“But your afternoon tea with Miss Montague went well, did it not? And you may invite her here to Coldwell Hall as much as you choose.”
“I thank you, Elliot. And it really was wonderful to see Esme again; I should like her to be a regular visitor if you allow it.”
“Of course.” He seemed relieved for a moment as if the pressure to truly answer her had been lifted.
“But it would be nice if Esme could meet my husband also.” Isabella knew that her voice trembled just a little.
“Oh… I…” He turned away from her, walking towards the window behind the blackened little armchair his sister had once sat in.
“I do not wish to cause you concern, Elliot. And I know that my interference has not been welcome in the past, and I am afraid, in truth, of blundering where I ought not to again.”
“It has been a very long time since I have met anybody outside of this house. I have not met anybody new these last eighteen years barring new staff. And your father, and you, of course.” Again, his head dropped.
Isabella knew that he was thinking of that awful day in the chapel. She knew it without a doubt. She was the last new person he had met, and she had passed out, fainted away in front of his eyes. And now here she was expecting him to go through it again. No doubt he was dwelling on the idea that Esme Montague would also fall to the floor in horror. Or perhaps he thought she would laugh, just as the cruel people in the street had done so many years before.
“I know that I did not behave well when we first met, Elliot, and I am truly sorry. But I should not like to see you hidden away from the world forevermore because of my reaction. And please know that it was my first reaction, not my lasting one.”
“That is very kind of you, Isabella, but I do not seek to test you. I shall not turn and stand before you and search your face for any sign of revulsion. You are human, and you will feel what you will feel. There is nothing that I can do to change that, and I would not seek to change you in any way. And you need not take it upon yourself to have all the responsibility for the events of our first meeting. There were more people than you involved in it and, of all of them, you were the only one who did not have a say. It is a source of great shame to me, even if I was so selfish as to deny my shame at the time.”
“You do not need to feel ashamed, Elliot.”
“Do I not?” he said and, for a moment, she thought he was going to turn to look at her. But he did not. “I could tell what sort of a man your father was the moment I met him, and I knew that your opinion on the subject of marrying me was of little matter to him. It was obvious when he saw no reason for the two of us to meet beforehand.”
“But it is done,” Isabella interjected.
“No, it is not really done,” he said sadly. “Because you have confirmed for me all of my worst fears about your father. And I know that you have not told me everything about your treatment at his hands. But I know enough now to know that you have suffered in your life. I do not wish to embarrass you, Isabella because none of that is your fault. But for you to tell me that I am blameless, that I should be without shame, is not right.” He paused for a moment and cleared his throat loudly. “The truth of the matter is, you have lived your entire life with a man who threatened and bullied and has continued to threaten and bully even though you are now a married woman. You lived your entire life with a monster, only to be married away to another monster. There are many nights when I lay awake knowing that I shall never be able to forgive myself for what I have done to you.”
“But I do not want that. I do not want you to lay awake at night feeling that way. And you are not a monster, Elliot. You are a man. A man who has suffered more than I could ever have understood before meeting you.”
“But that does not change what I did. Just because I suffered in my own life did not give me a right to cause suffering in yours. I do not blame you for collapsing to the floor on the day of our wedding. I would not have blamed you for it even if there was not a mark upon my face. You were meeting your husband for the first time on your wedding day, and it was truly unforgivable. I should never have agreed to your father’s proposal at all. I should never have sought to put my own selfish needs above those of a young woman I had never met.”
“My father came to you?” Isabella did not know why it really mattered.
Of course, it should have come as no surprise to her that her father had approached the Duke with the offer of a daughter for sale. After all, it made sense. Elliot kept himself so much away from the world, so how else was he supposed to have met her father in the first place?
“Yes, I thought you knew.”
“No, I did not know,” she said quietly.
“Then I am sorry again, Isabella. All of this must be extraordinarily painful to you.”
“You do not need to be sorry, Elliot. I had just not thought about it, and that is all. It had not occurred to me that my father had gone from door to door trying to sell me off.”
“I do not think he went door-to-door, Isabella,” he said quietly. “I think he came directly to me, assuming that a man in my pitiable position could do no other than agree. And, in the end, that is exactly what happened, is it not? I was offered the chance of a different life. I was offered company for the first time in a long time, and I seized that opportunity with both hands.”
