An Inconvenient Beauty

by Kristi Ann Hunter

  He led her up a small rise, away from the scatterings of other people enjoying the park and into the middle of a small copse of shade trees.

  “At Riverton you said you didn’t know if you loved me. And it made me think, made me question myself in ways I never had.” Griffith knelt before her, among the birds and the trees and the nature he knew she loved, and took both of her hands in his own, stealing what little breath she had left along with the final pieces of her heart. “I had to ask myself if I loved you, or if I simply loved the challenging puzzle you presented. My sisters tell me that’s a horrible thing to admit to a woman, but if you’re going to marry me you should know that I think about everything.”

  “Oh, Griffith.” Isabella freed one of her hands so she could reach out and cup his face, running a thumb along his cheek. She should stop him. This wasn’t going to end well. But she selfishly craved the memory.

  “I thought I knew what I wanted in a wife, so when my heart kept turning back to you, I fought it. I considered myself infatuated with your beauty or mesmerized by the mystery around you. I couldn’t be in love with you, because you went against everything I’d thought through so carefully.”

  Another woman might think his declaration insensitive and unromantic, but Isabella had come to understand Griffith a bit, and she knew what he was saying, what it was costing him to say those words. And the more he spoke the more ill she became. His love she could accept, but not his understanding.

  “Griffith, I—”

  “Please.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “I need to say it all. It turns out that my heart is perhaps a bit smarter than my mind, because it never beat for Frederica. It never whispered her name to me at odd moments of the day. And I thought that made her the smarter choice. She would fit into my life and everything would remain in its logical, thought-out place.

  “You turn my world upside down. I’ve told you things I never thought to share with anyone. I’ve changed my plans for you. I’ve danced with you.” He grinned. “Or at least tried to.”

  Isabella couldn’t take any more. She wanted to run from the park crying and screaming, wanted to rail at God for the unfairness of it all. Why, why when she had begged His forgiveness, when she had resigned herself to the consequences of her actions, had He allowed something like this to happen?

  She knew where this was going. Despite Griffith’s claim that she made him illogical, he was not a man who would make such a speech without intending to ask for her hand at the end of it.

  “Isabella, my love”—Griffith swallowed—“will you do me the honor of marrying me? Of challenging the rest of what I thought I knew of life? Will you take up the challenge of reminding me daily that God created the heart as well as the mind?”

  Pain stabbed Isabella from her chest to her feet. Had any woman ever received such a beautiful request? The sincerity and thought behind it amazed her. That this brilliant man had looked at all the angles and then decided that he wanted to spend his life with her anyway.

  She tried to look away from him, tried desperately not to soak in every detail in his handsome and eager face. The evidence of love and hope that seemed to burn right through her, threatening to overwhelm the hope of her family’s solid future that she’d carried in her heart.

  She couldn’t do it. Couldn’t leave Frederica to live with the consequences of Isabella’s actions. Couldn’t risk her uncle carrying through on his threat against her father. Couldn’t ask Griffith to wait while she continued to build her reputation as London’s most indiscriminate flirt. Couldn’t ask him to take on her family’s debts, her brothers’ education, and who knew what other problems her uncle would cause. Eventually Griffith’s logical mind would realize that she’d brought more misery into his life than joy, and she’d have to watch the light burning in his emerald gaze die.

  And she couldn’t do it.

  “I can’t,” she whispered.

  Griffith rose slowly from his kneeling position, his fingers still wrapped tightly around her own. She should take her hand back, but she knew the moment she did she’d be ripping her own heart out, because it was his and she had no way of claiming it back. Nor did she want to. If she was going to cause the torment gathering in his emerald eyes, then she deserved to feel heartbreak of her own.

  “Bella, I—”

  “No.” A sob cut off anything else she’d been going to say. Hearing the shortened version of her name, the one used by those she cared so much about, spoken in his deep, gentle voice was too much.

  So she ran. Down the gentle slope of the hill and around the line of trees, along the street where peddlers and hack drivers yelled at her. Whether it was a bid for her business or an admonishment to get out of the way, she didn’t care. She simply ran. Her skirt kicked up in a wildly scandalous manner, which would probably make the papers the next day. Somewhere behind her she heard the huffing and scrambling of her maid trying to keep up.

  Her side was aching by the time she slammed into the front door of her uncle’s town house. The pain didn’t subside when she pressed a hand tightly to her ribs, but part of her didn’t want it to. There should be physical pain when one’s heart broke. Maybe she’d die from it and her uncle would fulfill his promises out of sympathy and her mourning family would never have to know what she’d done.

  She’d said no.

  There was no denying that the word had come out of her mouth. Just that word. Not even a string of platitudes had followed it before she’d fled from the scene, giving him no time to form a rebuttal. And he would have had a rebuttal. Eventually. After he got over the shock of being so very wrong about how she felt about him.

  Again.

  He still wasn’t over the shock, though, so it was probably a good thing she’d gone home. They’d have both caught colds or some other dreadful ailment standing in the wind for five hours.

