The silence that followed this was as wide and as lonely as the sea.
“Oh, Isobel,” North finally whispered.
She nodded. Her ability to form words had gone. It was always like this when she talked about the pregnancy.
She sucked in a breath, trying to work loose the knot in her throat.
She said, “I hadn’t yet told Peter about... my condition. I was terrified to tell him.”
North made a groaning noise and closed his eyes. Isobel searched his features for disgust but his face was creased only with pain.
Yes, Isobel wanted to say.Yes! It was unbearably painful.
That is why I have not wanted to return to Iceland.
That is why I cannot trust you or any charming, handsome man.
That is why I cannot trust myself when I am near you.
I want too much from the wrong men.
While she studied him, his eyes opened. She forced herself to hold his gaze. She wanted to say all of this too, but she’d already said so much. And none of this was North’s fault.
He said, “What happened, Isobel?”
“Well,” she said, “my mother was halfway across Europe doing a long run ofTartuffe, her favorite play.”She simply let the words spill out, flowing like her tears.
“The other Lost Boys—the girls, perhaps—might seem like natural confidantes, but they were all waiting hopefully for their chance to have a go at Peter. They idolized AnaClara. I was alone.”
She dragged in a deep breath, but what she really wanted to do was scream. To scream for the lonely, terrified girl she had been.
She finished with, “Before Peter reunited with AnaClara, I was going to tell him. But then she returned and he threw me over. When it was clear I was an afterthought to him, second best, then I sort of... stopped. In all things that pertained to him. I stopped watching, stopped scheming, stopped hoping. I simply...was.
“I held myself very still for the first time in as long as I could remember. I thought of me and me alone—well, and the baby. I considered my situation. When I fully grasped what had happened, when I allowed myself to conceive everyone’s role in it—mine, Peter’s, AnaClara’s, my mother’s, even these Icelandic people in whose home we were living—I experienced a sort of... awakening.
“Peter’s selfishness had finally pierced the fog of my hero worship. Something like... good sense, and independence, and self-preservation began, ever so slowly, to stack up, brick by brick, inside me. I had the strength to choose my own interests ahead of the group’s. I had the strength to see beyond Peter, to not look at him at all actually. I could determine some way to survive for myself and for this new life. Alone. I had to...grow up.”
“But where is—?”
“I lost the baby,” Isobel said quickly.
There was no way to say it except to force the words out. They cut her every time she said them. She was cut in two to say it.
“Isobel,” he breathed. His hands went gentle on her arms but he did not let her go.
She nodded, responding to the softness in his voice. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
“I’d already written to my uncle by then. The letter honestly and frankly described my situation so that the Starlings could decide what manner of help, if any, they were willing to lend. They had a houseful of impressionable daughters. My uncle was running for parliament. And I was alone and unmarried and expecting a child. Sir Jeffrey, God bless him, arranged for me to sail to London as soon as a ship could reach Iceland. By the time that ship made landfall in Reykjavík, I’d lost the baby. I was only about eight weeks along. My body simply...”
She couldn’t finish.
“Were your friends with you when...?” he asked softly.
She shook her head. “I was alone. The Lost Boys had gone, but this family, the Vagns, had allowed me to stay behind. I told them I wanted to continue to learn the language and implored them to host me for a while longer. They sensed some distress, I believe, and allowed it. They never knew about the pregnancy.”
She stopped talking then and wept in earnest. Her face crumpled; her throat cinched painfully tight. Despite her sobs, she heard North make a mournful noise—a sort of moaned oath—and the next thing she knew, he was pulling her against him. She felt hardchest and warm arms, but her brain was consumed with the old pain and guilty relief of that night. She cried until she was wrung out, until there were no tears left to cry. He held her and she lacked the energy to move away; she didn’t want to move away. Her breath came in slow, raspy gasps. She sounded like a dying thing. Without thinking, her hands found the lapels of his coat and she squeezed, holding on.
She should say something, she thought. This was her terrible history and she’d revealed it of her own volition; no one expected such vivid detail, least of all her.
