Yet as the days passed and the coastline swept by . . .
The white cliffs of Devon glittering in the sunlight.
Cornwall with its charming villages clambering up basalt cliffs.
The wild bays of Wales with green mountains rising beyond.
Cumbria’s rolling hills and deep estuaries.
Kendall couldn’t help but feel a fragment of that lost boy surfacing.
The boy who had spent hours reading about far-off lands and dreaming of adventures in the jungles of Brazil or the Orient.
The boy who had curled on his mother’s lap—him nestled into one arm and Allie in the other—and listened to stories of her childhood in Venice, the clipped rhythm of her Italian lulling him to sleep.
The boy who had raced Allie to the lake beyond the parterre gardens, shouting and laughing over who could reach its banks first. Allie inevitably won.
But then his twin had always shone more brightly than himself—more talkative, more charismatic, more . . . loveable, he supposed.
Do ye even ken what love is, boy?Hadley’s words drifted through his mind.
No. Kendall did not know what love was . . .
Well, he knew that he loved Allie. He knew that he had loved his mother.
But that love was different. It had grown with him from his earliest memories. Allie and their mother were, quite literally, part of the muscles and sinews that supported both his bodily frame and spirit. And even then, he would have destroyed his relationship with Allie had his twin not been determined to mend it.
However, outside of his womanfolk, not once had anyone else loved him of their own accord, no matter Sir Rafe’s tale of their sire’s interference. The old duke had been dead for six years, and Kendall still had no friends.
And so this beginning with Isolde felt like the whole of his life. Fruitless. Hopeless.
Isolde had made that clear, after all.
I would choose my family a thousand times over your sorry self. Because they are deserving of my love and affection.
The implication being, of course, that Kendall himself was not. Not deserving of her love. Not meriting her affection.
And yet, the love-potion-spell of his wife intensified its hold on him.
He would be talking to Captain Woodbury about restocking their coal supply for the evening, and Isolde would step onto the deck. And Kendall’s breath would catch anew.
This luminous creature was his wife. Hiswife!
Surely, someday he would know the feel of her lips, the give of her body in his arms . . .
Apologize,whispered more than once through his mind.Grovel if you must.
And still . . . he said nothing.
It was utterly unlike him—to vacillate, to wallow in uncertainty without a clue as to how to move forward.
Allie said he viewed himself as unlovable. She was not wrong.
When no one in your life had ever loved you for yourself . . .
Occam’s Razor, as well as the whole of the scientific method, couldeasily draw conclusions from that fact. Sometimes, the proofwasin the pudding, as it were.
And so he endured Isolde’s cold behavior—monosyllabic dialogue, careful politeness, the painful lack of warmth.
