“Do you miss your friend?” Elliot said quietly.
“I do miss her. Although I am very grateful that you have allowed me to maintain the correspondence.”
“What sort of a man did you think I was when you first came here? Did you really think I was such an ogre that I would not allow you any contact at all with the outside world?”
“You sound angry with me, Elliot, and I understand it. But you must understand that I did not know what sort of a man you were; and I did not know if, in your heart, you were an ogre or not. I was just afraid, and that was all. And so much was out of my control, everything was out of my control, and I think it a little harsh of you to blame me for my feelings at that time. But to answer your question as truthfully as I can, I had assumed that you would not allow contact with the outside world, yes.”
“Forgive me; you have every right to challenge my mood.”
“But I would not wish to.”
“Perhaps you do not wish to, but you must. It is very easy for a man in my circumstances to fall into self-pity and bitterness. But it is a place I have fought to keep myself out of these eighteen years, and I would be grateful to you if you would not allow me to indulge myself. You must challenge me, do you understand?”
“I understand, Elliot.” And she did.
Isabella knew exactly how it made a person feel to embrace the role of the victim. She knew exactly because she had felt it herself from the moment she realized what a cruel and uncaring man her father was. And to know how her mother would never defend her had only served to reinforce it, to make it real. Isabella had been a victim, and she had felt very sorry for herself. But there came a time when she realized that she had decided to see herself that way, had played the story of her life over and over again in her mind and almost encouraged herself to feel worse and worse. It was a spiral towards a seemingly bottomless pit, and one she would never care to visit again. And if she could do anything to keep Elliot from falling in, she would do it.
“And if you would like your friend to visit, you may ask her. It is true that I do not have visitors myself, besides Crawford, but there is no reason why you cannot. If you would care to, you must arrange it with Kitty.”
Isabella felt suddenly like crying. She knew what Elliot’s privacy meant to him, and how hard it would be for him to open the doors of his mythical, protected castle to the outside world. Even just one person.
And she understood entirely that arranging it with Kitty meant that Elliot had no intention of meeting Esme himself. For some reason, that made her feel dreadfully sad. If only she could come to terms with her own emotions and lay them out in order so that she might have a better idea of how to deal with them.
“Thank you, Elliot.” It was all that Isabella could think of to say, and she was surprised to hear her voice had given away her emotion.
In truth, she did not know if Esme could ever be tempted to come in through the tangled boundary and approach the monster’s lair.
Chapter 12
Almost two months had gone by since Isabella had married the Duke of Coldwell. Isabella could hardly believe that when she had first married him, she had not assumed even surviving as long as this, never mind that she would be almost content.
If she could have changed anything at all, apart from the most obvious, she would have removed her feelings of isolation. It was a theme upon which Elliot had spoken more than once, and each time she heard it, she began to identify with his loneliness.
Nothing had changed about their circumstances, and their meetings carried on much the same as always, barring the fact that it was now summer. The light evenings had meant that their meetings in the drawing room had grown increasingly late to accommodate for the extended hours of daylight.
Isabella had not encountered Elliot out in the grounds ever since the day she had been to the tower, and she had begun to worry that he had taken to keeping himself indoors from that moment onwards.
The very idea of it upset her greatly, but she could not think of a way to approach the subject. It was certainly one of those issues which would undoubtedly put an untimely end to their conversation, as always.
Instead, she comforted herself with the idea that he had been outside but that she had not seen him. She had not been out to the tower herself since that first day; she could not face it. Whenever she thought of the blackened walls and the untouched but dirty porcelain face of the little doll, Isabella shuddered. In so many weeks, she had been unable to shake the desolate feelings which overtook her whenever she thought of the place.
It had largely kept her out of the woodland for fear of stumbling upon the tower even if she wandered down a different pathway. She did not know the lay of the land well enough to keep herself away from the tower, and she knew from experience how quickly one came upon it, how unexpectedly.
Instead, Isabella had kept herself to the gardens which were, in all honesty, the most extensive she had ever seen. There were open expanses of immaculate lawn and neat rows of brightly coloured blooms everywhere. But there were also areas of great interest, walled gardens being most plentiful. Every time she found something new, Isabella gave a silent prayer of thanks to whomever it was that had created so beautiful an estate and grounds so many years before.
She would dearly have loved to have walked the grounds with Esme, for they had spent much of their time doing just that in the past. They had always liked to walk and talk each parting with harmless gossip or telling their hopes and dreams for the future to the other, stride upon stride.
Although Isabella and Esme had exchanged several letters, Isabella had yet to find the courage to ask her friend to call upon her at Coldwell Hall.
She had not even begun to make inroads into the thing with hints, for Esme knew her almost as well as she knew herself and would see it most clearly.
