“I’m finding it hard to believe in dreams these days,” Isabella confided.
“Will it help you if I tell you that I think one of our dreams might be coming true?” Felicity asked.
“What do you mean?”
A slow smile spread across Felicity’s face. “I can hardly believe it, but…I think I might have found a gentleman I have feelings for. Someone I could see myself marrying.”
“Have you really?” Isabella sat up straighter, her own troubles momentarily forgotten in the face of this good news. “But that’s wonderful, Felicity! Who is it?”
Felicity blushed. “I think I’d prefer not to say just yet,” she said. “I don’t know whether he feels the same way about me, you see.”
“Has he said anything?”
“No. He’s come calling a few times, and we always have a good time together. But I don’t know whether it means anything serious to him or not. I don’t know whether he’s visiting with other ladies as well. It might be nothing, and until I’m sure…I would be too embarrassed to say the name aloud in case I’m wrong.”
“You can tell me anything,” Isabella said. “I hope you know that. Even if you are wrong.”
“I know. I will tell you, just as soon as the time feels right,” Felicity assured her. “But in the meantime, I thought you might like to know that…there is someone. Someone I could see myself with if he can see himself with me. Something to hope for.”
“That is good news,” Isabella agreed with a smile. “That’s the best news I’ve heard in a very long time, Felicity. You’ve cheeredme up immensely. You must tell me more as soon as there is more to tell. I’m sure he’ll return your feelings. I don’t see how anyone could do anything else.”
“You’re very sweet,” Felicity said. “Truly, the best sister anyone could hope to have. I’ll tell you more as soon as I can, I promise you that.”
Their meal was delivered, and the sisters ate together. Isabella felt better than she had in a long time, having heard Felicity’s news—incomplete though it was. After all, she reminded herself, the whole reason she had entered into this marriage had been out of a desire to secure a future for her sister. If that was happening now, then it meant that her plan had been a success. Did it matter, really, if things were amiss between Arthur and herself? The fact that she had developed feelings for him had never been a part of her plan. It could easily be set aside.
With that thought in her mind, she drifted off to sleep more relaxed than she had felt in a long time. Perhaps it helped, too, that her sister’s comforting presence weighed down the other side of the bed. Having Felicity close, sleeping next to each other as they had when they were children, made Isabella feel safe in a way that nothing else could.
She drifted in and out of dreams—dreams that took her back to her childhood days when things hadn’t been as lovely as they were now, but at least she had had more freedom. No one had taken her very seriously as a child—her father had never believed she would amount to anything much, so he’d given her plenty of liberty to run and play as she’d liked. It was only when she hadgrown older that he had begun to concern himself with treating her as a maid who still served Rosalind. Before that, she’d been nothing but a free-spirited child.
A part of her longed to return to those days. At least, back then, things had been simple. At least, she had known her place in the world and how to fit herself into it, and she had never longed for anything more than she’d had.
And then, without warning, the dream shifted and changed.
In her dream, a man stood before her in the darkness. She tried to ask him what he was doing there, what he wanted, but she couldn’t find her voice. She knew only that she was frightened of him. Whoever he was, he didn’t belong here.
He stepped toward her, reached out, and took hold of her arm—but it wasn’t until he pulled her from her bed and wrapped a hand around her mouth to muffle her scream that Isabella realized that she was no longer dreaming. She was awake, and whatever this was, it was really happening.
She fought with everything she had, struggling against his hold, but to no avail. He was much too big, much too strong. She tried to cry out to her sister, but her voice was silenced by her attacker’s hand over her mouth. She tried to kick his legs, to bite his hand—anything to force him to let her go—but it was hopeless. He picked her up as easily as if she weighed nothing.
Terror paralyzed her as they began to leave the room. Her mind went blank with it. She couldn’t even ask herself questions,couldn’t wonder about what was happening to her or why. All she knew was that it was bad, very bad, and that her fear was the most powerful thing she had ever felt in her life.
The one thought that broke through the haze was that it might be a very long time before Arthur discovered that she was gone—and he would never know what had become of her.
And she didn’t know whether he would even care.
CHAPTER 30
“This place is a wreck,” Arthur said. He peered at the house through the darkness, a part of him wishing they hadn’t decided to approach it so late at night. Surely this would have been easier in the daytime. “Why would Lady Reeves be here?”
“I don’t know,” Taylor said. “But my sources say that she will be. Perhaps she simply thinks she won’t be found in such a place.”
“More likely she uses it as a place to have illicit affairs with married men,” Arthur grumbled. “Because we know that she likes to do that, don’t we?”
“I think you might be making too much of it,” Taylor said.
“How could I possibly be making too much of it when her illicit affair with my father is what killed him?”
“Let’s wait and see how this conversation goes before we assume we know anything,” Taylor suggested. “It might be a false lead.”
