Ever since she’d received his previous letter, she’d entertained herself imagining this: That his question on where she would be staying in the Lake District had not been an idle one, that he would be arriving at just such a gloriously unexpected moment.
And he didn’t even pretend it was a coincidence!
“I have been very well indeed, sir. And I have not eloquence enough to tell you how glad I am to see you.” It was only after another tremendous smile at him that she remembered her children were still waiting patiently—or impatiently, in Hyacinth’s case—to be presented. “May I introduce my daughter Hyacinth and my son Alexander. Children, this is Mr. Fitzwilliam.”
He shook hands with the children. “Miss Englewood, enchanted. Master Alexander, a pleasure.”
They stared at him openly, still astonished that he was not Fitz. Isabelle smiled again—in fact, she might never stop smiling.
The next moment, a very different emotion buffeted her, one much closer to tears. It was impossible to overstate how many times she had read his letters, particularly the one on his visit to Mrs. Fitzwilliam’s grave—and how she always came away with a sense of wonder, renewal, and hope.
“When did you arrive?” she asked, trying not to be too emotional in public.
His smile changed into something slightly more solemn, not melancholy, only pensive—he had sensed her change in mood. “About an hour ago.”
“Are you staying at the Lakehead?” She wanted him to be near—as near as possible.
“No, I’m staying at the Governor, a little closer to High Street.”
“We’ve passed it,” said Hyacinth. “It has a big sign.”
Isabelle shook her head. The girl would never be the sort of the child who was only seen and not heard.
But he did not mind. “Indeed,” he answered. “The sign makes it easy to find.”
The Governor was not far from the Lakehead. In the evening, after her well-exercised children had been put to bed…
She mustn’t let her imagination get away from her altogether. Yes, he had kissed her before, but the first time she’d all but forced herself on him, and the second time he had been in the grasp of a great many emotions, with lust for her person probably quite low on the list.
But even if his friendship did not carry a component of physical interest, she was still beyond thrilled to see him, her friend who had turned what would certainly have been one of the worst nights of her life into one of the best, the memories of which brightened every hour of her day.
“Now, children, Mama needs to speak to Mr. Fitzwilliam.” For a long, long time, she hoped. “Hyacinth, would you take yourself and Alexander to Miss Burlingame?”
“Yes, Mama,” said Hyacinth. She curtsied prettily to Mr. Fitzwilliam, then, Alexander in hand, skipped away to find their governess.
Isabelle made sure her children entered the hotel as they were bid. When they had disappeared from view, she turned toward Mr. Fitzwilliam. The westerly sun caught a few glimmers of red in his hair; his waistcoat was as vivid a shade of blue as the lake. And his eyes, oh his eyes, they looked upon her with such interest and fondness—she warmed all over. “I see you have not suffered from my absence,” she murmured.
He offered her his arm, his gaze lingering on her face. “That is because you have not been absent a day from my life, my dear Mrs. Englewood. Not even an hour.”
MILLIE, LADY FITZHUGH, STARED AT THE HOTEL before which the carriage had come to a stop. “My goodness, is this where we spent our wedding night?”
In separate rooms, with a seemingly unbridgeable chasm between them.
“Yes, it is,” said her husband, taking her hand in his. “A terrible night for you, wasn’t it?”
It had not been easy for her, but she’d been prepared since birth for a loveless marriage. He, on the other hand, had to give up the girl he loved madly almost without warning, not to mention the career in the army he’d planned for himself. All for duty—and a crumbling house. “It was worse for you.”
He shook his head. “Getting drunk and smashing mirrors in my room? I cringe at the memory. And let’s not even mention my conduct the rest of the honeymoon.”
The carriage door opened. He alit and handed her down, his fingers warm upon hers. “However,” he said, leaning down so that his lips just brushed her ear, “I am going to make it up to you by being the world’s most devoted husband.”