The problem was that Isabella did not want to put Esme in a dreadful position. In Esme’s mind, the tales they used to tell each other of the monster in the castle behind the tangle of impenetrable foliage might still loom large. The very idea of attending might well strike fear into Esme’s heart, and Isabella could not bear it.
She could not bear the idea that Esme would accept the invitation out of love to her friend, all the while worrying and feeling fearful of such a visit.
But worse than that, Isabella could not bear the thought that Esme might refuse. It would seem like the end of their friendship, even if they continued to correspond. If she did not test that friendship, Isabella would not have to think about something as final as that refusal.
And yet, as she walked the gardens and leaned forward to draw in the wonderful scent of the roses, Isabella could not help dreaming of how wonderful it would be to have her friend with her every so often.
Still, those were musings for another day. Perhaps she ought not to invite Esme until she knew the truth of everything about Coldwell Hall. Not, of course, that she suspected Elliot of anything dreadful, but she knew there was something to know; something that had remained untold.
Not a secret, exactly, but an omission of some sort that she thought it would do well to know.
Not just because of Esme and the implications of inviting her dear friend to see her, but because of her own standing in the house and her own understanding of her husband and the family who had once shared that fine, enormous mansion with him.
And it was in that very spirit that Isabella began to find herself exploring more and more. Whilst she had determined not to return to the tower, she had not turned her back on her quest for knowledge. Instead, she turned her attention to the house itself and wandered at will, just as she had been assured she might.
As always, Isabella moved quietly around the house, silently scuttling down corridors and wondering if she might, at any moment, come face-to-face with her husband. Quite why it had become something to fear, she could not say, for she had grown to look forward to their meetings in the evenings.
She was coming to find her husb
and good company and, whenever some business or other kept him from their nightly conversation, Isabella had found herself disappointed.
But still the shock of seeing him that day out in the woodland had not left her. Not just the shock of once again setting eyes upon the red and purple ruined skin, but to see how her own sudden appearance had affected him. Isabella did not want to put him through that again, although she was beginning to find each day growing increasingly longer, stretching out ahead of her until all she felt she had was time.
Perhaps that was why she had come to look forward to her conversations with her husband. Perhaps it was loneliness which was driving her to hasten to the drawing room every night and to feel a growing sense of disappointment when she felt the evenings drawing to a close.
If she had other company throughout the day, would she willingly choose to spend the evenings with Elliot?
After some weeks of silent investigations, Isabella had felt sure she had identified the chamber that her husband used. She had walked by the door on the west side of Coldwell Hall, the opposite end from where she slept, many times.
After several days of intermittent hovering and listening, Isabella had finally found the courage to open the door. She had pushed it inwards very gently, relieved to find it unlocked. In her mind, she had a plan; if she found her husband there, she would claim herself to be lost and apologize that her exploration of her new home had taken her so far. She knew, of course, that it was a particularly weak excuse, but she could come up with no other and, in the end, she went ahead.
Isabella had crept into the room, pleased to find that it was empty. Elliot must be somewhere else altogether, perhaps even in Crawford Maguire’s study in deep and fortifying conversation. Wherever he was, she knew she had at least a few minutes to indulge her curiosity.
The room was large although certainly no larger than her own one. She felt sure that it was not the biggest bedroom in the mansion and wondered why Elliot might have chosen not to take the very best for himself. Still, the room was very nice indeed and painted in the same light cream colour of her own walls.
It seemed that her husband was fond of making the internal spaces of Coldwell Hall seem as bright as if the daylight truly happened within. Whilst all the windows had beautiful and thick curtains hanging at them, there were no great sweeping pelmets anywhere, nothing to hinder the progress of whatever sunshine might be available. It was the same everywhere, Isabella felt sure.
Poor Elliot; he both loved and feared the daylight.
There was a great four-poster bed in the room with a dark green bedspread over the crisp, bright white linens. It looked as comfortable as her own and, for a moment, Isabella imagined Elliot in it, comfortable and relaxed, safe from the eyes of the world with his door closed.
Isabella walked a little further into the room, creeping almost on tiptoe so as not to make a sound. There was a great sense of Elliot in the room, with books everywhere on tables and shelves and, cast aside on an armchair as if it was sitting there in person, his violin.
Isabella smiled when she saw it, remembering the beauty of the melody she had heard that night so many weeks ago. The melody that he had composed himself. She could only draw part of the tune to mind and wished for all the world that she could remember it in its entirety.
It had been a haunting melody, one which she had felt sure had come straight from his heart. It almost described him in some way.
