An Inconvenient Beauty

by Kristi Ann Hunter

  The corners of her mouth lifted slightly. “I’m sorry I missed it.”

  Griffith stepped forward. “Why did you? I see you at dinner but never before or after. Your book is obviously not that interesting.”

  Isabella ran her finger along the edge of the pages. “No. It isn’t. I’m not even sure which one I brought up here with me.”

  Foolish or not, the urgency under his skin propelled him to do something, so he sat on the window seat beside her curled-up legs, the toes of her slippers pressed against his leg as he reached over and wrapped his hand around hers. The long lines of her ungloved fingers felt cool against his palm, and he wrapped his grip more firmly around her hand. “Why are you avoiding me?”

  “My life is complicated,” she whispered.

  “I’m a duke. I’m rather good with complicated.”

  They stared at each other for a moment. She didn’t look nearly as comforted as he’d hoped she would.

  “I don’t know if I love you.” The words came out in a rush, her eyes widening as if she hadn’t even known what she was going to say. As soon as they’d cleared her lips, though, a measure of calm came over her. The slight trembling he’d felt in her fingers ceased, even as a suspicious wet gleam formed along the bottom edge of her eyes.

  “I don’t know if I love you,” she repeated. “I don’t know if I can. I have problems. You could solve them, I know, but what then? What if we’re both trapped in a marriage we discover we don’t want with no way out? What if you learn my secrets and don’t like them? If I stay on the path I’m on, I’ll be able to walk away when it’s over. I’ll have my life ahead of me. But if you . . . If I let you . . . I’ll be trapped. We’ll be trapped.”

  And this was what it would have felt like if that thatching needle had caught him in the chest instead of the arm. His brother had been right. His friends had been right. Love didn’t play by any logical rules. It was an ever-changing maze. A monster that chewed you up and spit you out and made you fight for your happiness or die trying.

  She took a trembling breath, and a single tear spilled out to slide down her perfect, smooth cheek. “I don’t want to hurt you. Please go.”

  The gentleman in him was standing even as part of him screamed in his head not to leave until he’d changed her mind. But it was becoming clear that he was fighting a foe he didn’t understand, didn’t even know about. And love was just going to have to join forces with his brain if he wanted to figure it out.

  He stepped away, letting her fingers trail slowly through his. He looked up and saw Frederica still standing in the doorway, hands cupped to her face and eyes rimmed with red. There was certainly more here than he knew.

  Halfway across the floor he turned and looked at Isabella. She’d curled her legs in tighter and tucked her face into her knees. There was no way she could convince him she felt nothing. A small sob escaped her curled form, and Frederica’s quiet cry answered it. Emotion was as thick in this room as the dust that had been allowed to settle while the house was prepared for company. Griffith didn’t do emotion and never had, and this was why. It was uncontrollable and messy.

  He rubbed a hand against his aching chest. Emotion was also very real and powerful. More so than he ever realized.

  But Griffith was a problem solver. That was something he’d been since he was little, stomping around the fields with his father in boots that were a touch too big because they were the smallest the cobbler had that matched his father’s, and he’d been unwilling to wait for the man to make more.

  He tore his gaze from Isabella. Simply looking at her muddled his thoughts, but watching her cry quietly churned them like trodden mud. He looked at the window, the floor, the ceiling, searching his brain for a promise he could make to her, to let her know that just because he was leaving this room he wasn’t giving up on her.

  A collection of small white figurines on the table by the door caught his eye. He picked up a porcelain couple—arms linked in the steps of some sort of dance—and held it in his palm, a dozen thoughts whipping through his mind as he watched the light glint on the clean, white surface. He grabbed on to the most important notion at the moment and held tightly to it.

  “I want to dance with you.”

  Isabella’s head snapped up, and Frederica gasped.

  “Everywhere you go, every ball and soiree, I will be there, and I will ask you. I want you to be the next person I dance with.”

  Frederica sniffled. “But the ball. Your mother promised the winning lady her choice.”