  Quiet pressed in on him as he stood at a back window, looking out over the small but immaculately manicured garden that passed for grounds in the city. Roses danced in the breeze to a tune only God knew, but the one he heard was of a decidedly more earthbound, if still angelic, source. The pianoforte was behind him, a solid, hulking presence in the darkening music room. Now it lay silent and still, but he could almost hear her plunking away the notes of the Scottish ballad he’d caught her singing one afternoon in the country. Could imagine her escaping to the keys to avoid her uncle’s displeasure over Griffith’s attentions. He had no trouble remembering the small grin she’d given him when the pompous Lady Hannah had derided her for playing someone as plebeian as Hummel when she had in fact been playing a lesser-known piece by Mozart.

  Why had she turned him down?

  Griffith sat at the pianoforte, running his fingers over the keys, sending a disjointed clash of notes careening around the room. It broke the quiet but didn’t ease the oppressive feeling of it. For the first time, living alone in his large London house felt lonely. Why now? His family had been out of the house for nearly two years.

  He’d never been lonely, during that time, because he’d never expected them to stay. Isabella was someone different entirely. There wasn’t a room in the house he couldn’t see her living in, imagine her bringing a bit of life to, even if it looked a touch more chaotic than he’d like.

  With a last slam of the keys, Griffith jerked to his feet and stomped out of the room to seek a haven in the only place he could think of. His study should still be solidly his own, as Isabella would have no reason to be in there even if she were his wife.

  The house was quiet as the servants went about finishing their work elsewhere in the house. The silence felt heavy and thick. Even his clothing seemed to feel the tension, forcing him to roll his shoulders and undo his cravat in an effort to ease the tightness.

  He walked into the study and eased the door into its customary position, leaving a three-inch gap between the door and the frame. After a moment he reconsidered and pushed the thing closed until the latch clicked.

  A curl of
peace worked its way through his midsection. This was the room he did his best thinking in, was the most comfortable, and usually solved whatever problem he was facing. He’d always loved this study, even when he’d spent most of his time away at school. As he’d gotten older he frequently took his school breaks in London just to absorb the energy in this room. Despite the fact that most of the time spent with his father had occurred in the country, this was the room that felt as if it had received the old duke’s mark the most. Griffith had changed very little of it in the eighteen years since it had become his.

  He wandered the room, grazing a hand idly over a standing globe, running a thumb along a shelf filled with gilded and leather-bound volumes. His thoughts shifted far from the room, trying to decide what he was going to do now that the woman he’d fallen in love with refused to marry him.

  Could he marry someone he didn’t love, knowing that Isabella was out there somewhere? No, he couldn’t. Not until she had married first, removing any hope he had of making her his bride. He would have to become even more of a social hermit, because he couldn’t bear to see her with the man she and her uncle eventually chose.

  Why not him? As beautiful as Isabella was, she came with pitifully little in dowry and connections. His suit should have been accepted with glee by anyone seeking to advance their family’s status and station in life. With what he knew of her family’s situation, she should have jumped at the chance to marry him. She wasn’t going to get a better offer.

  His mind mulled the problem until he suddenly blinked the room back into focus, reality stunning him out of his musings with an abrupt crash. He was sitting in a wing chair, feet extended toward the cold fireplace. It wasn’t an unusual position to find himself in, but never before had he sat just so while also swirling a glass of amber liquid in his hand.

  When had he poured it? He couldn’t even remember going over to the sideboard he kept stocked for gentlemen who came to discuss business. With a shaky hand he lifted the glass to his nose and sniffed. He didn’t even know what he’d poured. Scotch? There was a certain amount of irony in that choice of drink that he could imagine himself subconsciously choosing.

  He ran his tongue over his teeth to see if he had not only poured the drink without thought but also drunk it without noticing.

  Nothing felt thick and dry like he remembered it feeling after his accident in the country. He tested his breath. Only the normal staleness of a long day met his nose.

  He set the thankfully untouched glass of spirits down on the table beside him.

  This wasn’t him. This moping around like a brooding dandy whose lovesick poetry hadn’t been well received by society’s darling. He was the Duke of Riverton, and while he was now ready to admit that his plan to control and plot his journey to a loving marriage had been doomed to failure almost from the first, he was not ready to say that love should not have a measure of such logic applied to it.

  Isabella denying his suit was illogical.

  But it still hurt.

  Chapter 27

  Isabella slept late the next morning.

  When she woke, Frederica was sitting in a chair by the window, reading a book. She glanced over when she heard Isabella moving but said nothing and turned her attention back to her book.

  Isabella pushed up into a sitting position and waited until Frederica flipped a page, curious to see if her cousin was actually reading or simply trying not to look at her.

  “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  Frederica huffed a sound that could have been termed a short laugh if it weren’t coated in sadness. “When a woman cries until well past three in the morning, you let her sleep.”

  With a groan, Isabella flopped back onto her pillows. “I didn’t realize I was so loud.”

  Another page turned. “Do remember that our beds back up to the same wall. It doesn’t take much.” She closed the book and looked at Bella with a blank expression. “What happened?”