She cleared her throat—when he spoke into her ear like this, it never failed to send a torrent of heat surging along her nerves. “More devoted than you have been elsewhere in the Lake District, sir? How is that possible?”
“Oh, you will see, my dear Millie, you will see.”
She was quite ready to “see,” but she had also learned, in the short weeks since their marriage was first consummated, that sometimes it was even better to wait a little, to delay their next embrace by just long enough so that they were both breathless for it. “Maybe. But in the meanwhile, I must have a turn about the garden.”
“Anything you want, Lady Fitz.” He smiled as if to himself, and she only heated further.
The garden was to the side and the back of the hotel, full of late-flowering clematis in bursts of fuchsia and purple. “The sundial is still here,” she noticed.
“And that’s the bench you were sitting on, when I woke up the next day and looked out of the win—”
He blinked. She looked in the direction of his gaze and could not believe her eyes. Mrs. Englewood! She sat on a low stone wall halfway up the green, gentle slope behind the hotel, twirling her black lace parasol in what could only be described as a flirtatious manner.
Next to her, a man sat with his back to them. He spoke; Mrs. Englewood burst into laughter. Millie had never seen Mrs. Englewood except either in a state of grim apprehension or in tears. In laughter her loveliness was almost shocking. Then, even more shocking: She lifted her gloved hand and briefly touched the man’s cheek.
Fitz pulled Millie behind a hedge.
“Who is that man?” whispered Millie, still trying to see around the edge of the tall hedge.
“I don’t know,” Fitz whispered back. “But this is the most thrilling view I’ve had in days—other than that of your lovely person undressed, of course.”
She could not agree more. The ease and intimacy of Mrs. Englewood’s gesture was hardly that of a woman still pining for another. “We had best make ourselves scarce, don’t you think? Should we find a different hotel?”
Fitz’s lips again brushed her ear. “Or we can go to our rooms and not come out again until it is time for us to leave.”
This time, she did not need to be persuaded twice.
“DO YOU KNOW NOW, this is the first time we’ve exchanged pleasantries,” said Ralston.
They’d shared their views on the weather, the hotels, and the lakes. The clouds above were as white and soft as spring lambs, the scent of summer grass perfumed the breeze, and the stones of the low wall radiated a gentle warmth beneath his hands—the perfect time and place for a bit of leisurely small talk.
“What? We spoke of nothing of substance for an entire quarter hour?” She grinned. “The waste. The horror.”
It had not been that long since he first saw her in the rain, an almost wraith-like figure in a shroud of a mourning gown. Her gown was still black, but now it was trimmed with bands of lavender at the cuffs and on the hem—she was transitioning from secondary mourning to half mourning. The lavender was muted, grayish. But to his eyes it was a burst of color almost as brilliant as a sunset sky.
And her face—so much fear and sorrow had been etched in her features. But not when she smiled. When she smiled, as she did now, there was only brightness, clarity, and warmth.
“I hope I haven’t come at an inconvenient time,” he said impulsively. “But I couldn’t wait any longer to see you.”
“Good,” she said, meeting his gaze. “If you didn’t come, I’d have been sorely disappointed.”
He love
d her candidness. There was never any coquetry to her, any pretense. In fact, the entire positioning of her person—the angle of her torso, the tilt of her head, the placement of her hand right next to his—implied a physical eagerness that made him as randy as a sixteen-year-old boy. He imagined her slipping into his hotel room at night, wearing nothing but a smile. He imagined kissing her everywhere. He imagined her as ravenous as she had been on her honeymoon.
Abruptly she scrambled off the low wall on which they’d been sitting. He started. Surely she had not heard his lustful thoughts.
“Don’t look behind you, but my sister is standing at her window.” Her voice was low and taut. “She has seen us.”
Mrs. Montrose—Mrs. Englewood’s letters to him always came from the Montrose residence—must have waved. Mrs. Englewood waved back with a tense-jawed smile.