  He looked at the figurine in his hand once more and then at Frederica. “I suppose we need to win, then.”

  Thirty minutes later he strolled into the drawing room with Frederica on his arm and Miranda and Ryland trailing behind them. Miranda placed their bag of items on the table. Mother dutifully sorted through them, then looked up with a triumphant smile on her face. “I’m afraid Lady Alethea’s was the first group to return, and they also had nine of the items.”

  Griffith tilted his head and smiled back at his mother while he reached into his pocket and pulled out the dancing figurine he’d picked up in the second-floor drawing room. A figurine that had sat with its sisters on a table in the front hall his entire life.

  He set it gently among the circle of items on the table before returning to stand to his full height.

  “Miranda will open the ball with Ryland.”

  He bowed, trying not to feel guilty over his mother’s grim expression, then turned and walked from the room.

  Chapter 19

  His house was full of people. After he’d set the figurine in front of his mother yesterday, he’d disappeared, hibernating in his study like the wounded bear he felt like. No one ventured into this area of the house, but the voices of the many newcomers drifted through the small gap between the door and the frame, infringing on his solitude until he considered getting up to close the door completely.

  All afternoon yesterday carriages pulled down the lane, people tramped up and down the stairs, and servants rushed to and fro, trying to see to the needs of more people than this house had seen in their entire tenure.

  It was ridiculous that so many people had loaded up their carriages or hired ones to drive them a long day’s ride out into the country for a single day of activities followed by a ball in the evening. Tomorrow they would all be making the long trek back to London. It was entirely too much hassle for a single day of frivolity, but he was a duke. A rather solitary duke with an obligation to marry.

  He frowned.

  He didn’t want his wife to be an obligation. Both he and Isabella or Frederica or whoever his wife happened to be deserved more than that. She should be more than that. She deserved to be wanted, and he had enough obligations in his life without adding her to the list. Obtaining a wife might be an obligation, but the wife herself shouldn’t be.

  Which meant the selection of his wife could not be taken lightly. He’d known that, had always known that, and that was why he’d taken such care to think through everything so meticulously.

  And now he was going to have to admit he’d been wrong.

  Not just once, but twice. He’d been wrong about his ability to control his feelings, and then he’d been wrong about Isabella’s feelings for him. Was he also incorrect about his feelings for her? What if he wasn’t actually in love with her? What if he was only infatuated with her incredible beauty? What if his logical brain was obsessed with figuring out the intrigue around her, and once the mystery was solved she would lose the grip she appeared to have on him?

  He sat back in his chair and rubbed his finger against his thumb.

  The door swung open without a knock. Griffith tensed but maintained his position in the chair as he looked toward the door with a deliberately arrogant and powerful expression.

  Only to find himself being laughed at.

  Ryland and Anthony slid into the room and shut the door behind them.

  “I can’t thank you enough for volunteering me to dan
ce the first dance.” Ryland crossed to the desk to look over the notes Griffith had spread across the surface. It was mostly notes on the spring planting for his estate in Cornwall. Shafts of sunlight speared through the window to cut across the words.

  “It’s a bright, sunny day.” Griffith pulled a paper toward him and tried to look preoccupied. “Shouldn’t you be out fishing or whatever else my mother has planned? I know she intended for people to spend a good portion of the day outside.”

  “I don’t know.” Ryland flicked the paper in Griffith’s hand. “Shouldn’t you?”

  Probably. But he’d come to the country to figure things out, and it was time he did. “I’m busy.”

  The two men shifted around the room, but Griffith kept his gaze resolutely on the paper in front of him, making himself read words that he’d forgotten by the time he reached the end of the sentence.

  “We’re busy too,” Ryland finally said.

  Griffith looked up to see both men settled deeply into chairs, as if they had no intention of budging from this room until he did.

  Sometimes friends you couldn’t intimidate were a staggering inconvenience.

  He looked back at the paper.