“If you are expecting me to be angry with you for it, then you are gravely mistaken, Elliot Covington,” Isabella said in a bossy tone. “Because my father is very good at spotting such vulnerability in people. My vulnerability was that I had no power to resist. Yours was that you were lonely and isolated. The fact that my father had played upon both vulnerabilities is an issue that he will have to answer for himself one day to a higher power than either you or me. But, just because this was all born of my father’s greed does not mean that we must live miserably, does it? Can we not take this situation away from my father’s hands, turn it into something new and different? Turn it into something that my father had never assumed it would be, or even cared to think about.”
“It will not be such a simple thing for me to forgive myself.”
“I already know that you do not forgive yourself easily, Elliot. You blame yourself for things that have been out of your control, and I know that you do. That is why you are here at this moment, that is why I find you in this tower again today.”
“Yes,” he said so quietly she could hardly hear him.
“I do not seek to upset you with my words, Elliot. I cannot begin to imagine what you suffered all those years ago and what you still suffer to this day. But I recognize a good human being who blames himself for nothing more than the crime of surviving. And now you are choosing to add to it the crime of loneliness. And yet you cannot see that neither one of these things are crimes. I do not see them as such, and it would be my dearest wish that you would not either.”
“I cannot tell you what it means to me that you have been so kind,” he began, and she could hear the emotion in his voice. “And please believe me when I tell you that it is enough for me that you do not hate me. There is surely many a woman in your position who would hate me without ceasing for the rest of her life, and yet you keep trying to help me.”
“And I shan’t give up trying to help you, Elliot. In helping you, I shall be helping myself.”
“How so?” Again, she had the strangest feeling that he had been about to turn to face her. Again, he did not.
“I do not wish to spend my days in solitude waiting for the evening to come. And as much as I am keen to see my dear Esme as many times a week as she can be free to come, I would wish for your company also.”
“But it is so difficult in the daytime. It is so hard for me when I am talking to you to remember that I am scarred at all, and I am afraid of turning suddenly and then seeing the look on your face.”
“Elliot, we cannot spend forevermore standing sideways onto one another.”
“Are you telling me that you are not afraid?”
“No, I am not telling you that. I am afraid. I am afraid that I will let myself down, I suppose, and in so doing, I would let you down also. And I would not wish to do that to you for the world.”
“Well, you must understand that I have lived a certain way for a very long time now, and it will not be a simple thing for me to break it.”
“I know that. I would not wish to push you into it.”
“So, you must allow me to think for awhile upon everything that you have said.”
“Yes, of course.” Isabella felt her mouth go dry but knew that she must continue. “But will you not turn to me now? Here in this tower, will you not turn to look at me?” Her heart was beating hard and fast.
“No,” he said simply.
“But, Elliot…”
“Since you are afraid of letting me down, I am afraid to see revulsion on your face. When you fainted away in the chapel, it was not as painful for me as you might have thought. But I did not know you then, and I had not expected anything different. But now, now that we have come to know each other as we have, I do not think that I could stand to see your revulsion. I could not bear it.”
“I understand.” Isabella could feel tears in her eyes but blinked at them hard until they dissipated. “But we will both keep trying, will we not?”
“Yes, we will keep trying,” he said, and she could see his handsome smile spreading.
Chapter 24
After dinner in her room, Isabella made her way down to the library with no expectation that Elliot would be there. He had been kind and friendly and had even agreed to walk back towards the house with her, albeit that he had been determined to stand so that only the left side of his face showed.
But she knew what such encounters took out of him, a man who had been left alone with his own emotions for such a very long time, and she had thought that he would very likely choose to spend the evening alone to fortify himself.
She did not blame him and did not mind, thinking that he would perhaps contemplate the things they had spoken of and come to some conclusion. After all, he had done just that with the doll and had, in the end, taken the doll as a keepsake and laid it on a chair in his own room. Perhaps this time alone was much-needed, and she was fully determined not to be disappointed by his absence.
However, she had just finished lighting the candles when she heard him come into the room.
“I have bought my violin with me, once again, and hope you are keen to play this evening.” He walked over to the fireplace and set his violin on his armchair whilst he took a poker and prodded at the weakening flames. “I had the fire lit a little early this evening, and it seems to be dying out already. Carry on without me, I will just put some extra wood on this and see if I can get it going again.”
“As you wish,” she said with a laugh. “Or I could ring the bell and have somebody come and remake the fire if you would prefer it?”
“No, I am quite capable.” He laughed too, and she thought him such an unusual character in more ways than one.
As a man who had been born to be a Duke, it seemed such an unlikely thing that he was prepared to kneel in front of the fire and throw on logs in an attempt to revive it. There was something about the whole thing which made her like him all the more.
Her own father, an Earl and a much more minor person in terms of title, would not have pulled on his own boots, never mind put a fire to rights. But that was only one of many great differences between Elliot Covington and the Earl of Upperton, she knew that much.
