He knew it even as the sharp words had arrowed from his mouth in the carriage.
He knew it as he endured the tense silence of a meal aboard theSS Statesmanthat first night, the clinking of cutlery on Sèvres china filling the fraught quiet.
He knew it later that night, as he bunked in his secretary’s small cabin, naturally permitting his duchess to have the opulent bedchamber and bathing room. Thankfully, there was ample room aboard ship, as nosecretary or man-of-business had accompanied them. Just his valet and Isolde’s maid.
Kendall understood he needed to apologize to his wife. But how? Life as a duke did not prepare one for humility. Or change, for that matter.
Without Allie to guide him—to act as Mentor to his words—surely he would only bungle any attempt, thereby necessitating further apologies. The whole would become a Catherine Wheel he could not escape.
In short, the entire endeavor felt futile, so why begin?
And yet, as the days passed aboard ship, the silence between Kendall and his wife grated—an ill-fitting shoe he desperately wished to reshape.
He busied himself with his ship, speaking with Captain Woodbury and generally absenting himself from his new wife’s side. She, too, was grieving what her future might have been. Perhaps, she merely needed space to adjust to her new life.
Isolde appeared content with her own company. She read on the sofa in the bedchamber or stood at the starboard railing, watching the coastline slide past.
Kendall would pause as he crossed the deck to study her then. How she would lean her weight into the wind, closing her eyes as if communing with seabirds or summoning merfolk. At times, she would even dangle her bonnet from its strings, allowing the breeze to unravel her hair and send streams of flame arcing over her head.
And he would stand stock-still, a captive yet again of her ethereal beauty.
But she scarcely spoke.
He did attempt conversation.
“I received word in port earlier today that Stephen Jarvis has been convicted of fraud,” he told her over a dinner of roasted lamb.
Kendall had inwardly rejoiced at the news. The man deserved every punishment.
“Oh,” was Isolde’s uncaring reply.
She cut into her lamb.
“Transportation and five years hard labor.”
“I am glad justice is served,” she said without a trace of gladness.
He considered drawing breath to apologize, but her expression—flat and lifeless—halted the words in his throat.
How could a mere apology ignite a spark again in her eyes?
Of course Kendall would darken the light of a woman like Isolde. Perhaps he was more akin to his father than he recognized—a destroyer of vitality.
Allie’s words would not let him be.
Let the pain forge pathways of love in your heart.
Believe you can be a better man—one that Tristan would have liked to become.
The boy Tristan would have despised the Kendall he had grown to be.
And yet . . .
As Kendall watched Isolde stroll up and down the deck, wind trailing long tendrils of coppery hair in her wake, he couldn’t help but imagine what his younger self would think of his marriage.
Tristan would be disappointed at the forfeiture of his goals—his dream to obliterate Old Kendall’s memory.
But . . . that same boy would rejoice to marry Isolde. To call this vibrant creature his own—the only woman, unsuitable or not, he had ever thought to marry.
