It was all the permission her heart needed to take wing.
“What . . . what are you doing?”
“Checking this horse’s hoof. He was holding it aloft.”
“Oh.” A horrible possibility occurred to her. “Were you about to leave without . . . without—”
His head cocked. “Calling on you?”
His gaze burned into her, and all she could do was nod.
“I wasn’t going anywhere, Isabel.”
She believed him.
“I thought to give you and your father a chance to reunite in private.”
He stepped around the team and onto the sidewalk, stopping before her not a yard away. An invisible string stretched between them that begged to be tugged.
Isabel grew a bit shy of him, the enormity of what he’d accomplished settling into her. “Howdid you free him?” she asked. “I was so certain Montfort was the only way.”
Percy shrugged. The manshrugged. “He isn’t the only man with connections.”
In that instant, the meaning of Isabel’s life came into focus. Her life could tick along with her moving through it for any number of days, weeks, months, or years, but it would lack all meaning without this man.
So, she needed to ask another question, one whose answer held her future happiness in its hand.
She held up the rose. “Why did you send them?”
Chapter 29
Percy hesitated.
Not because he didn’t know the answer to Isabel’s question, rather because he didn’t want to scare her away with it.
Yet he couldn’tnotspeak it.
“To remind you every day who you are. That you are not alone,” he said. “That you aresafe.”
“Oh.”
“And to thank you.”
Her eyebrows knitted together, confounded. “Thank me? For what?”
“For acting selflessly that night. For standing up to Montfort and refusing to do his bidding at great potential cost to you and your family. For not subjecting Lucy to another round of scandal. You are the heroine of this story.”
“I only did what was right. I should have done it sooner.” She indicated the carriage beside them. “I suppose you know its owner?”
Percy nodded. “Lady St. Alban is inside your shop with the girls?”
“Eva has found her dream muses.” A hesitant beat passed. “She’s rather nice.”
Percy didn’t need to ask whichshe. “She is.”
“I can see why you would have fallen for her.”
Even as Percy grew impatient with this line of conversation, he knew he must offer an explanation. “We were young.” It was only the truth, and hopefully it would be enough, for he didn’t want to talk about that woman. He had other words to say tothiswoman. “About our marriage.”
