She lifted her chin and looked evenly at Winter. His hand shook even more, and Matthew tensed. If that gun fired, Isabelwoulddie. There was no doubt. But she didn’t stop. She didn’t step away. And she didn’t seem to care because she was determined to protect him.
And he realized, in that awful moment, that he loved her beyond measure. And he might lose her.
“What are you doing, uncle?” Isabel asked, and was proud that her voice sounded remarkably calm, considering what was happening.
“You wouldn’t help me,” Fenton said, his voice pleading as if he could make his case with her. “I can’t wait anymore, I can’t watch anymore, while he gets to go on and my Angelica is in a cold, dark grave all…all alone.”
When his breath caught, she felt Matthew shift behind her. The pain both of them felt in that moment was palpable. Mirror images, though it had torn them apart. She wondered briefly it they could have helped each other, once upon a time. If her uncle hadn’t resorted to anger, would they have been able to hold each other in their grief until they survived it?
Sadly, they would never know. Because here they were. And her uncle was determined to destroy Matthew.
“You will have to shoot me in order to take him,” she said, the words like sandpaper in her throat. She meant them despite the terror they engendered deep within her, in some primal place that screamed at her to live no matter what.
The part that loved Matthew was stronger.
“Isabel!” Matthew hissed, his tone sharp and desperate behind her.
She ignored him and remained focused on Uncle Fenton. “Is that what you’re willing to do?”
He stared at her. His eyes were glassy, but somewhere deep inside of him she still saw the flicker of his true self. The man he’d been before his child had been torn from him. The man who would never hurt her.
She had to believethatman would win over the one overcome by irrational hate.
“Please don’t make me,” he said, his hands trembling even more. She held her breath, for she knew that gun could fire at any moment.
“No one will make you become a murderer,” she said. “You will have done that yourself. You will be a murderer. Andhestill won’t be.”
“He will. He is.”
She shook her head. “He isn’t. I loved Angelica, but I see her with a more realistic view, perhaps more than either of you. She was wonderful, and she could be petulant and spoiled and irrational. You remember when I won that scavenger hunt when we were twelve?”
Her uncle blinked, like he hadn’t thought of Angelica as anything but a corpse for so long that a memory of her as a child seemed foreign. “She—she was angry. She threw your prize into the river.”
She nodded. “She would have her way, no matter how ridiculous it was.”
“She was a girl then,” Fenton snapped, his angry gaze focusing on her. “It was different when she was older.”
“Was it?” she asked, trying hard to hold her ground. Happy that Matthew was standing behind her, rigid with rage and terror, but allowing her this opportunity to end this night with no bloodshed. Like he…trusted her. “Is it truly so hard to believe that she would have a fit of pique over not getting her way? That she would take what she wanted regardless and do it without a thought to the consequences?”
Her uncle wavered a little, but she gasped at the sight of it. Her words were sinking in.
“I don’t know,” he whispered.
“You want to blame someone else because the pain is so deep, so powerful. So unyielding that the rage is all you have to keep it at bay. But if you kill Matthew, it will not change a damn thing about what you’ve lost. It will only turn you into a monster that your daughter would have turned away from in horror. Is that what you want? What you truly want? To kill this man Angelica loved? Who…I love.”
Matthew tensed at her back, but she ignored him. If she was going to die protecting him, she needed him to know what she felt. If she lived, they could deal with the result later.
“Isabel,” her uncle whispered, his tone heavy and mournful.
She continued, “Are you truly planning to destroy the last good thing in your daughter’s life just to make yourself feel momentarily better?”
He stared at her, his eyes now full of a desperate plea for help. She saw it there, and she said, “Please, Uncle Fenton, put the gun down. Don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt him. It’s all I ask of you.”
His hand shook, harder than ever, and then he lowered the pistol and sank to his knees. Loud sobs racked him and she dropped down beside him, hugging him as she pushed the gun out of reach and let him cry. She looked up at Matthew, his eyes soft with pity and dark with fear and relief. He touched her shoulder, his fingers pressing into her before he strode to the door and rang the bell for Portman to come.
Matthew stood at the dim light of dawn that sparkled through the windows into his study. He had never been so happy to see another morning, to face another day and know that Isabel was still alive in it.
As if he had conjured her, she entered the room and came to a stop. He stared at her, with the shadows beneath her dark eyes, with the evidence of her tears still lined on her face, with her lower lip trembling. And then she made a soft sound and crossed the room to him. She fell into his arms, her entire body shaking as he held her. And he shuddered too as the gravity of what they’d just endured hit him squarely in the chest.
