Yet that was not entirely the case, he reflected, as he waited in the foyer for the servants to locate Miss Wedgewood. He was at ease with her, yet sometimes when he thought on her, when they had kissed, it was as though he had been through an explosion a second time.
Things were changing, all because he had met Millie.
“Sir Isaac?”
He turned on his heels and rocked back, tone dry. “Lord Neil.”
The lordling smirked. “Always a pleasure to see you.”
The two had decided, long before Lord Neil’s advances upon Esther, to tactfully dislike each other. It was not a spoken agreement, merely understood. They had exchanged more words between them in the past week than in the previous ten years together.
Isaac barely inclined his head. “Kind of you to say.”
“You are here for Miss Wedgewood. She told me of your plans to take a ride through the countryside.” He pointed out the front door. “I think she meant to wait for you outside. Did you not see her?”
Isaac shook his head, puzzled despite himself. “I did not. The butler did not even suggest she might be without.”
Lord Neil shrugged and went to the staircase. “Perhaps she walked along the side of the house to the gardens. She went out some time ago.” He did not bother turning as he spoke, but Sir Isaac bowed to the man’s back anyway. He would remember his manners, even if Lord Neil did not.
Outside again, Isaac walked along the house to where it turned a corner into gardens that still maintained the stricter, geometric style of generations past. Esther had begun to change Inglewood’s gardens into the more wild sort that many of artistic sensibilities preferred.
Which did Millie prefer? Clean lines of clipped hedges, or wildly swaying grasses and jumbled ivy?
He wound his way through a few shrubs and rose bushes, tempted to call out but resisting. He would come upon her soon or go back to the house and wait for the servants to run her to ground.
Then he saw someone else already had.
Millie stood next to a gleaming marble fountain, as pale as the stone itself, facing down the viscount, Lord Carning. Her small fists were clenched, her chin tilted up, and she glared fiercely at the peer. The man himself smirked down upon her, standing far too close.
What was it about the woman that attracted rakes and scoundrels?
Isaac quickened his step, though he maintained an aloof expression. “Miss Wedgewood, here you are at last. I have combed the entirety of the gardens looking for you.”
Lord Carning stepped back, and Millie jerked around to face him with an expression upon her face that pained him. She appeared afraid. And she clutched something in her hand—a long, slender object. A pin?
What had Carning done to frighten her?
There was no use trying to figure it out with the man himself standing there, smirking.
“Lord Carning.” Isaac bowed when he came close enough, and the viscount returned the gesture gracefully. Then Isaac extended his hand, rather than his arm, to Millie.
Let the viscount see that she had friends.
She took his hand at once, allowing him to draw her close. “Are you ready for our ride?” he asked, voice pitched lower, almost intimate. He ignored the viscount’s expression of interest. The man could go to the blazes for the look of fear he had put upon Millie’s beautiful face.
“I am. Thank you for collecting me.” Her fingers twined through his.
“Good day, Lord Carning.” Isaac barely tipped his head this time, then whisked Millie away the moment she made her curtsy. The viscount did not say a word, though he stared after them.
Millie’s hand trembled in Isaac’s grasp, and he quickly drew her closer, the inside of her forearm flush against his. “Are you well?”
“Well enough.” She smiled at him, still pale, her eyes shining with pain. “Please, get me away from here.”
They were at his carriage, and he handed her up with swiftness. The moment she sat, she jammed the long pin back into her hat fiercely, as though she rather wished she was shoving it into something else. Perhaps someone else.
She already wore a dress, hat, gloves, and appeared entirely ready for the diversion. The diversion turned escape. He walked around quickly and found his seat with all speed before lifting the reins.
“I will drive you to the sea.” With a quick flick of his wrist, the horses jolted forward, and they were moving away from the house at a fast clip.
The further they drove, the more Millie relaxed, until she leaned upon his left shoulder.
It felt natural to have her there, nearly tucked against his side. His only regret was that he did not have the ability to put an arm around her. Not that it would have been appropriate. But it would have felt natural, right, to hold her closer.
She did not seem to mind, did not even seem to notice or care, that the arm she leaned against did not possess an elbow, a crook to tuck her arm through, or a hand to hold.
He looked down at the top of her bonnet, barely able to glimpse more than a few curls and the tip of her nose from beneath its brim. What was she thinking?
Millie sat up abruptly. “I am sorry. I do not mean to be so cloying. You must think me weaker than a kitten.” She rubbed at her eyes with her gloved fingers. “I am exhausted, Isaac. I thought this would all be so easy.”
He missed the weight of her head upon his shoulder. “I do not think you weak, though I certainly question your decisions prior to your confession.” He kept the words gentle, not accusing. She was distressed enough, he need not belabor that point with her. “What did Carning want?”
“Carning was the man engaged to my sister. And the man who attacked me.”
Isaac turned to her, startled by that pronouncement. “What?” He had not drawn that conclusion from her stories.
“Years ago,” she said with a dismissive wave.