  “For goodness’ sake, Griffith.” Ryland moaned. “There are three sentences on that paper. They think the western-most field should be left fallow for the year because last year’s crop yield was less than adequate.”

  Griffith made an extra effort to retain the information on the letter in his hand. Ryland was correct. Trying to look casual and confident, he slid the paper onto the desk. “Leaving an entire field empty for the year is a decision that shouldn’t be taken lightly. People need food.”

  “And you need a wife.” As Anthony’s first contribution to the conversation, it was direct and to the point of the real reason the men had invaded his study. “So why are you in here instead of joining the expedition to the ruins?”

  “I’ve seen the ruins.”

  “As have I. Which is why I know that in spite of the fact that you cleaned up all of the dangerous parts last summer, there are plenty of rocks and ditches for ladies to be helped over.”

  Ryland cleared his throat. “Ladies such as Miss Breckenridge.”

  “Miss Breckenridge hasn’t joined in on an event in days. Why would she be going to the ruins?” But he knew why. Isabella adored seeing where and how things grew. She wouldn’t miss the chance to see how the plants had taken over the old stones and piles of rotten wood.

  “How should I know? But I assume that the blond curls in the middle of the cluster of gentlemen surrounded by pouting ladies belongs to your beautiful obsession.” Ryland shrugged and settled farther into his chair.

  “I’m not obsessed.”

  Anthony laughed.

  Ryland pursed his lips and raised his brow.

  “I’m not. Not with Isa . . .” He cleared his throat. “Miss Breckenridge.”

  The twin smirks on the other side of his desk proved both men had heard him slip on her name. Errors such as that were not common for him. He didn’t say anything he didn’t mean to say, didn’t allow anyone to catch him at a disadvantage. At least, he hadn’t until Isabella had come into his life.

  Ryland was the first to break the silence. “I told you Miss St. Claire was the wrong woman for you.”

  The word wrong made Griffith wince and started a throbbing in the back of his head. He flexed his injured arm out of habit, even though the ache and tension wasn’t coming from there at the moment.

  “Who is to say,” he said slowly, thinking through every word with deliberate care. He couldn’t afford for his two friends to misunderstand his question. Mostly because he wasn’t sure he’d get the nerve to ask it again. “Who is to say if I’ll ever be able to make the correct decision? If I’ve already made the wrong decision twice, how can I trust that I’ll ever be able to discern the woman God wants me to marry?”

  “Twice? You’ve abandoned your pursuit of Miss Breckenridge already?” Ryland’s forehead scrunched into a wrinkle so deep his dark eyebrows were nearly touching.

  Had he abandoned it? Had he ever even truly started pursuing her? “Obviously, she is not inclined to find my suit favorable, so it stands to reason that she is not the woman God prepared for me.”

  “I don’t think it works that way.” Anthony pushed up from the chair and crossed to the window.

  “Of course it does. Proverbs. ‘In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.’”

  Ryland laughed. “You think that means He’s going to tell you whom to marry?”

  “Why wouldn’t it?” Griffith was torn between having this conversation because he knew it was the right thing to do and tossing his two closest friends out on their ears. Or he could leave them here and join the rest of the guests at the ruins. Where at this very moment Isabella was surrounded by suitors.

  This was the very reason Griffith hadn’t wanted to pursue a Diamond.

  Leaning forward to prop his elbows on his knees, Ryland’s grey eyes pinned Griffith in his chair. It was the same gaze that had skewered many a Frenchman into giving up his secrets. Griffith had to admit it was fairly effective.

  “Sometimes, I think God lets you choose.”

  “Why would He do that?” Griffith rolled the thought over in his mind, but he honestly couldn’t fathom it. If Griffith had that sort of omniscience and power, he would certainly be telling people where they needed to be. Sometimes he did it even though he wasn’t omniscient.

  Ryland lifted one shoulder and let it fall again, the close tailoring of his dark grey jacket falling right back into place. “I think sometimes He likes to give us a choice. Life’s pretty bleak if you only ever do what you’re told. If you make your choice with an aim to honor God, then He will honor that.”

