“I think we could be of help when that time comes,” he said. “I hope you’ll turn to me for assistance.”
Her expression softened a bit. “If you would be willing, I would greatly appreciate the help.”
He reached out, for he could no longer resist it, and touched her cheek with his bare fingers. She sucked her breath in through her teeth and leaned into his hand as her eyes fluttered shut.
“Isabel,” he whispered, just to hear her name out loud.
“Matthew,” she murmured back.
He leaned in and kissed her. Her hands trembled as she lifted them to cup his cheeks and draw him even closer. Her lips parted beneath his and he took what she silently offered. The kiss deepened, grew more heated. He knew where it was headed.
He couldn’t allow it. Yet. Not yet. Not here, not with his mother just through a door.
He pulled away reluctantly and she sighed out a tiny sound of displeasure.
“You and Helena had a talk?” he asked, searching for a topic that would distract him from the very hard cock rubbing the front of his trousers at present.
She nodded. “She is certainly protective,” she murmured. “But I suppose she would be. She—she told me you once offered to marry her to save her from a bad position.”
Matthew jolted. He had not expected Helena to share that particular tidbit. It had been a year before, a moment that felt worlds away now. “Not because I cared for her. At least not beyond friendship,” he said, feeling he should explain himself. Not certain why.
“You don’t owe me anything,” she whispered.
He shook his head. “We are to marry. Tomorrow. So I think I do. Baldwin was in a bad situation. So was Helena. They believed they couldn’t be together and so I offered to marry her myself, to save her. I mostly did it to make Baldwin wake up to what he truly wanted. He did, they married and all is right between them.”
She pressed her lips together. “Indeed, it is. All your friends are remarkable in that way. Those that are married appear deeply in love. Powerfully.”
He turned his face, for this felt like a dangerous topic. Very dangerous, indeed, considering how many of those same friends had struggled just as he was struggling. Many of them had experienced a reluctant courtship, driven by desire. A blossoming of feelings that not a one of them expected. And then…the magic of the lives they now shared.
That was not his path, but he found he increasingly envied it, especially as he looked at the beautiful woman before him.
“I will have to prove myself with them,” Isabel said. “To prove I am not in league with my uncle. I suppose I’ll have to prove that to you, as well.”
Matthew shifted at that particularly unpleasant thought. The one that had been haunting him for days. He cocked his head. “Speaking of your uncle…”
“You want to know why he did not come tonight?” she asked. Her cheeks darkened. “He made a show of getting ready, rubbing his hands together, talking about making scenes. And then, just as suddenly, he said he would not come. That he did not want to step foot into your home until it was absolutely necessary.”
She let out a long sigh, and in that moment he saw how exhausted she was by this exercise. By her uncle’s swinging pendulum of moods and what it had wrought on her life. He also saw her fear, the same one she had expressed to him the night they had been caught together. What he didn’t see was any kind of deception. Perhaps he couldn’t fully trust himself, but he didn’t think that Isabel was lying to him.
“If he could have come here and caused trouble, but didn’t, that must give you some modicum of relief,” he said.
Her eyes widened. “It doesn’t.”
“Why?”
She shook her head. “His eyes are still so wild, Matthew. I feel him plotting with every turn, muttering beneath his breath about having you close enough to hurt. Why don’t you take it seriously?”
He reached out and caught her hand. They both looked down at their intertwined fingers. Watched as he lifted her hand and pressed it to his chest. Her fingers tightened there, like she was trying to hold his heart. For a wild moment, he wished she could.
“You’ve lived with him a year, yes?” he asked. “Well, I’ve endured this behavior from him three times that long. He blusters, but he does not act. Right now he’s reveling in how he created a scandal surrounding my name. Perhaps that will finally be enough for him.”
She didn’t look certain, so he leaned forward, sliding his fingers along her jaw once more. Whatever words she’d been going to say fell away as her breath caught and her eyes fluttered shut.
He brushed his lips to hers, gentle this time despite the animal instinct that rose up in him once more. He drew her closer, against his chest, folding his arms around her. She shivered as she settled there and in that moment he felt something entirely new. Entirely unexpected.
He felt peace.
She pulled away and looked up at him, expression bleary and almost confused. Like she, too, had felt that shift and it took her off center just as it did him.