Isaac pulled the reins, halting the horse pulling the gig, and turned fully to her. He arrested her with his gaze, the depths of his feeling unconcealed. “I do not care if it was this morning or a dozen years ago. He ought to be called out. Drawn and quartered. Publicly flogged. Why did you not tell me that he was the man? You should not spend another moment in that house.”
Millie folded her hands in her lap, most primly. “That is all very easily said, Isaac, but not practical. Where do I go? Lady Olivia would not allow me to leave without doing her bidding first. Lord Carning is as capable of ruining my family as ever he was before. Lord Carning is a peer, the grandson of a duke. An heir. An accusation toward him would be no more productive than digging a tunnel with a teaspoon. The teaspoon will only bend and break.”
“I am not a teaspoon,” he muttered. “And he is just a man.”
“You could not even strike him without being brought up on charges.” The exhaustion she spoke of was evident in her tone. “And then my name would be bandied about all over again, a joke for men at their gambling tables, gossip over teacups. There is no justice for him, Isaac. Only trouble for me.”
Isaac stared at her, unable to argue. Though he wished to tell her she was wrong. Instead, he started the horse forward again. Without looking at her, he asked, “What was he saying to distress you when I arrived?”
He heard the slow intake of her breath, saw the way she shuddered before she spoke. “He reminded me of the past. Nothing more.”
Isaac did not press further. He sensed she would say no more, and he had no wish to upset her. “Then we will not speak of the past at all. Only of the present.” They continued down the road toward Inglewood and the sea, a path as familiar to Isaac as his own shadow. “You were quite terrible at Whist last night.”
Millie glared at him. “I did warn you. I almost never win.”
“I admit, I did not mind. Watching your countenance as you attempted to read my intent upon my face—it was as amusing as watching a play. Frowning, smiling, narrowing your pretty eyes.” He mimicked one of her expressions from the previous evening, furrowing his brow, pursing
his lips, and narrowing his eyes.
Millie smiled at last, though with only the barest amusement. “I did not look like that.”
Isaac shrugged. “You did.”
“Sir, you are contradicting a lady. That is terribly rude.”
“The lady ought not tell falsehoods if she wishes me to agree with her.” He mimicked her expression again, this time drawing a laugh from her. “There. You know I am right. Though I will admit that you are a great deal prettier than I am, so the expression was not so terrible upon you as it is upon me.”
“Now you are just hoping I will call you handsome and soothe your vanity.” She scoffed and folded her arms. “I refuse to fall prey to your wishes, Isaac.”
“Positively unfair of you.” He guided the horse down the lane to Inglewood. It was the fastest way to the beach, to pass through Esther and Silas’s lands, and of course they would not mind. “We have been invited to take refreshment with Esther this afternoon.”
“We have?” Millie cocked her head to one side. “And what does she make of all the time you spend in my company?”
That sobered him. When he had returned his sister to her home the night before, after an evening of sitting as near to Millie as he could without crossing the lines of appropriate behavior, Essie had been gleeful. His sister talked of nothing else until they parted company. If no one else believed Isaac smitten with Millicent Wedgewood, his sister certainly did.
“Exactly what we hope everyone thinks.” He gave her an encouraging smile. “That I am falling in love with you.”
Apparently, that was not the thing to say to please Millie. She turned away abruptly, her bonnet obscuring her lovely face from view. “Will she be terribly angry when she learns the truth? When I leave and nothing more is said?”
They crested a hill before the carriage path dipped down the beach, and Isaac halted the horse at the top. The beach spread as far as they could see, in either direction, and the North Sea laid before them. Isaac took in the beautiful sight, the shining silver of the water and brightness of the sand.
“Millie.” He had to get the words right. Had to indicate just enough interest without leaving himself open for pain. “I have wondered, when all of this is over, if we can satisfy Lady Olivia, if you might be willing to see me again.”
“See you again?” He could barely hear her over the sound of the waves crashing upon the shore, or his heart thudding in his ears. “After everything?”
He nodded and forced more cheer in his voice than he felt. “Perhaps I could call upon you in London. Or you could come back, visit Esther. I know she wishes to spend more time in your company.”
“Only because she thinks the two of us might enter into a courtship.” Millie turned her gaze to the sea, closing her eyes as she took in a breath of the briny air. “My family will still have a great deal of recovering ahead of us. Even if I am invited to parties and events, even if my mother is welcomed back to the circles that closed to her, there will be a lot of work ahead of me.”
Isaac had called himself a fool before, but even he could not misunderstand what Millie tried to tell him. Polite as her words may be, her rationale pragmatic and straightforward, she was really telling him, “no, I will not see you again.”
Despite telling himself that he had known it was a ridiculous notion to entertain, Isaac’s heart cracked. He practically heard the sound as one would a branch snapping in two, or a vase dropped upon a marble floor.
He hid the pain behind a smile and a laugh, as he had when he first returned from war. “That is a shame. I find I enjoy your company. Even if you are a terrible partner at Whist.”
Millie took his words as permission to smile again. “Are we going to sit upon this hill forever, or will we drive along the beach as you promised?”