Ralston had made sure that Mrs. Montrose was not in sight before he approached Mrs. Englewood, believing that she should be the one to decide when to present him. But now he wondered whether it wouldn’t have been better to have done the opposite—once Mrs. Montrose had seen him, then she would no longer need to worry about what Mrs. Montrose’s reaction would be. She would know.
“Should I absent myself?” His preference was otherwise but he did not want to make the situation more taxing for her.
She half-grimaced, her grip tightening on her parasol. “You have no idea how much I would like to say, ‘This is my dear, dear friend, Mr. Fitzwilliam.’ But I haven’t prepared her at all and it would be too much of a shock.”
He remembered how she had reacted to him. “I understand,” he said, meaning every word.
She closed her gloved hand over his, her eyes wide and deep with gratitude. “Thank you for being so kind. Let me talk to her. I promise I will present you no later than tomorrow.”
He had not expected such an emphatic pledge. Perhaps at the back of his mind there had been a small fear that she might want to keep him hidden and never publicly acknowledged, for at her reassurance he suddenly felt as light as one of the clouds floating overhead. “I will wait for your word, then.”
She took a deep breath and, with her sister as witness, set her hands on his shoulders and kissed him on his cheek.
LOUISE WAS ALREADY PACING in the sitting room of Isabelle’s suite, her skirts rustling with the agitation of her gait. “Is that Mr. Fitzwilliam? Is he here to visit the lakes or to visit you?” she demanded almost before Isabelle had closed the door behind herself.
Trust Louise to waste no time on the preliminaries.
“He is here to visit me,” said Isabelle. That still gave her little starbursts inside.
“Then why didn’t you invite him for tea? I should meet him, if he has traveled hundreds of miles to woo you.”
Isabelle crossed the room. Her window overlooked the front of the hotel; the hills stretched green and glossy into the distance. “There is something about Mr. Fitzwilliam you don’t know.”
“What is it?”
She had meant to idly toy with an edge of the curtain, only to find that she had to unclench her fingers from around a handful of fabric. If her brother thought her mad, perhaps she wouldn’t mind so much. But Louise had always been her champion, her shoulder to cry on. “He bears a great resemblance to Fitz.”
Dead silence. Then, “No, Isabelle. No. Please tell me it isn’t true.”
Her heart sank. She swiveled her head a few degrees from side to side, trying to loosen the tension in her neck, before she closed the window and turned around—there was certainly no turning back from this point. “You have twins, Louise. You know that a superficial resemblance is just that, a superficial resemblance.”
“No.” The jut to Louise’s jaw only made Isabelle’s heart plummet further. She recognized that expression—Louise was digging in and not even a steam locomotive would make her budge. “Victoria and Cordelia are both my children. Your situation is not remotely analogous. Imagine if your son was taken away from you. Then you accidentally came upon another child who looks exactly like him and brought him home to raise as your own. How would that look?”
Desperate, that was how it would look.
“And this isn’t fair to Mr. Fitzwilliam either,” Louise went on inexorably. “You wouldn’t have been interested in him at all if he didn’t look like Fitz.”
“I will admit that on the day we met, I would not have given Mr. Fitzwilliam a second glance had he not looked like Fitz. But—”
“See, you admit it yourself.”
Elder siblings—sometimes they were wonderful; sometimes they conveniently forgot that she was no longer twelve. “Let me finish, Louise. It took me no time to begin to see Mr. Fitzwilliam for himself. He has led an entirely different life from Fitz and is an entirely different person. I like him for who he is, not whom he resembles.”
Louise looked at her as if she were a child trying to deny having stolen a sweet, with that very same piece of confection still in her mouth. “No, Isabelle, that is wishful thinking on your part. Maybe you don’t mind him for who he is, but make no mistake, you want him because of whom he resembles.”
This was exactly what she’d been afraid of, being buried beneath Louise’s anxious concerns with no way of changing the latter’s mind. “That is not true. That is simply not true,” she could only repeat.
