Isabelle dearly loved her friend and the family that had taken her in.
Lord Milton sighed in annoyance. “Miss Alden, you are not listening to me.”
She forced a tight smile. “I do apologize, Lord Milton. All I can think of is our wedding day. You know how those things can make a young woman distracted.”
The Dowager Duchess snorted in the corner of the room, disguising it as a cough. She shook her head slightly and tried to focus on her needlework.
“Excuse us for a moment, Lord Milton.” Victoria gave him a warm smile, but the thinly veiled rage in her eyes was apparent to everyone else in the room.
Victoria stood and took Isabelle by the hand, dragging her out of the room. Isabelle sighed and followed her, knowing that it would be better to get the conversation out of the way sooner rather than later. There was little she could do until then.
They turned through the halls of Windham House until they were in the drawing room with the door shut behind them.
“You cannot honestly mean to marry that man!” Victoria paced back and forth across the room. “He is dull, pompous and vile. He wishes for nothing more than a woman to warm his bed, as vulgar as that may sound.”
“I know.”
“And he is a gambler! He may say that he has changed, but you know that he has not. It is an affliction and one that he will not be able to rid himself of. I would know. My father tried after he first began frequenting the tables and he failed miserably.”
“I am under no false impression that Lord Milton is going to change this behavior.”
“Then why would you go through with the marriage when you know it is only going to end in disaster?”
“There is nothing more I can or will do. Lord Milton wishes to marry me. We will be married and then my father will fulfill the deal with Win—His Grace.”
“Your life cannot be reduced to that. I refuse to allow it.”
Isabelle’s stomach turned. “I know.”
“You cannot tell me that is what you want to do with your life.” Victoria took Isabelle by the shoulders and forced her to look at her. “You are going to go out there and you are going to call off the engagement. I cannot allow you to marry that man to save me and my family. You also deserve to be happy.”
“And I will be. Enough.”
Isabelle was under no illusion that she would be spending the rest of her days with Lord Milton in wedded bliss. She was preparing to spend the remainder of her life with a man who would lie to her, who wouldn’t challenge her and cared very little about her interests. She would marry a man who would waste all of their money and would only concern himself with keeping up appearances.
I have resigned myself to my fate.
She reached for Victoria’s hands and held them tight. “You must believe that this is what I want. I will be as happy as I can be. Since the very beginning I have told you that I had no interest in marrying, and this arrangement suits that purpose as much as it is possible to do so.”
“No, it does not.” Victoria pulled her hands away. “You deserve to be happy. You should spend the rest of your life with someone who wants to be with you as much as you want to be with them.”
Isabelle looked away as tears sprang from her eyes. “I do not believe that such a person exists for me in this world.”
“Look me in the eyes and tell me that you are not in love with Felix.”
Hot tears slipped from her eyes and rolled unchecked down her cheeks as she silently regarded Victoria. Isabelle opened her mouth to speak, but nothing would come out. She couldn’t find the words to deny that she was in love with Felix. She couldn’t force them to come.
And even if she could, she wouldn’t.
Despite the fact that she would have to lock away her feelings and push her memories of Felix into the far recesses of her mind, she refused to devalue them.
“You should marry the man you love, not the man who is good enough.”
Isabelle took her by the hands again and held them tight, sniffling as she tried to dry her tears. “Marrying for love was never in the cards for me.”
“But it could be if you would only give Felix a chance. I know he loves you as you love him. And do not tell me otherwise. I have seen the way you look at him and the way the pair of you share jokes that the rest of us do not understand. You will be miserable for the rest of your life if you do not marry him.”
Isabelle took a deep breath, giving Victoria’s hands another squeeze. “I know you believe that to be true, but it simply is not.I may love Windham, but that does not mean that he would ever be inclined to love me.”
