He looked up at her. ‘She drowned herself I am told.’
Isabel nodded. ‘So they say. I never understood it...’
She frowned. The time had come for honesty.
‘Sebastian, may I confide in you?’
‘Of course.’
‘Anthony came to see me a few days after Amy’s body had been found caught in that stand of willows.’ She pointed to a stand of willow trees bowing gracefully over the water. ‘He was almost manic with distress. He had heard the gossip. They were saying she was with child, his child, and it was his rejection of her that had led to her suicide.’
She looked away. She had never confided in anyone before, and to do so would cost her dearly.
‘Go on,’ Sebastian urged.
‘He told me things.’ She took a deep breath. ‘About himself. Terrible, shameful things. Things for which he could be hanged... but he could not have Amy’s death on his conscience. He was not the father of her child.’
‘Isabel,’ Sebastian said softly, sitting up. ‘I know all about Anthony.’
She turned to look at him, her eyes wide with shock. ‘How?’
He sighed. ‘Gossip.’
She looked down and humiliating tears pricked the back of her nose. ‘So everyone but me knew? All the years I had been married to him, I had assumed his lack of interest in me was because...’ She stopped herself from saying any more.
The shame at her own naivety and her anger at Anthony for his duplicity welled up inside her, and the hot, angry tears began to roll unbidden down her cheeks.
She steeled herself, trying desperately to will them away. Sebastian sat up and put his arm around her shoulders, and drew her into the curve of his body. She made no protest. It felt good to be held. He pressed a large, clean white kerchief into her hand, and she mopped at her face.
‘You don’t have to say any more,’ he whispered.
‘But I do,’ she gulped. ‘That’s why I never understood about Amy. Anthony swore he never touched her and, given what he told me, I believed him.’
Sebastian looked down at her, a small frown creasing his brow. ‘There is no doubt she was with child?’
Isabel nodded. ‘The doctor confirmed it.’ She gave a great shuddering sigh and let her hands fall in her lap. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.’
‘Because it is something you have kept to yourself for too long, Isabel. There’s no shame in it and, for what it’s worth, I believe Anthony did care for you in his own complicated way.’
She gave him a scathing glance. ‘How would you know?’
‘Georgiana Kendall told me,’ he said.
She pushed away from him, a band around her chest tightening as she said the hated name between gritted teeth.
‘Georgiana Kendall …’ she began, trying to find the words to express her feelings.
Sebastian laid his hand over hers. ‘They were not lovers, Isabel. She was under no illusions about Anthony’s preferences. She was just part of the picture he painted about himself.’
Isabel looked away, her humiliation complete. Georgiana Kendall had known something of such importance while she, his wife, remained in ignorance, torturing herself with her own imagined inadequacy.
‘How she must have laughed at me,’ Isabel said, the tears beginning again. She shook her head. ‘In some ways it was easier to believe that they were lovers, but once I knew the truth and understood that he could talk to her in a way he could not talk to me, it felt like as much of a betrayal than if he had taken her to bed.’ She dashed away the tears. ‘Sebastian I am such a fool. I knew he only married me for my dowry. I hadn’t realised it was also for the veneer of respectability it gave him. I was just a part of that same picture.’
Sebastian took her chin between his fingers and tilted her face up to look at him. His thumb gently stroked her tearstained cheek.
‘Isabel, I am no apologist for Anthony, but you are the one who was so quick to tell me to put the past behind me. I can only give you the same counsel. There will be someone, somewhere, who will care for you the way you should be loved.’
She looked into his brown eyes and saw something she had never seen before. Compassion, yes, but something else—desire. All she needed to do would be to let her reserve go, close her eyes, and feel his lips on hers. The thought sent a warm rush flooding through her, and her betraying body softened, leaning in towards him.