  “And if I make the wrong one?”

  Anthony leaned against the window, his attention gliding back and forth from Griffith to something outside. “Whatever choice you make, you work within the boundaries God laid out in the Bible. If you had married Miss St. Claire, would you have treated her the way the Bible says to treat your wife?”

  “Of course.” Griffith crossed his arms over his chest. Picturing the stilted breakfast conversations the two of them would probably have had didn’t thrill him, but if he had made the commitment, he would have put everything he had into doing it right.

  “And if you married Miss Breckenridge?”

  The vision that ran through his head this time was considerably more pleasant, imagining him and Isabella riding through the countryside, visiting tenants together or just enjoying the land. “Yes.”

  “Then, I think it might be safe to assume that God will let you marry whichever lady you choose as long as you honor Him once you’ve done it.” Anthony tapped the glass with one long finger. “And if you think you might want that choice to be Miss Breckenridge, you might want to venture outside. It’s hard to see since they’re going over the rise, but I think Lord Ivonbrook is holding her parasol.”

  Chapter 20

  Griffith strode through the house and snagged his greatcoat from the hook by the door near the kitchen. It was the coat he used when he was going out to work, but it would have to do for now. He wasn’t going to wait for his valet to retrieve his good one. It was a thirty-minute walk to the ruins—twenty, if he pushed himself—and the group had probably gotten there five minutes ago. He had a lot of ground to make up.

  Wind pulled at his hair, sending the blond strands into his face to catch on his eyelashes. The sun beat down on him, making him wish he’d left the greatcoat behind entirely. It was difficult to know what the weather was going to do this time of year, but this was yet another thing he’d gotten wrong.

  And if he was going to develop anxiety over decisions as small as whether or not to wear a coat, his life was about to become very miserable indeed.

  There had to be some sort of way to avoid second-guessing everything he did and to have the ability and confidence to weathe
r a few errors in judgment. A very few. And only on things that didn’t matter a great deal. And were within the boundaries of God’s set expectations.

  He shoved a hand through his disheveled hair. If he’d known opening his mind to the idea of marriage would cause this much frustration, he’d have simply informed Trent he should be prepared to inherit. Did men without titles have this much trouble?

  The excited chatter of the group drifted to him on the wind, and he slowed his hurried pace. He didn’t want to storm up to the ruins appearing winded, after all, and his near run across the fields had left him in such a state. He slowed to a stroll and focused on steadying his breathing and calming his heart.

  A group of servants gathered to the side under a copse of trees, where they served lemonade and small, iced cakes to the strolling masses. Griffith shrugged out of his greatcoat and dropped it into the wagon behind them before working his way down to the bottom set of ruins.

  The old keep was half buried in the side of the hill, its stones nearly covered by hundreds of strands of climbing vines. The plants had been cut away from old windows and doors, rickety piles of stones had been scattered, and rotten wood had been cleared away to prevent the risk of an accident, making the ruins a safe and enjoyable place for a group outing.

  It also meant there were many places where a couple wanting a touch of privacy could slip away unnoticed.

  Guests greeted him and pulled him into conversation after conversation, preventing him from scouring the maze of old arches and rooms for Isabella. He’d used up his quotient of rudeness by not greeting them as they’d arrived, so he made himself take the time to talk to everyone as he moved through.

  He talked weather and war, politics and scandal. He encouraged everyone to stay in the more stable section of the keep instead of the former great hall, from which several of the doorways and passages had crumbled. Everyone seemed to be greatly enjoying the outing, which would make his mother happy.

  Familiar laughter wrapped around a corner and slammed into his gut. It had an edge, as if she were forcing it. Of course, more often than not people’s laughter had that edge to it in this setting. Hearing Isabella push herself into fake enjoyment bothered him more, for some reason. Anyone who suffered from as much despair as she seemed to in private should at least actually enjoy their merriment.