Sitting up, Isabelle did the only thing that she could. She departed from Hamilton Hall at a reckless speed. It wasn’t ladylike but, for having been raised and bred to be the finest of ladies, she had never felt quite comfortable in the reality of it. Rose had been the good daughter, the perfect daughter, the one that could do no wrong, and the one who always, inevitably still, received the brunt of their parents’ disapproval. If she could be so perfect and still have fault found within her, Isabelle knew that there could be no hope for herself. And so, she didn’t try. She’d ran outside in the rain and muddied her hem. She’d rode horses astride. She’d climbed trees and rebelled against bonnets and shoes and parasols.
She’d rebelled, and still she was never noticed.
Rose was the daughter that required all of the attention. And Isabelle received none. She loved Rose dearly, would continue to love her until her dying breath, but she finally admitted to herself that she resented her sister for it. Isabelle knew she’d never be truly loved by her parents. And she knew that Rose loved her in her own quiet fashion. But she had never been afforded the opportunity to find out if her parents could love her, because Rose was always there.
A tear of guilt mixed with anger slid down her cheek.
Rose was undeserving of the feelings she was only now coming to realize, now that it was too late to take them back, too late to apologize for all the pain she had caused her sister to endure on her behalf. Rose had been perfect and had still suffered silently their parents rueful scorn, while Isabelle had been selfish and wild. She had revolted against her lot in life, and had allowed her sister to suffer punishment in her stead. It was easy to do—the two looked so incredibly alike, despite the separation of one year between their births, that it was easy to confuse them. And like the spiteful and immature girl that Isabelle was, she had allowed it.
She was no more mature now than she had been for the whole of her life. She had borne a child with a man who was not her husband, nor even promised to be. She had decided impulsively to marry the man her sister loved, merely because it made her life less complicated. And she had run away so that she could undergo a painful procedure that could endanger her life while ending the life of her child, merely because she was a coward. Then she had, like the idiot she was, run out into the road and finally got what, for her entire life, seemed to be coming to her. She got hit by a carriage. It should have knocked some sense into her.
And yet, here she was contemplating lying to the man who had promised to marry her without question.
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t lie to him. But the truth seemed insurmountable. It was too much. But it didn’t have to be. And it wouldn’t be. She knew who she was. Now she just had to find the courage to tell him.
Isabelle’s thoughts and emotions continued to shuffle back and forth and back again as she strode down the road in the direction of the village just beyond the hills that surrounded the estate. It was tedious exercise that tested her endurance, but she was determined. She needed to get to town, despite the early hour, despite the fact that dawn had just recently broken over the horizon.
*****
Falling in love was tedious work when the one doing the falling was desperately trying to hold to a ladder swaying in the breeze in an attempt not to fall any farther and, instead, climb his way out of it.
Desmond was falling in love, there was no denying it now.
At every footstep that echoed through the corridors of the house, his ears perked, he sat taller in his seat, he leaned toward it, expecting it to be her.
No, not expecting. Hoping.
And that was something that he never did. Despised, even.
Hope. It was for young fools that did not yet understand that hope had no place in a world such as theirs. Hope was a lie that people told themselves to get through the day. Hope of a better tomorrow, of anything. Hope was robbery of one’s time, one’s energy, and one’s essence. Hope was a thief. Hope was not to be trusted.
To hope was to waste one’s life waiting.
To hope was to lust after the coulda, woulda, shoulda-beens.
Hope was the worst kind of lie.
And yet, he hoped anyway.
He’d been waiting since last night when she didn’t turn back to look at him from the top of the stairs. He’d felt like an idiot for the amount of time that he’d spent waiting for her to reappear, to look back, to reemerge. And then even more of a fool when he’d listened for her with his ear pressed against the polished wood of his chamber door.
He couldn’t disturb her in case she was resting. But he wanted desperately to see her, and surely by now she must have been refreshed enough to emerge from the cocoon of her room. It was nearly noon and, to his knowledge, she had not requested to have breakfast in her room. In fact, when he’d questioned one of the maids as to whether she had woken yet, he’d been told she was not in her rooms.
Where was she?
He could just find out where she was from one of the servants and go to her, seek her out, be in her company. But that would be pitiful. It would be like groveling. And that felt just as bad as hope.
He wanted her to come to him. Wanted her to want to come to him. If he was going to fall so damnably in love with her, then she very well ought to love him back in equal or greater measure, and she must show it by showing up.
So he waited. First, in his study, behind his desk. Then, in the library. However, when he still didn’t hear the pitter patter of her steps moving about the hall, he moved himself to the sitting room. The house was a decent size, but certainly not exceedingly large, and there were only a select number of places she could be. Surely, she would wander in at some point and, when she did, she would stumble upon him.
However, she didn’t make an appearance in the rose sitting room either.
Where was she?
