When everything was so much simpler.
“Your Graces,” Isabel said, hands fluttering much like those butterfly wings when she stepped forward.
“Mrs. Hayes,” his mother said, breaking from him and holding out her hand when Matthew could not move toward her. “Or may I call you Isabel, since tomorrow we shall be family?”
“Of course, Your Grace,” Isabel said, glancing at him. “I would be honored.”
The duchess cast him a quick look over her shoulder. It was pointed, and he realized he had simply been staring since he entered the room. As she stepped away to pour them each a drink, Matthew came forward at last.
“Good evening, Isabel,” he forced himself to say.
“Matthew,” she whispered, her gaze flitting over his face. “I’m so happy you invited me tonight. I thought you would not wish to see me.”
His heart lurched at the breathlessness in those words and the pain in her gaze. Despite his hesitations about her motives, he still felt a powerful drive to comfort her. To do far more than that. He reached for her hand.
When their fingers intertwined, there was a jolt of awareness that went through him. As always, desire was there. But something else, too. Something he could scarcely put a name to, for he hadn’t felt anything like it for a very long time.
It was a feeling of coming home, which could not be correct. He was overwrought after all the excitement of the past few days.
“We are to marry, Isabel,” he reminded her softly. “I could not avoid you if I wished to. And I don’t wish that.”
She nodded slowly, though his words didn’t seem to help ease her discomfort. In truth, he had no idea how to do so. They were both thrown into a situation out of their control. They were both aware of the barriers and the difficulties.
She cleared her throat as his mother returned. “My uncle sends his, er, regrets that he could not join us. He was distracted by some business.”
From the tightness around her lips, he could see that was not a true statement, and his stomach turned. Was she lying because this was part of some larger plan? And if not, if she were as much a victim as he was, just how bad things were for her at home, with a man so driven by hate that he would sacrifice her for it? Both questions left him ill at ease.
There were voices in the foyer then, and they all turned. “Ah,” the duchess said. “The others are arriving. Shall we greet them?”
She smiled at Isabel and then stepped from the room. Matthew held out his arm and she took it. But before he drew her into the hall, toward his friends and the night ahead, he leaned down closer.
“You are beautiful,” he whispered.
She jerked her gaze up with a gasp. Like she didn’t believe it. Like he couldn’t feel it after everything.
“S-so are you,” she stammered.
He found himself smiling as he guided her from the room. And for the first time in days, his heart actually felt light.
Isabel stood alone on Matthew’s wide terrace, looking down at a shadowy garden below. She could not see much of it in the moonlight, but she could already tell it was massive. Lovely. And after tomorrow, hers.
That thought was shocking every time she stumbled upon it, and she gripped her hands tighter on the metal railing as she gazed into the night.
The past few hours had been…trying. The supper was wonderful, of course. The company fine, for Matthew’s friends and their wives were all good people. Decent men and women.
But she saw the way they watched her. Careful. Accusatory in some cases. They were a tightknit group. She had no place there. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.
And that stung even though she deserved no less than their censure.
“He is like a brother to me, you know.”
Isabel turned to see Helena Undercross coming across the terrace toward her. The Duchess of Sheffield, Baldwin’s wife. And there was no mistaking the hard edge to the otherwise beautiful woman’s countenance.
“I know he and your husband are very close,” Isabel said carefully.
“They are. All the dukes in their little club are close, but there are pockets of deeper friendships within their ranks. Baldwin, Ewan and Matthew are one of those pockets.” Helena stopped beside her and stared up at the stars for a moment. “That alone would make me protective of him. But there is more to it than that.”
Isabel tilted her head. She wanted so much to know more about the man she would so soon marry. And this woman, with her accusation, was offering her a glimpse of just that.