There were few paintings on the walls, just as in her own room. It seemed that Elliot did not care to cover the lightness and do anything to darken the room at all. But there was one small portrait at the far side of his room, the opposite side from his own bed. It was a portrait that he would have been able to see quite clearly as he lay in repose, and she wondered if that was why it had been hung there in that position.
Again, she crept silently deeper into the room so that she might study the portrait closely. It was the head and shoulders of a young woman, a girl really, likely still in her younger years. She was perhaps just twelve or thirteen.
Although Isabella had not met the girl in question, the subject of the portrait, she felt sure that the painter had made a good likeness. She recognized the dark ash brown hair instantly as being as thick and soft-looking as Elliot’s own hair. But it was the eyes more than anything that made her draw in her breath, for they were the brightest green and so like Elliot’s that they might have been drawn out from his own face.
“That is Lady Eleonora, His Grace’s sister.” Kitty’s voice startled her so badly that Isabella shrieked.
She spun around to look at her maid and could see that she carried fresh bedsheets in her arms.
“Oh, Kitty,” Isabella said in a tone which suggested shame and embarrassment; she had been caught out in the act of prying.
“Forgive me, Your Grace,” Kitty said and inclined her head respectfully. “I had not meant to startle you, and I spoke quite without thinking. I really am terribly sorry.” Kitty looked frozen suddenly, displaying some of the shame and embarrassment that Isabella felt.
“Think nothing of it, Kitty,” Isabella said kindly and was pleased when Kitty laid the sheets down on top of the bedspread, returning to normal. “Oh, this is just silly. You have caught me here prying into my husband’s room, and I am embarrassed. And now you are embarrassed, and it is too much. For goodness sake, let us dispense with these feelings, Kitty, what do you say?”
“I think that would be a great relief.” Kitty smiled at her in that motherly way, and Isabella knew that her maid had returned to her ordinary state of confidence and comfort. “And if you do not mind me saying, it is hardly prying for a wife to be inside her husband’s own room, is it? You are married, and His Grace has not barred the door to you.”
“No, I suppose he has not. But perhaps he expected a certain amount of privacy. Perhaps he did not think he needed to lock his door against me.”
“And perhaps he would never lock his door against you. Perhaps his door would always be open to you, my dear.”
Isabella was sure that she understood Kitty’s meaning. The door was not simply open to her in daylight hours so that she might look at the decor and the view from the window, or study at close quarters the portrait of his young sister. The door was open to her permanently, in the darkness of night also. Isabella felt her cheeks flush a little but determined to say nothing more about it.
“Kitty, forgive me for being so curious and so inquisitive, but did Eleanor die in the tower in the woodland?” She turned from Kitty to look up at the fresh and innocent face of the young girl in the portrait.
“Yes, Lady Eleanor did die in the tower. There was a fire, you see, and she and her mother were trapped inside.”
“And that was eighteen years ago?”
“Yes, Lady Eleanor was but twelve years old.” Kitty blinked hard, and Isabella could see tears shining in her eyes. She knew that she could ask no more of the woman than she had done already. “To think that she would have been thirty years now, likely with many children and a fine husband. Life can be so very cruel, can it not?”
“Yes, life can be very cruel indeed.” Isabella wanted to ask more, but when she saw the first of Kitty’s tears roll down her face, she knew she could not.
She crossed the room quickly and, without a moment’s hesitation, pulled Kitty into her arms and held her tightly. Kitty felt small and thin in her arms, her bones prominent, and her shoulders tiny. She leaned against Isabella completely and cried the tears which had no doubt been cried again and again over the years whenever she was reminded of the tragedy of Coldwell Hall.
“Forgive me.” Kitty’s voice was barely audible.
“There is nothing to forgive, Kitty. I truly am so very sorry for the loss you suffered. And I am even sorrier to have reminded you of it with my own curiosity. It is I who must beg your forgiveness and not the other way around.”
“Thank you, Your Grace.” Kitty began to straighten up and searched in the long sleeve of her
dark gown for a handkerchief.
“Here, take this,” Isabella said and hurriedly handed Kitty her own.
Chapter 13
“Isabella, forgive me, but did your father approach you with some purpose when you attended the church in the village all those weeks ago?” Elliot’s tone was unreadable, and Isabella felt an old familiar stab of anxiety.
It was the anxiety which had always overtaken her whenever her father requested an audience with her at Upperton Hall when she had still lived under that roof.
“He did,” she began uncertainly. “I ought to have said as much, I see that now.” She hung her head a little.
“No, you need not have said anything if you did not want to. And I do not ask to chastise you in any way for not being entirely frank with me. I am just concerned that you had suffered a little at your father’s hands if he made the same demand of you that he has recently made of me.”
A Beauty for the Scarred Duke: A Historical Regency Romance Book Page 10