Isabella,” he said, “I have to see you again.”
“How?” she asked, opening her hands atop the old, worn counterpane. “I have children to care for, Anthony, and a life to live.”
“How?” he echoed incredulously. “However it must be. Whatever is required. Nothing has changed for me, Isabella. I want you as my mistress. You will not return to Greenwood? Not even for a time?”
She shook her head, the sadness deepening. “Oh, I cannot,” she whispered. “I told you that. I’m not cut out for that kind of existence—and you and I, we have very different lives.”
“This is not acceptable,” he said, seizing her shoulders. “It will not do, Isabella. You need me—you crave what I can give you—and God knows I want you.”
“I cannot,” she said simply. “Anthony, I said so last night. Didn’t you listen?”
“But what has changed?” he demanded, his grip tightening. “Good God, Isabella! This is a hell of a thing for a man to wake up to. You were willing. What has changed?”
“The children,” she said simply. “I have decided I cannot leave them.”
“Why?” he demanded. “Why is this a problem now, when it wasn’t a month ago?”
The anxiety returned to her eyes in full measure. “Things have changed,” she said quietly. “I was a fool to leave them alone, for they’re all I have, and—”
“No, damn it, they are not,” he said. “You have me, Isabella. You can have me.”
She drew a little away from him then, and for the first time, he saw a flash of unease in her eyes. “I may have a piece of you, yes,” she said a little warily. “But I am responsible for my sisters. I’m all they have—as you are all your daughter has, my lord. We must always put them first.”
“Stop my lording me,” he said darkly, “and don’t dare suggest that I don’t love my daughter.”
“Of course you do, and you believe in guarding what is yours, you said,” she said.
“You’re damned right I do,” he retorted. “And you are mine, Isabella.”
“No, Felicity is yours,” she said quietly, “as Georgina and Jemima are mine. Don’t you see? It is an awesome duty one must carry out when a child’s life and well-being have been placed in one’s hands.”
He did not see—or at least in that moment did not wish to see.
Moreover, Isabella was raising a mere half sister—and a stepsister with whom she shared not one drop of blood. Indeed, the children’s mother, if he’d accurately read the undercurrents, had practically put Isabella out of her own home upon marrying Lord Tafford.
And now Isabella was sacrificing herself to raise that woman’s children? But on his next breath, he remembered Diana, and the thought brought a stab of clarity.
How could he not understand what Isabella meant?
Didn’t he know, perhaps better than anyone living, what a childhood spent being unwanted and unloved could do to the mind? How it could twist and torture a person, turning them into something they would otherwise never have become?
No, perhaps Isabella had no legal obligation to raise the children. To love them. To put them first. But it was morally right. And if they had all done the morally right thing for Diana, however circumspectly, perhaps they might have been spared a terrible tragedy.
He understood, too, that in raising Lissie he had the advantage of a wealth that was probably unimaginable to Isabella—not to mention the luxury of a houseful of servants. Nannies and nurses and footmen, and that governess he had never gotten round to hiring.
And she was right to make him feel guilty.
“I will buy you a house,” he said, having barely thought it through. “A large house in Town. Or the country. I can send the girls to the best schools, and generously pension your Mrs. Barbour, and I can—”
“No,” she interjected, her hand coming out to encircle his wrist. “Life does not work that way, my lord.”
“I will make it work,” he gritted, seizing both her hands. “Isabella. I will make it work. It must. We are lovers. I will not let that change.”
For the first time, he saw true anger sketch across her beautiful face. “You do not rule the world, my lord,” she said, her voice deathly quiet. “For all that I think of you—for all that I burn for you—you do not get to simply rearrange my life to suit your needs.”
“Isabella.” He gentled his tone and cupped her face in his hands. “Please.”
“No,” she said, drawing away. “I am not your pawn, sir. I cannot let myself become that, for I had a good glimpse of it, and it lessened me. As to the girls, no, I will not do it. I have decided not to let them from my sight. I will not. And that is the end of it.”
“It cannot be, Isabella,” he choked, “for I—”
But just then, there was a distant sound outside; harnesses and hooves, followed by the racket of what sounded like a door.
“Dear heaven!” Isabella jerked upright in bed just as the front door slammed, echoing through the house. “Can they be early?”
They were.
“Bella, Bella, we saw a monkey on the promenade!” a small voice cried, “and we got taffy! Bella, are you home? We got the first train!”
“Damn it!” said Hepplewood under his breath. “It only wanted this.”
Eyes wide, her color gone, Isabella turned to leap off the bed, starting for her clothes.
