“I won’t tell anyone who she is,” Cordelia said softly. “I wouldn’t?—”
“It’s not aboutyou,” he snapped, more harshly than he intended. “It’s about risk, about her children, and about the life she’s built. One mistake, just one slip, and it’s all gone.”
Much to his surprise, Cordelia didn’t flinch, not even a little. Instead, she simply stepped closer, past the broken glass.
“I understand,” she said calmly. “Truly, I do. But may I ask you something?”
He didn’t answer, so she asked anyway. “Do you ever think about how lonely it must be for her?”
Mason said nothing.
“All those years, hidden away,” she continued. “No real friends, no visitors, no invitations. A lady must have friends.”
“She survived,” he bit out.
“Yes,” Cordelia said quietly but without backing down. “But surviving isn’t the same as living.”
He turned from her, unable to bear the way her voice softened on those words.
Surviving isn’t living.
Because it hit somewhere too close, somewhere he didn’t want her reaching. He couldn’t stand that she might be right. Still, he said nothing.
Cordelia took another step forward. “I’m not asking to parade her about or to force her into anything she doesn’t wish. I only thought she might enjoy a few hours of company and laughter. That’s all. I will protect her secret as fiercely as you do.”
He wanted to shout, to rage, to shake sense into her, to demand how she could possibly understand what was at stake. How one wrong word could unravel the careful illusion he’d constructed, how easily the world devoured women like Isabelle.
But he couldn’t because she wasn’t fighting him. She was asking, and she was doing so with all the patience and kindness he didn’tdeserve, as if she believed he could still say yes, as if she trusted him to.
And God help him, he found himself nodding.
“Fine,” he muttered. “But she’s introduced as a local widow. No names, no titles. And if anything feels wrong, and I do mean anything, Cordelia, she leaves.”
Cordelia’s expression softened into something that nearly shattered him. “Of course.”
He couldn’t stop looking at her, drinking in the sight of her. He hated how easily she calmed him, how her gentleness crept past his defenses when nothing else ever had. Anger was the only thing his father had ever taught him well, and yet, with her, it always ended up feeling small.
He cleared his throat.
“I expect you’ll inform her?”
Cordelia smiled faintly. “If I may?”
He gave a stiff nod.
She turned to go, pausing once at the door, and when she looked back, her eyes weren’t triumphant or smug. They were grateful which was somehow worse.
“You… are inviting me to come?” Isabelle’s voice was breathless and her eyes fragile and full of hope.
Cordelia smiled. “Yes, if you wish to of course.”
Isabelle clutched her hands to her chest, as if to steady herself. Then she hesitated. “Wait… did you ask Mason?”
“I did,” Cordelia replied, still slightly pink in the cheeks from their encounter. “He was… reluctant at first, but he agreed.”
“Oh.” Isabelle’s smile returned slowly then bloomed fully, like a flower that had been waiting years for a bit of sun. “Then I’m coming.”
Cordelia grinned. “I hoped you’d say that.”