  For a few seconds Isabella considered lying. Would Freddie understand why she’d said no? Why she had to say no? Poor Frederica was waiting to find out whether or not the love of her life was even going to survive to be able to propose, while Isabella was walking away from the man who had declared his love for her and had so sweetly asked her to be his wife. Would Frederica understand that more was riding on Isabella’s success than ever before? That Freddie’s own happiness was at stake?

  “He proposed.”

  In the ensuing silence, Isabella couldn’t look at Frederica. She heard her cousin rise and cross the room to yank the bell pull.

  “And you said no, I’m assuming. Otherwise we’d have been up all night celebrating.”

  “I couldn’t, Freddie. Not with so much at stake. My father was a proud man before the accident. When I left he was barely holding on, working himself to exhaustion every day to accomplish a small fraction of what needed to be done. He’d sit before the fire at night, looking older than I’d ever seen him. How could he survive being indebted to my husband? Relying on a Peer of the Realm to care for his family, his children? It would break him, Frederica. And that would break me. And I know Griffith would blame himself for my unhappiness.”

  Frederica drummed her fingers against her book. “I don’t think,” she said slowly, “that your father would be all that pleased with your making decisions for him.”

  “Of course he wouldn’t. Which is why I won’t tell him.” Isabella got up from the bed and began to pace. “When I go home at the end of the Season, we’ll say I wasn’t successful. Uncle Percy agreed to pretend to help out of sympathy.”

  “Leaving your father indebted to his wife’s brother instead of his daughter’s husband. I’m not sure that’s any better. Personally I think His Grace would be considerably less annoying and condescending about it than my father will be.”

  Isabella frowned. “Maybe, but at least then I’d be there to suffer alongside them. Not off in my shiny new castle, living life without a care while they scrape by knowing everything they’ve got is from the hands of another.”

  “It seems a rather impossible situation.”

  “Yes.”

  A maid arrived then, carrying a tray. The cousins waited until she’d left again before returning to their conversation.

  “Are you going to be ill today?” Frederica set about pouring and fixing the tea the way Isabella normally took it. “I wouldn’t blame you. But Father’s expecting people to stop by this afternoon and informed me he expects us to be available. The House of Commons approved the draft of the bill. Now it only needs the approval of the House of Lords.”

  Isabella sat at the dressing table and wrapped her hands around the cup of tea, taking a deep breath of the fragrant steam. “So it’s almost over, then? He said the Lords would vote on it once the Commons had.”

  “It’s almost over. He wants you to make a final case for him, though.” Freddie frowned as if trying to remember something important. “Assuming, of course, they stop picking over it and vote on the thing. You’ll be happy to know that even though all these men want to vote on it to make the path to your side a little smoother, they’re not voting blindly. All the changes have Father worried. Of course he’s never thought it strict enough. If he had his way the apothecaries would be nothing more than chemists, able to do nothing without the oversight of a fully educated physician.”

  Isabella well understood her uncle’s frustration. This Apothecary Act had been something of a burden for him for years. She just couldn’t bring herself to care. “How did you find out about all of this? He’s barely talked to me about what’s going on. Just tells me to get more men. As if they were flowers I could walk around a ballroom and pick at will.”

  Frederica shrugged. “The bedroom wall isn’t the only one that’s thin.”

  “I’ll be ready.” Isabella made herself take a bite of fluffy pastry even though it sat on her tongue like cotton stuffing. She swallowed hard. “I still have to see this through, and the sooner we finish it the be
tter.”

  Frederica nodded and then pulled a folded white square from her book. “I almost forgot. A letter arrived for you yesterday, but you’d already closed yourself away in here. I assumed it could wait.”

  Who could possibly be sending her a letter? Had her mother sent another note?

  Isabella’s hand trembled as she reached for the paper. Perhaps a word from home was just the motivation she needed to see this through, to bear the cold stares in another ballroom, to ignore the papers one more day, to resist the urge to tell her uncle what a conniving manipulator he was and leave London in her dust.

  Her mother’s handwriting looped across the front of the paper, bringing a smile to Isabella’s lips.

  Frederica reached down and hugged Isabella. “I’ll leave you to your letter and your breakfast, then.”

  Isabella was already breaking the seal when the door latched behind Frederica.

  But the words did not bring solidifying motivation. A cry wrenched from Isabella’s lips as she read the note.

  They were selling the farm. Not all of it, of course, but enough to pay off the debts and send Hugh to school. There would even be enough for a small dowry for Isabella and her sisters. They wouldn’t have to rely on her uncle’s generosity anymore.

  That sentiment brought tears to Isabella’s eyes.

  Her mother continued by saying that once the girls married, the small farm would be more than enough to support Isabella’s parents, especially as her father had become exceptionally good at leather work during his convalescence. They’d taken his leather goods to Dumfries and made almost as much as they’d made with the farm the previous year.

  Mother sounded so happy. Isabella could do nothing but cry.

  It was so clear now. She’d made the wrong choice. She’d given up everything, telling herself it didn’t matter because at least she’d be saving her family. She could deal with her own unhappiness to know that they were safe and taken care of.

  But she shouldn’t have.