“Then I shall start with something by Haydn again if you have no objection,” she said, taking her favourite piece of sheet music from the piano seat.
“No objection at all,” he said and carried on raking over the fire grate.
“I must admit, I find it quite soothing to be able to play something I have come to know by heart. I have played it so often since you bought me this beautiful piano that I hardly need to refer to the music anymore. Something about that gives me a sense of comfort, of safety. And it also gives me a little confidence, I think.”
“You play very well indeed, Isabella, and you ought to have confidence. After all, you have not played for a number of years, and in a matter of days, you have mastered it again. I think you are a very fine musician.”
“I should like to be able to compose my own melodies, just as you do. I even thought about trying it, but I sat here and sat here, and nothing would come to mind. And then I spent an inordinate amount of time wondering quite where it is such inspiration comes from, and then I was diverted again, not even thinking of a melody, but thinking of the mechanics of developing one. That is hardly artistic or creative, is it?”
“I suppose that melodies are not something that you suddenly decide to create,” he spoke thoughtfully, even though he had laughed heartily at her admission. “I think it is something that just comes to mind when you least expect it. You probably hum little tunes that you do not know and never heard before all the time. That is composing, is it not?”
“Oh, I see what you mean.” Isabella sat down on the piano stool and laid her hands on her lap while she thought. “So, one does not simply sit down and say right, I am going to come up with a melody. Instead, it is easier to wait for the melody to come to you, as it were?”
“Yes, that is it exactly. At least, that is where my own little thoughts come from. They just appear, just a few bars, but it is enough then to make a start. When you have a melody come into your head, and you play that shortest of pieces, it seems to open up your heart further to creativity, and the rest of it comes quite naturally. You must try it; see if I am not right.”
“I shall,” Isabella said and hoped that she would find herself humming the tunes sooner or later. “Oh, it is no good. I am already worrying that I shall never hum again, that nothing will ever come to me. Really.”
“Isabella, it will come.” Elliot rose from the now roaring fire. “Just as soon as you stop thinking about it. Or overthinking it.”
“Yes, I shall try to empty my mind.” She laughed. “But not until I have played the Haydn. I had better concentrate whilst I do that.”
Elliot turned to retrieve his violin and, as he crossed the room towards her, she surreptitiously peered up at him. She knew it would not do to simply stare at him outright, to boorishly override his own thoughts and feelings on the matter of being looked at. But still, she wanted to test herself, just secretly.
It was true that it was not particularly light in the library, although the sudden flaming fire and the fact that he had crossed the path of her candelabra had done much to expose his disfigurement. And she had to admit, just to herself, that it was still not an easy thing to look at. But perhaps it was a little easier than it had been on that first day and, after all, progress was progress. Esme would have been proud of her, she felt sure.
“I am ready when you are, Isabella,” Elliot said, his smooth, deep voice coming from behind her once again.
Without another word, Isabella began to play. As soon as her fingers began to dance across the keys, she felt her confidence in the piece riding high. In the end, she closed her eyes, quite determined not to think about it, but just play, taking on board some of Elliot’s observations of life.
As she listened in the darkness, she realised that she had never played better than she was playing at that moment.
When they reached the end of the piece, Elliot clapped.
“I say, that was very well done.”
“Thank you,” she said and felt the warmth of his praise. “I closed my eyes, and I did not think about any of it.”
“Then I think you are perhaps ready to try a new instrument.”
“Right now? This minute? I am to learn how to play the violin?” Isabella could hear her own excitement.
“Yes, though I am not entirely sure that you will master it in a minute.” He laughed.
“That is not what I meant, and you know it. You are teasing me.” She laughed also.
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�Here, just stand up and take the violin,” he said, and she held the violin just as she had seen him do so many times before.
“Like this?”
“Yes, that is perfect.” He was standing behind her, so close that she could feel his presence. “Now, I am sure that you know that different notes are formed when difference strings, or a different combination of strings, are pressed against the wood. Like this.”
Elliot reached out and covered her hand with his own, gently moving her fingers over the strings and then pressing down gently. With his other arm, he reached around her and put the bow in her hand, again with his own hand covering hers.
Without a word, he moved her arms so that the bow ran across the strings. It was a simple collection of notes played gently as he pulled her arm backward and forwards, drawing the bow across the strings.
“Goodness me, that is wonderful,” Isabella said breathlessly. “I almost feel as if I am playing it.”
Dukes to Fall in Love With: A Historical Regency Romance Collection Page 19