Everything about Desmond turned pinched, like the face of the pug he’d had when he was a boy. It wasn’t that he was angry, per say. His pride had been injured, was all. With every minute more that he waited for her to find him, the bruise on it darkened. And there was hardly any distinction between the emotions of pride and anger when they played out on Desmond’s face.
But what did he care? It was not as though he had to look at his face. He just had to live with it. The person that would have to see it was her—if she ever cared to appear—and if she thought him angry then it was just as well. He bloody well would be angry if she did not fall instantly and totally in love with him and instead let him sink alone.
And he was sinking.
He’d fallen from the ladder he was clinging to. Gone and fallen in love with a lady who might as well not exist for as much as he had seen of her or talked to her today.
Yesterday had been magical.
He wanted to write it all down, scrawl each moment across a page so that he wouldn’t forget a single detail.
It was just yesterday, but he remembered it like a distant memory, tucked away in the recesses of the mind for safe keeping. Some of the details were a little fuzzy around the edges, but she was crystal clear. She was lit up in sunlight and gold. She was hair blowing in the wind, and skirts whipping around bare, white ankles. She was driving a shovel into the ground, and she was glistening with iridescent droplets of water, turned to diamonds by her richness.
It all stayed with him as vivid as when it happened, making him feel a thousand years older, and at the same time younger than he’d ever felt.
And it was just yesterday.
What would every day for the rest of his life with her feel like?
He needed to see her and find out.
What if it was a fluke?
What if it was lust?
Desmond closed his eyes.
He didn’t want to see her. He had to.
She was a mystery of a woman. Desmond didn’t much care for mysteries—never had—but he cared for her. He didn’t mind that he couldn’t always tell how deep her thoughts and emotions went, was unable to rea
d them. It didn’t matter that she seemed to read him just about as well as he did himself.
What did matter was that fact that, in just nine days, this lady—who was so young she could practically be his daughter—had come in and uprooted his life in all the best ways.
He needed to see her, needed to know.
Did she feel the same for him? Was she also as affected?
Because falling in love with someone who did not return the sentiment was less like falling and more like sinking, in the ocean, attached to chains and an anchor. Drowning.
And well, honestly, for as much as Desmond longed to avoid associating with nearly every living thing, he didn’t much care for the idea of no longer being alive himself.
It was not that he had a complex about his mortality. He knew that he would one day die and that he could not control that, however, he could control this. He did not have to die this way, torn apart by a woman.
This was not his time to go and this was not the way by which he was to do it.
It just wasn’t. And he wouldn’t allow it to be.
He’d been through so much in his lifetime, surely this was not the way that he would go out.
Long strides took him out of doors to be swallowed in the mist that hung over the valley. There was a slight drizzle coming down, but the dusting of dew on his face and neck was just what he needed. It was something that was true, tangible, something that could be felt with all five of his senses. Very much unlike love.
He hadn’t any particular destination in mind, but there could be but one. The place where he used to come to think. His bench. Though today he was missing the one item that usually accompanied him to the spot. His journal. It would turn up eventually; it wasn’t like it to just grow legs and wander off on its own.
Desmond had half a mind to turn around and march back into his home and tear it brick from brick until he found it. But of course it would turn up. It was merely that yesterday had been out of the ordinary; he must have misplaced it in all the chaos that was his mind and heart.
Chaos. Was that what he was calling it now?
He smiled. If it was, this was the kind of chaos he could stand to live with forever. A mixture of self-doubt, hope, longing and, yes, love for this lady who had a face so beautiful it was like seeing the face of an angel sent down from Heaven. A face, but no name.
He wanted to set the words to paper so that they wouldn’t be so full in his heart. But he couldn’t. Not without his journal. Desmond rubbed a coarse hand across his face and then strode around the bushes to his bench, only to find the subject of his every thought there.
“You shouldn’t be out here,” he said upon approach.
Not a single muscle flinched. She did not jump or, in the least, act surprised. Her expression was blanketed like the mist covering the valley, her tone plain, as she said, “I’m well enough to walk.”
He hadn’t thought that she wasn’t.
“Yes,” Desmond allowed, wondering if he were coming across nearly as in control of his emotions as she was with hers, “but the rain is not good for your health.”
“It is hardly raining,” she stated. And it was a statement. Her tone did not threaten to argue or condescend. It was merely the recounting of a truth that could not be denied. It was not, after all, technically raining.
“It could very easily be raining,” he contended. He did it not to be right or to have the last word—he didn’t think any woman would ever give any man that—but because it could very easily be raining and, like it or not, he was falling in love with this woman and didn’t wish her to die of pneumonia brought on by a cold that could have been prevented had she kept indoors during inclement weather.
Though, he relented—in his mind only—that, if an Englishman, or woman, were to keep inside during any and all inclement weather, they would hardly set a foot out the door for the majority of the year.
Semantics.
“Perhaps I like the rain,” she said, cutting through his thoughts.
