She sighed and snuck up the back path to the servants’ entrance that she paid a footman to keep unlocked when she took these little adventures. She slipped into the kitchen and locked the door behind her, shaking off her night and the troubling thoughts and memories it inspired. She was here again, and she had to slip back into her normal life and not show that she was changed by Matthew’s touch. By the questions about him that now haunted her.
By her own reactions to both.
She walked into the hall and toward the back stair that would return her to her bedchamber, but she had not yet turned into it when she heard the sound of a throat being cleared behind her. She froze and slowly turned to find her uncle standing at the entrance to his study, arms folded as he glared at her in silent accusation.
“Uncle Fenton,” she said, her heart leaping to her throat and lodging there so words were nearly impossible to form. “I-I was…that is, I needed…I mean to say—”
“Don’t choke on your lies, girl,” he said, stepping aside to motion her into his study.
She bent her head and trudged toward him. She was caught, there was nothing else to it. Tonight of all nights, too.
“Sit,” he said as he shut the door behind them.
She moved to the settee and perched there, watching as he moved to the sideboard where he poured himself scotch. To her surprise, he also poured a second tumbler, this one of sherry. He handed her the second and took a seat across from hers.
He sipped his drink before he said, “Where have you been?”
She swallowed hard. She’d never been a very good liar. It wasn’t in her nature, despite the sneaking out and scandalous behavior she’d been allowing herself of late. Those activities had been born of desperation, not a point of character. Now she fought to find words that would save her.
Because the truth would most definitely not set her free in this case.
“I suppose my saying I was just in the kitchen getting myself a bite wouldn’t be accepted?” she asked.
He shook his head. “It would not. You were out. I saw you return in a hack, of all things. Where were you?”
She folded her arms. “I was out…seeing Sarah,” she lied. “Her mother is not well and I sometimes go out at night to help her.”
He arched a brow as if he didn’t quite believe that. “And you take a hack to do this, rather than simply requesting one of my carriages?”
She worried her lip. “I did not want to impose upon your hospitality more than I already have,” she said. “Or trouble you and your servants.”
He stared at her a long time, those eyes that were so like her cousin’s boring into her. She shifted beneath the weight of that stare and the lies that caused it.
“Perhaps you just don’t want me to know where you’re going,” he said softly. “Or what you’re doing in truth.”
Her mouth was so dry that it felt almost glued shut. She took a great gulp of her sherry before she whispered, “I assure you not, uncle.”
He shrugged. “Lie if you’d like, but there is no point to it. You have lived here for how long?”
She pressed her lips together. “For a little over a year,” she said. “A boundless hospitality that I feel very grateful for, I assure you.”
“That’s right.” Her uncle suddenly sounded far away. “You moved into my home thirteen days after the second anniversary of her death.”
Isabel flinched. There was Angelica again, always the other person in any room where she entered. The marker of before and after. “Yes,” she whispered.
“And you are out of mourning for that husband your father arranged for you, yes?” Uncle Fenton continued. “The time has officially passed?”
“Er, yes,” Isabel said. “It’s been about eighteen months since his passing.”
“Good.” He got up and paced to the window. “Very good. I think it is time to put you back out on the marriage mart, Isabel.”
She gulped for air. This was something he danced around, of course. The idea of matching her again had been the driving force that sent her to the Donville Masquerade in the first place. But tonight her uncle seemed more…driven by the idea. Like it was a plan, not just a fleeting notion.
“Oh, Uncle Fenton,” she said. “That is very kind of you, of course, to think of my future. But I do not know if I am ready to—”
“Ready?” he repeated, as if he was confused. “What does ready have to do with it? You cannot stay here forever, my melancholy cannot be good for you. It is time to make a new arrangement. Better than the last, certainly. Your father should have come to me then. You could have had a knight or even a minor baron to wed. But he was insistent that my money and name not influence. Well, that is over now. We’ll find you a true gentleman.”
“You wish…you wish to take me out into theton?”
