“What do you mean? I didn’t know you were worried at all. You didn’t seem to be very worried when we were down there talking to Father and Rosalind. You seemed very confident—more so than I think I’ve ever seen you before, in fact. I was very proud of you, speaking up for yourself the way you did.”
“Thank you,” Felicity said. “But the truth of the matter is that I do worry, Isabella. I worry about you perhaps as much as you worry about me. I know you don’t believe it because you’re the eldest and because you’ve always felt that it’s your responsibility to take care of me.
“It is my responsibility to take care of you,” Isabella said firmly. “It’s the duty our mother left me with—and it’s something I would have done on my own anyway because I care for you. You’re my younger sister. This is a part of that.”
“It’s not just a part of being an elder sister,” Felicity corrected her. “It’s a part of being a sister. You don’t really think I don’t worry about you every bit as much as you worry about me, I’m sure?”
“Well, there’s no need to. I’m perfectly all right.”
“Isabella, we don’t know this man,” Felicity argued. “Nobody does. You’ve had no courtship with him. You’ve met him one time. For all you know, he came here to claim you as his wife as a way of exacting revenge for the lie you told about him.”
“I don’t think he would do that,” Isabella replied.
“But you don’t know what he would do. That’s just it. You don’t know him at all.”
“I’m not saying that I think he wouldn’t do that because he’s too good or noble,” Isabella clarified. “I’m saying that I don’t think it makes very much sense for him to do such a thing. Why would he marry me if he didn’t want to on some level? Why would it be worth sacrificing so much of his own life just to punish me?”
“People were talking about him at the ball when you were spreading that false rumor about being engaged to him,” Felicitysaid. “Before it was true, I mean. And everyone said the same thing—that he was a mystery.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being a mystery,” Isabella replied.
For the most part, she was trying to reassure her sister. The truth was that this line of discussion did make her feel ever so slightly uneasy. Felicity was right. She knew nothing about the Duke, and what if the things she didn’t know turned out to be unpleasant? What if the mystery turned out to be something she wouldn’t want to discover about someone?
“Everyone says that he keeps to himself,” Felicity observed. “They describe him as a recluse. He never comes to parties. Never socializes. Sometimes people run across him in town, so they say, but he always makes excuses and parts ways with them as quickly as he can. He never invited anyone to Windhill. He has no friends. No one knows anything about him.”
“People love to gossip,” Isabella said dismissively. “You know how they gossip about us, Felicity, and is half of what they say about us the truth?”
“Isabella,mostof what they say about us is the truth. You know that as well as I. The things that are wrong are only the judgments they make. They’re wrong to say that we’re unworthy people or that we don’t belong in society. Those things are just cruel. But there’s nothing incorrect about the facts they share. When they whisper about who our mother was, or when they say that Father didn’t really want us but that he took us in becauseshe wanted him to, because it was her dying wish—those things are all the truth. The gossips have it right.”
Isabella didn’t know what to say. Her sister was right.
“So, if they’ve got us right, I have to think that they must have the Duke right as well,” Felicity considered. “The things they say about him must be based in truth. That he’s reclusive, for instance. That he hasn’t been out among society since the deaths of his parents, and that he’s never shown any interest in finding a marriage. And if he’s never taken an interest in that before, what could make him suddenly show an interest now? What’s changed? He hadn’t even met you before coming to our house that day, so we know it wasn’t that he was taken with you. The only difference was that he heard you had started a rumor about the pair of you, and why would that make a man who had never wanted a wife before suddenly want one?”
“I don’t know,” Isabella admitted.
“That’s why I find it suspicious,” Felicity said. “I think it could be dangerous.”
Isabella thought of the Duke, of the way it had felt to exchange barbs with him. He had beenexciting, certainly, but not dangerous. No, she didn’t fear him—if anything, she felt rather thrilled about the fact that she would certainly get to spend more time with him. It was an unexpected feeling and not an altogether unpleasant one.
“You seem to be in two minds about this,” Isabella told her sister. “I thought you were happy that I had found a marriage for myself. Didn’t you say that?”
“I did,” Felicity agreed. “And I am happy, Isabella, truly. If I could have any wish granted, it would be to see you happily married! And that’s what I hope will happen for you now—but can you blame me for worrying? Knowing all that I do—and lacking everything Idon’tknow—about the Duke, I think anyone would worry. I think you would worry if I was the one who was marrying him.”
Well, that was certainly true, and Isabella knew that there was no point in denying it. She reached out and put a hand on top of her sister’s.
“You have nothing to worry about,” she said gently.
“How can you sound so sure of that? You don’t know.”
“I do know,” Isabella said firmly. “You know that I’m strong, Felicity. Haven’t I always been? Haven’t I always gotten the two of us through every hardship we’ve faced?”
Felicity bit her lip and nodded. Isabella was sure they were both thinking about those years right after their mother had died when the two of them had struggled to find their place in the Viscount’s home. When Rosalind had discovered for the very first time that she would have to regard the maid’s daughters as her own sisters and had spent every day raging at them for daring to intrude upon her perfect life. When Rosalind’s mother,who had still been alive then, had looked upon the two of them as evidence of a love her husband had had besides her and had despised them and sought to punish them for it. Those days had been difficult and painful, and though eventually they had come to learn how to live in the world they’d been thrown into, they both knew it was Isabella’s strength that had gotten them both through those hard times.
“You can do anything,” Felicity told her. “I know you can. None of this is about a lack of confidence in you.”
“I understand,” Isabella said gently. “You’re afraid of what might happen.”
“Of course, I am.