Which started them in a new direction entirely. She had the ability to do that. To stop him short and spin him around, just with one word, one phrase, one look.
Desmond was resolved to see her indoors, but he couldn’t help wondering, asking, “Do you?”
And finally she looked at him, her light eyes nearly the same color of the mist that surrounded them. They were hollow orbs, and well guarded, not allowing him entry to her thoughts. “I could.”
The words were spoken with such clarity, such poise, and distinction, Desmond knew that he hadn’t heard wrong. He also knew that no matter how hard he tried he would never be able discern what emotion she was masking. Was it hope? Longing?
Despite her obvious flaws—namely, being quite clearly a run away—she was perfect as no lady ought to be. Ladies were bred to be perfect, it was true, but this went beyond the pail. This was something else entirely. Ladies knew how to play a game. But Isabelle wasn’t playing a game here. Instead, she was the master of it, she was the one making the rules, and Desmond felt the stumbling knowledge that he was merely along for the ride, playing in to her cards.
She was almost too perfect in this moment. She was perfectly controlled in the most vexing manner, leaving Desmond second-guessing her motives, her meanings, the emotions she kept concealed.
Desmond didn’t know of a single lady that would prefer to sit outside in the cold and the damp over the warmth and comfort of indoors. And he didn’t know of a single lady that could do it so stoically either, without a breath of complaint as to the fact that they were cold. Her control was almost as heartwarming as it was disturbing.
She was out here because this is what called to her, just as it was what called to him. And that made his heart sing a symphony.
Only to die out a second later when he realized that she wasn’t quite herself at all. Or at least, not the her he had come to know as of recent.
Her eyes were dead, blank expressions revealing not even the faintest emotion.
“Are you all right? You are looking a bit grey,” Desmond remarked, concern threading through his body, his tone remaining firmly in check.
“It is the weather, I am sure,” she said, turning away so that he was left with only a view of her bruised profile.
To her credit, she did not lift a single finger to the skin that was making her look as though she were a first-time sailor at sea.
“Of course,” he said, returning to the subject at hand, to where they were, “which is why I must insist that we return you to the house. You should be dry and in front of a fire.”
“That is not what I meant at all,” she said, though her tone bore not even a hint of displeasure. “I should have been more specific. It is merely my spirits that are grey, my lord.”
And once more he was taken off subject.
Would he ever again be able to get through a conversation without his mind changing gears? Most certainly not, as long as she was near. He would have smiled acerbically at the thought, but he found that he could not.
“You’re calling me my lord again?”
After yesterday, after everything, they were back to formalities?
Had her heart not had the same awakening as his?
“I apologize,” she said, but it sounded as though she were doing no such thing. Her voice sounded as perfectly dull as it had for the entirety of their conversation.
“Oh, do not do so on my account,” he quipped, though he felt not in the least bit humorous as his heart was wrapping around itself, suffocating his emotions.
She looked at him in that strangely masked way that did not allow him to deduce what was going on inside her head, and explained, “It is just that it seems more right to do so, if you can understand. We’ve only known each other a short while, and it seems almost forward.”
“I gave you permission,” he said, not tightly, but not with as much ease as he would like.
He’d given her permission and she had taken it. So what was the problem?<
br />
He looked to her, tried to see her, tried to peel back her mask. There was something there, something behind it. There had to be. She couldn’t have changed her mind so quickly. They had kissed just last night! Twice!
He wished he could be an easy person, a person who could love her openly, profess his feelings to the earth, the wind, the sky, even knowing that the sentiment might not be returned. But he was not an easy person who could just flamboyantly parade around his feelings. He kept his feelings and his person tied up tight inside him so that they would never escape. So that he might never be hurt again.
“Yes, I know. And perhaps it wouldn’t matter had I a name to return to you. But as I do not, it does not feel right.”
Desmond closed his eyes as she reminded him once more that she had no idea who she was. Even as he was sitting here beside her, she was alone, because she had no identity.
And that hurt him. He didn’t want her to be alone. And yet, by keeping her here, by bringing her on as wife, that was what she would be destined to be for the entirety of her life. Even if she restored her memory, she would still have him to contend with and, while he might be seated beside her, even as he loved her, he would always be a world apart. He hadn’t a choice but to be.
Desmond bit back a saddened sigh, and filled the space between his lips with, “That was one thing we do need to discuss.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, still with a total lack of emotion that was aggravating in the extreme. She didn’t even sound the least bit interested in what he was saying.
How was it possible? How could she so thoroughly disguise all of her emotions when just days ago—just yesterday!—she’d been so animated? She was an entirely different person yesterday. It was like she had changed overnight.
Perhaps it was like she said, the weather had her spirits down. But if that were the case, why would she march herself all the way out here and into the thick of it? If the rain had sunken her spirits, then shouldn’t she be in bed sleeping away the sorrow of it?
Wherefore Art Thou. Page 20