He grabbed her shoulders again. “Isabella, have you a back way out? Anything?”
Lips pressed thin, she shook her head. “Not from upstairs.”
He got up, slung his neckcloth around his neck, and snatched up his coat. “I left my hat and gloves downstairs,” he said, moving swiftly. “If anyone notices, say they are Tafford’s. How high up is your window?”
“High,” she said sharply, her hand lashing out to seize his arm
. “Tony, you mustn’t! You could be hurt.”
Hurt?
Fuck it, he was already hurt. And he damned sure wasn’t staying here with her guilt-ridden eyes and his unholy temper.
He jerked from her grasp and looked out.
He’d seen worse. He threw up the sash, quieting the rumble of the weights as best he might, and leaned out. There was a ground-floor roof below—over the kitchen, by the look of it—running all along the back of the house.
Voices were swelling in the rooms below. Children. A female. Much clatter—umbrellas and bags, it sounded. He looked around to see Isabella clutching her shift, staring at him, her face bloodless.
Yes, he’d seen worse falls to be taken after a long night spent in the wrong woman’s bed. But he’d never seen anything worse than the ashen look on Isabella’s face.
And he knew, too, that on some level, he’d gotten her into this.
That he hadn’t taken no for an answer.
Swiftly, he stabbed his arms through his coat sleeves, grabbed Isabella, and kissed her soundly. “This is not over,” he said. “It cannot be. I will not let it be, do you understand?”
“How?” she whispered.
He set his lips in a hard line. “I do not know,” he said. “But time is on my side, Isabella. You are mine. You will always be mine. And I will wait you out, I swear to God.”
Her face bloodless, Isabella threw up her hands.
He did not know what else to say.
Perhaps he’d already said too much—and far too demandingly. But this could not end; not now, when he was just beginning to know her heart—to understand Isabella and her needs.
And he knew, by God, where she lived, too.
But there was hot, burning pressure welling in the backs of his eyes; a frightful rush of emotion he scarcely recognized, one he damned sure didn’t wish her to see.
He went to the window, cursed beneath his breath again, and swung himself smoothly out.
CHAPTER 10
Isabella was not late for her appointment in Knightsbridge that day; children could not be fed upon heartbreak and tears. After scanning a week’s worth of newspaper advertisements, she had found what might prove an acceptable shop a mere stone’s throw from Hyde Park.
It was a promising thoroughfare, though hardly a fashionable one, with much of the area still more village than town. But it was affordable, barely. A deal was soon struck with the owner, a lazy, unshaven fellow by the name of Poole, who agreed to defer the lease until April, and to cut her rather a bargain, provided Isabella took the place as-is.
As-is meaning an utter pigsty—if a pigsty was covered in cobwebs and soot.
And so it was that Isabella spent much of that evening, and most of the next week, on her hands and knees scrubbing floors, trying not to think of Lord Hepplewood’s iron embrace and high-handed demands. It was exhausting and horrid and precisely what she needed to keep herself from miring up in the misery she felt.
By Lady Day, the maisonette above the shop was habitable, and Isabella found herself counting out a few of her precious coins to pay a carter to haul their furnishings out of the farm cottage and up the steps into the newer, but no larger, space. Mrs. Barbour cheerfully laid out her tools in the kitchen, then they set about washing the shop windows below.
Over the course of the following week, Isabella walked the lanes and alleys from Paternoster Row to Old Fish Street, visiting the printers and stationery wholesalers situated there, then negotiating the best terms she could get.
It was not easy, and more than once she questioned her own sanity. But it was either that or the mire, she reminded herself, and Isabella could not sink. No, she would take too many people down with her.
Slowly, the goods began to arrive in carts and crates, and while Mrs. Barbour watched Georgina, Jemima helped Isabella unpack and sort it, and together they decided where each book or puzzle or card would go. And by mid-April, Glaston & Goodrich Booksellers was open for business, surprisingly busy, and Isabella was all but broke again, having spent nearly everything in rent, refurbishment, and inventory.
It had been a frightful risk, really. A risk that her old self might not have dared to run. But Isabella felt increasingly confident the shop would pay off in the end.
“And Glaston is me,” said Georgina, pointing at the shop’s newly hung wooden placard, “and Goodrich is for Jemma.”
Ownership was announced, on this particular occasion, to a friend who lived nearby and who had walked with Georgina home from school.
Just then the bell above the door jangled.
“Post’s come,” said Jemima, swiftly tying on her shop apron.
