By this time, they were surrounded by smiling faces.
“Welcome home, my lord. Welcome home, my lady,” Eastwood said, the butler’s face split by a huge grin.
Mary wrapped Izzy in a huge hug, weeping a little. “So glad to have you home, dear. So very glad,” was all she could manage to say.
Finally, two more faces came out of the house at a run, tearing down the steps as fast as their little legs could carry them, a pair of nurses clucking anxiously behind. Izzy knelt down on the drive, heedless of the dirt, and took her daughters into her arms.
“I have missed you two scamps so much,” she whispered, hugging them tight. “Presents… we have presents for you.”
They squealed with delight, and with Helena holding tight to her hand, and Ian carrying Aurelia, they went into the house.
“Mrs Henry has ordered the dinner, my lady,” Mrs Worthing said, “but we took care to have all your favourite dishes, and his lordship’s, too. The Trahernes are invited for dinner tomorrow, and the new curate, but they can be put off if you prefer. Polly’s sprained her ankle but I’ve got someone from the village to fill in, just for now.”
“I shall just go and write a few letters to tell people that we have arrived home safely,” Ian said to Izzy. “Any message for your father or mother? Just your love, as usual, I suppose.”
Thus the old routine rose up to swallow Izzy in an instant. The afternoon flew by in playing with the girls, interrupted every ten minutes by Mrs Worthing with some matter needing the mistress’s attention, while Ian was nowhere to be seen. Then dinner with Henry and Mary, catching up with all minutiae of domestic life until Izzy felt she could scream. All she wanted to do was to retreat somewhere with Ian and find out, once and for all, whether this magical new husband would survive the transition back to normality.
Even at the end of the evening, when she had exchanged not half a dozen words with him, he chose to sit over a brandy with Henry, talking about estate matters.
“Why not go up, Izzy?” he said. “This will not interest you.”
So she had gone to her room, and let Brandon ready her for bed, and then she paced back and forth, back and forth, waiting. There was no connecting door between their rooms, for his room was at the opposite corner of the building, so she could not even hear when he came upstairs. Was he still downstairs with Henry, or was he already in bed, fast asleep? It was maddening not to know.
Just when she felt she could not bear it a moment longer, the door opened and there he was. With a cry of relief, she hurled herself across the room and into his arms, bursting into tears.
“Izzy? Whatever is the matter? Are you unwell?”
She shook her head, too distraught to speak, but he held her tight, kissed the top of her head and made soothing noises, and gradually she grew calmer.
“I was… afraid,” she said eventually.
“Afraid? Of what? My dearest love, tell me what troubles you, I beg you.”
“I was afraid you would not come tonight. Everything is so… as it was… and I thought… I was afraidyouwould be… as you were. But you are not, are you? Please, please say that you are not!”
“That Ian is gone forever, believe me. Is this because I stayed up with Henry for a while? You know what he is like, he worries so much, and he likes to unload all the problems onto my shoulders. If I had known you were anxious… my love, you must never do this again. I cannot bear you to be miserable on my account. Tell me, next time, or send Brandon down with a note.”
“That would be amusing.‘Dear husband, Come to bed at once. I need you. Your ardent wife.’Poor Brandon would be mortified.”
Ian laughed. “Then perhaps we should always end the evening at the same time?”
“No,” she said slowly. “I should not like to constrain you in that way. Your room is so far from mine, that is the trouble.”
“That was my attempt not to be an encroaching husband, but perhaps, now that you appear not to mind my encroachment, we could rearrange things? Suppose I take the room next to this one as my dressing room? We could even have a connecting door, if you wish.”
“Oh, yes! I should like that.”
“I will have to keep a bed in there, naturally, for those times when we quarrel and you hurl breakable objects at my head, but I need not use it otherwise. Would that be an acceptable compromise, my dearest?”
“It would. I promise to keep the hurling of breakable objects to a minimum.”
He chuckled, a low rumbling in his chest that made her whole body quiver.
“Ian,” she said tentatively, looking up shyly at him. “I know I am very difficult to live with, and probably, like that poor child at the castle, I should have been thoroughly beaten as a girl to stamp out my wildness, but I mean to do my very best to be a good wife to you.”
“Shh,” he began, but she shook her head.
“No, let me say this now, while I feel it so strongly, for tomorrow or next week I may start screaming at you again and telling you how much I hate you, and I do not. I never have, but it has taken me an unconscionable length of time to work out what it is Idofeel.”