Louise clasped a hand on Isabelle’s arm. “I’m sorry, Isabelle. I should have realized something was amiss when you didn’t return home bawling. I know what I say hurts you now and will hurt you for some time to come, but you can’t simply substitute a lookalike for Fitz.”
“I am not!” But how could she make Louise understand? How could she make anyone understand?
And the worst part, she now realized, was that she and Fitz had never known the kind of intimacy she shared with Mr. Fitzwilliam. They had been children, deeply in love but also deeply limited in what they knew of life. Theirs had been a connection of unbridled youth and untested hope, like aluminum, shiny, but easily dented. The bond between her and Mr. Fitzwilliam had been forged from far stronger materials, a steel that had been tried by fire.
“Isabelle—”
“Please, Louise, don’t say anything else.” Her head was beginning to pound. “I will ask Mr. Fitzwilliam to call on us tomorrow. You will be able to see for yourself what he is and who he isn’t.”
“That is not a good idea. The meeting will make him believe he is more accepted by the family than he is.”
“Then you will pass judgment on a man without ever meeting him?”
“I am not passing judgment on him, Isabelle. I am questioning your motives.”
She’d always enjoyed Louise’s bluntness, but now she felt bludgeoned. “I have no motives here beyond those of friendship and fondness.”
Louise pinched the bridge of her nose, as if she too, had been ground down by their quarrel. “This will not end well, Isabelle. Even if I were to believe every word you say, can you imagine what Mr. Fitzwilliam will do when he meets the man to whom he bears a great resemblance? Remember, the one you cannot have?”
Isabelle had thought her insides already wound tight enough, but Louise’s question gave them another wrenching twist. “That Mr. Fitzwilliam must decide when the time comes. For now, all I can tell you is that he has earned my affection and my esteem.”
Louise gazed at her a long time, shaking her head all the while. “I hope you are right, Isabelle. For your sake, I really hope so.”
Chapter Seven
MRS. ENGLEWOOD DID SLIP into Ralston’s hotel room that night, but she was fully clothed and wearing the furthest thing from a smile.
He closed the door, followed her to the middle of the room, and set his hand on the small of her back. The silk of her gown was smooth and warm under his palm; the scent of rose petals wafted subtly from her skin. “No luck, I take it?”
She scowled. “None whatsoever. She was even opposed to meeting you, because she did not approve of our friendship.”
; This surprised him, though it did not manage to completely distract him from his desire to pluck the small, black evening toque from her head and bury his face in her lustrous hair. “That bad?”
She clamped her fingers over her temples. “I overrode her on that particular point and you are expected tomorrow morning at half past ten. There is nothing I can tell her to change her mind, so I hope that you in person would make a difference.”
Now he felt slightly ashamed to be so entranced by her charms, when lovemaking was nowhere on her distressed mind. “I don’t know whether I will make any difference, but I will attempt to be both sincere and charming.”
She made a noise at the back of her throat, a low growl of frustration.
He turned her around and wrapped his arms about her. “Allow me to apologize for my troublesome face.”
She sagged against him. Her reply, however, was emphatic. “Never apologize for your face. If you had a different face, we wouldn’t be the friends we are today—and I would not change that for anything.”
Her words flowed deep into his heart, a cascade of lyrical warmth. “It will all be fine,” he murmured, his voice thick with gratitude. “Perhaps not tomorrow, perhaps not next week. But everything will be all rght.”
She sighed. Her hand settled on his sleeve and he forgot what else he was about to say. The cambric of his shirt was lightweight, hardly a barrier to the warmth and pressure of her fingers.
Her fingers spread. Then, without warning, they tightened on his forearm. She clasped him as if she could not bear to let go, her breaths shallow and ragged.
He, on the other hand, could not breathe at all, caught in the urgency of her gesture. He stared at her still gloved hand, imagining the strain in her knuckles, her fingertips white from the force she exerted. Gradually her grip eased, but the tension inside him only escalated. He wanted that jolt of pressure from her again, that involuntary expression of need.
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