“Go upstairs, Georgie, to Mrs. Barbour,” said Isabella, pointing through the door to the dark staircase that shared their street entrance. “Try to do your sums on your own, all right?”
Her lower lip poking out, Georgina dragged her feet in the direction of the narrow steps.
“Georgie has taken the short end of all this,” said Isabella ruefully. “I have neglected her a little with getting the shop started.”
“But the shop allows you to stay at home with us, Bella,” said Jemima, sorting through the post on the counter, “and that matters more.”
“Thank you, Jemma.” Isabella tossed her a grateful glance, her heart welling with affection.
Jemima was far more mature than her years would suggest, and had been of inestimable help in getting the shop started. It was in moments like this—moments in which she was so deeply glad to have the girls—that Everett’s threats began to haunt Isabella.
Surely no judge would permit him to take them? Jemima had been barely eight when Isabella had taken her from Thornhill, and Georgina could not even remember her parents. Isabella and Mrs. Barbour were the only motherly influences the child had ever known.
But the awful truth was, the law afforded women no rights when it came to children—not even those they had borne. Only a man was thought fit to serve as trustee or guardian, and to make the hard decisions as to how a child would be brought up, educated, or even married off. And technically, Everett was both to Georgina, though he’d never shown the slightest interest in her until now.
So far as poor Jemima was concerned, she was stuck with their pinch-penny uncle, Sir Charlton, who’d never so much as enquired after the girls these last many years. The last time Isabella had written him for help, he had blithely suggested that the best solution for everyone was that Isabella simply accept Everett’s marriage proposal, since he was willing to take both children.
Damn it, her father had been such a trusting fool.
Isabella would sooner abscond with both girls into the wilds of Canada than surrender either of them to Everett. She only prayed it never came to that.
But Jemima was opening the mail, and she had paused to frown at something.
“What’s that you’re glowering at, my dear?” Isabella asked.
Jemima sighed. “A dun from Tallant and Allen. Can we settle the account?”
“Soon, I think,” said Isabella. “Sales have been surprisingly good. What else is there?”
Jemima waved a creamy piece of stationery and grinned. “Ooh, another plea from your Mr. Mowbrey in Chesham,” she said. “How many is that?”
“None of your business,” Isabella said, snatching it.
“Well,” murmured Jemima, “one begins to wonder if your scholarly gentleman doesn’t want something besides his rocks sorted.”
“Do not be impertinent, miss,” warned Isabella.
But Jemima’s grin had faded. “And here’s another from Lady Meredith,” she said, pinching it like a soiled rag between two fingertips. “Shall I toss it in the rubbish?”
“No,” said Isabella on a sigh. “Hand it here.”
Taking both, she left Jemima to watch the shop and went out into what passed for a back garden. This was, in fact, the third letter from Lord Hepplewood, for she’d intercepted the second herself while the girls were walking in the park
with Mrs. Barbour.
That one, however, had been hand-carried by a liveried footman from Clarges Street.
Yes, she was very glad the girls had been away for that delivery.
Upon returning from Greenwood all those weeks ago, Isabella had lied and told the girls that, having realizing the time required, she’d decided she would miss them too much to be away working for Mr. Mowbrey. That was the trouble when one told an arrant lie; more had to be heaped atop it until, like a dangerous pile of rubble, the whole lot was apt to come crashing back down upon one’s head.
When the first letter postmarked Chesham had arrived, the girls had begun to giggle and make jokes about the mysterious Mr. Mowbrey’s true interests. Isabella had forced herself to laugh, then gently chide them.
But the letters were no laughing matter. The first had been carefully worded, merely enquiring rather pointedly after her health—a delicate euphemism if ever there was one—and repeating in very firm words his wish that she should visit him at Greenwood Farm.
She had responded by informing him all was well with her, and she had provided her new direction as well. After all, she told herself, if the man wished to find her, he would. Worse, there was always the small chance that her “health” was not all she might hope.
The second letter had been less personal. The delicate enquiry had been repeated, but the invitation had not. He was writing to inform her Lady Felicity had taken up residence with him in Clarges Street, and that he congratulated Isabella on her new business venture.
By then Isabella was quite sure she was not with child and had written in veiled terms to tell him so. And that, she had expected, would be that.
But it was not, she now realized, sitting down on a bench in the sun.
She held the letter in her hands, scarcely able to breathe. Then, in a great rush, she tore it open to find . . . nothing, really.
Hepplewood had decided to return to Greenwood to oversee the spring planting. Lady Felicity was accompanying him. There was no invitation. There was nothing, really, save banalities about the weather, followed by a curious final paragraph.
