Isadora lifted her chin, pulling together every scrap of dignity she possessed. She would not let him see how deeply his words cut. Would not give him the satisfaction of knowing she’d made the catastrophic mistake of caring about a man who’d explicitly promised her nothing beyond duty and respect.
“Then I must call you Your Grace,” she said, her voice steady as stone despite the chaos roiling in her chest. “After all, we wouldn’t want to blur the careful boundaries you’ve established between us. Heaven forbid I presume we might be anything approaching actual husband and wife.”
She turned before he could respond, before the tears threatening behind her eyes could betray her. Her footsteps echoed off marble and ancient stone, carrying her away from the man who’d just confirmed every fear she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge.
Behind her, she heard Edmund’s sharp intake of breath. Sensed him reaching toward her?—
But she didn’t look back.
The corridor stretched endlessly before her, each step carrying her further from the library where Lillian still sat surrounded by books, further from the man who inspired such contradictory emotions she couldn’t begin to untangle them. Isadora climbed the stairs toward her chambers with movements that felt mechanical, her entire being focused on maintaining composure until she reached the safety of privacy.
Christmas decorations mocked her with their festive cheer. Holly and ivy, evergreen and ribbon, candles burning warm against winter’s darkness—all of it designed to celebrate joy and connection and the warmth of family gathered against the cold.
She had none of those things. Had married to escape one trap only to find herself in another, this one gilded with a duchess’s coronet and baited with a lonely girl who needed her.
And complicated beyond measure by a husband who looked at her with hunger he refused to acknowledge, who kissed her hand with tenderness that felt genuine, then dismissed their entire connection as nothing more than practical arrangement.
Isadora reached her chambers and closed the door with a soft click that sounded somehow final. She leaned against carved oak, pressing her palm against the cool surface while her breathing slowly steadied.
This was impossible. All of it. She couldn’t continue like this—couldn’t keep pretending indifference while her treacherous heart insisted on developing feelings for a man who’d made itabundantly clear he had nothing to offer beyond honesty and respect.
The question was what to do about it. Accept the boundaries Edmund had established and focus entirely on helping Lillian? Retreat into the sort of cordial distance that characterized most aristocratic marriages? Or continue pushing against his walls in hopes that eventually he might let her see the man he kept hidden beneath layers of control and isolation?
Outside her windows, snow had begun falling again—thick flakes that would soon bury the estate beneath white that made everything appear clean and new. But Isadora knew better than to trust that charitable covering. Beneath the snow, the same frozen ground remained. The same ruins and failures and carefully tended graves of hope.
Nothing had changed except her foolish belief that it might.
She moved to her dressing table and caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. The woman staring back looked composed, dignified, every inch the duchess society expected her to be. But her eyes told a different story—they held confusion and hurt and the dangerous beginnings of something that felt uncomfortably like heartbreak.
“You are a foolish girl,” she told her reflection quietly. “A spectacular, unprecedented foolish girl who somehow convinced herself that a man who explicitly promised nothing might offer everything.”
The admission should have brought clarity. Instead, it only made the ache in her chest intensify.
Because the truth—the terrible, inconvenient truth she could no longer avoid—was that somewhere between accepting Edmund’s proposal and this moment of brutal honesty, she’d started falling in love with her husband.
And he’d just made it abundantly clear that he would never allow himself to reciprocate those feelings.
CHAPTER 17
“You’re being deliberately obtuse.”
Charlotte’s voice carried across the morning room with the sort of exasperation reserved for longtime friends who’d witnessed each other’s most spectacular failures. She settled deeper into the striped silk settee, teacup balanced with the careless grace that came from years of practice at London’s most demanding gatherings.
Isadora kept her attention fixed on the embroidery hoop in her lap—a hopeless tangle of Christmas roses that bore no resemblance to the pattern she’d been attempting. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean.”
“Liar.” Charlotte’s tone held affection despite the accusation. “You’ve been avoiding your husband for three days, you haven’t slept properly judging by those shadows beneath your eyes, and you just stabbed that poor fabric with enough violence to constitute assault. Something is very wrong, and pretending otherwise insults us both.”
The morning room was one of Rothwell Abbey’s more pleasant spaces—south-facing windows caught what little winter sun Yorkshire offered, and someone had arranged evergreen boughs along the mantelpiece with actual care rather than mere obligation. The scent of pine mingled with tea and the lemon biscuits Mrs. Crawford had sent up, creating an atmosphere that should have been comfortable.
Instead, Isadora felt like her skin was stretched too tight across her bones, every nerve humming with awareness of Edmund’s presence somewhere in this vast house. She’d been tracking his movements for days now—not deliberately, she told herself, but simply as matter of household management. She knew he took breakfast alone at seven, visited his study at eight, rode out to inspect the estate at ten when weather permitted.
She knew all this because she’d been arranging her own schedule to ensure they never occupied the same space.
“I’m simply tired,” she said, yanking thread through fabric with more force than necessary. “The transition to Yorkshire has been rather exhausting.”
“The transition to Yorkshire,” Charlotte repeated flatly. “Not the transition to marriage with a man who looks at you like you hung the moon but refuses to acknowledge his own feelings?”
The observation struck too close to truths Isadora wasn’t prepared to examine. Her needle slipped, pricking her finger hard enough to draw blood. She pressed the wound to her lips,using the gesture to buy time while she constructed an answer that wouldn’t reveal too much.