Isaac’s good humor did not falter as he drove her down the beach, then back again to Esther’s hospitality. He laughed with Millie over his nephew’s antics. Ignored Esther’s knowing glance. Escaped to Silas’s study and put Millie out of his mind until the time came to take her back to the Alderton house.
Until he was safely in his own home, in his room with his back pressed to the closed door, Isaac did not examine his heart.
He had no chance at making her love him. Millie had made that clear when she told him of her whole plan, of her need to reenter Society. Of course she would wish for the most advantageous marriage possible. And what was he?
A crippled baronet, with holdings that barely provided enough to remain self-sustaining.
Isaac went to the mirror which hung over a chest of drawers, staring at himself. He unbuttoned his coat and tossed it upon the bed. Then pulled off his cravat and threw it to the floor.
He stood before the glass, the white sleeve of his shirt hanging loosely on the left.
It wasn’t just the arm, though that was what people saw. There were scars lining that side of his body from the shrapnel, from the blast that took his arm and the lives of men standing near him. Scars along his torso, his hip, his legs. Then the invisible scars upon his mind and heart, slicing their way across his dreams.
He would never be whole again. What woman would want him? Not someone like Millie, forced into a corner and fighting her way back to the top of Society’s battlements. Little fox she might be, but the woman had ambition. And he did not even like to stand in crowded ballrooms.
Broken. He was broken.
Isaac undressed to his waist and forced himself to look in the mirror, to look at where his left arm ought to attach to the rest of him. How had he deluded himself into thinking he had a chance at a proper romance with that physical reminder ever present?
Tears burned in his eyes, but he refused to let them free. Refused weakness.
A drink would help. But that was the coward’s way out. Essie had made that clear to him years ago when their mother had died. He could not go that route.
Each of his friends had found and claimed a love match. Their happiness had taught him to yearn for the same. But it could not be.
A knock on the door interrupted his morbid, pitying thoughts.
“Come.”
Harper, the valet, entered. “Sir Isaac, do you wish to dress for the evening?” Harper eyed his undressed state with polite confusion.
The musical performance. He had that to go to directly after his dinner.
Isaac ran a hand across his chin, feeling the stubble coming in. He needed to shave. Dress again. Compose himself. “Yes, of course. My dark blue coat tonight, I think. And the silver waistcoat.”
His valet nodded and began his work, speaking all the while of mundane things. Asking about cravats, stick-pins, shoes. They worked through the motions together, and Isaac approved the product of his valet’s work at the end.
Still, he did not quite meet his own eyes in the mirror. He could not allow himself another moment of weakness while Millie still needed his help.
Chapter 20
My Dearest Daughter,
Your letter has left me most distressed. Your father and I quite depend upon you to set things to rights. Surely you are safe under the protection of the Marquess. You must remain and see this thing through, as you agreed….
Millie folded the letter, running her fingers over the crease. She walked from one end of her guest bedroom to the other. The letter had been penned before her mother knew the worst of it. Millie had written to her parents after Mr. Weston’s attack.
She could not return home.
The night before, during the musical performances, Isaac had played his part admirably. He sat on her left, his sister on Millie’s right, during each exhibit of musical talent. Isaac bent to whisper in her ear his thoughts on each performer, some of them not entirely charitable remarks, but anyone who watched the two of them had no way of knowing how intimate or casual their conversation.
Despite the unremarkable evening, Millie had barely slept. Her nightmares were growing worse with her repeated exposure to Lord Carning. Mr. Weston’s unexpected adv
ances likely contributed to the overly distressing dreams, too. Most of the night she dreamed of being hunted, running through trees with hounds baying, with hands grabbing at her, as though she was the prey they chased.
Another day of the house party upon them, Millie did not have much time to accomplish the tasks set by Lady Olivia. Her mother’s letter made everything worse. Her exhaustion had drained her emotionally. There was no escape.
“Miss?” Sarah stepped into the room, her eyes bright. “Sir Isaac is downstairs. To call on you.” The maid bounced on her toes as she made the pronouncement. Then she hurried to the small wardrobe and snatched up Millie’s favorite bonnet. “You must take him for a walk in the gardens, miss. You will have privacy there.”
Millie looked down at the letter in her hands, turning it over again. “Sarah. You know there is nothing between Sir Isaac and myself except friendship.”
Sarah approached with the bonnet and a pair of gloves. “Nonsense, miss. The way that man looks at you, there is something more.” She put the bonnet upon Millie’s head without waiting for leave to do so.
Catching her maid’s hands in her own, Millie fixed her with a stare. “There cannot be anything more, Sarah. Sir Isaac plays a part in order to help me. I play a part to get out of this house with my honor still intact. My parents have expectations—”
“They must want you to be happy, miss,” Sarah said, staring at Millie without comprehension. “Mr. Wedgewood always says how important it is to him that you and your mother are happy.”
“Emmeline is happy.” Millie winced when she heard the sharp edge to her tone. “My sister did what made her happy, and they have not said her name since. They have not spoken of her. They do not want my happiness if it means their ruin.”
A rebellious gleam appeared in Sarah’s eyes, as though she meant to argue her point, but she abruptly lowered her gaze. “As you say, miss.”
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