Isolde gasped and staggered backward a few feet and clapped her hands over her mouth. Her eyes were flared in shock.
After the alarmed flapping of wings faded, all was deafening silence.
Isolde remained frozen. Her eyes were still wide with what appeared to be horror.
Isaiah’s knees nearly buckled from humiliation. Inwardly, he flailed in panic.
What the bloody hell had he done?Whyhad he done it? How had a Redmond come to be whinnying in a graveyard? Was he ruined? Would she mock him?
Who the devilwashe anymore? He was tempted to turn tail and run.
“I thought…” he stammered. “But you said…”
Finally, she slowly, almost somberly, lowered her hands.
“It’s just...” her voice was an anguished hush. “Your whinny was so much better than mine, Top Boy. I’ve never heard a better one. I'mbitterlyjealous.”
He froze. His jaw dropped. He clapped it shut. Outrage surrendered almost at once to a flood of what felt like the purest happiness.
“Holy Mother of God. You are aminx.”
Suddenly, an answering whinny from an actual horse echoed from somewhere out on the main street.
They both burst into laughter.
They crouched down behind headstones like naughty children when the vicar popped out his head from the church, reflexively faintly smiling at the sound of merriment, even if it was occurring among the departed. Such was life. Presently he disappeared back into the church.
“You are a dangerous person, Miss Sylvaine,” Isaiah said with a sigh, finally. “A menace.”
“Your poor face.” Miss Sylvaine’s eyes were shining with laughter tears. “You were so worried. I’m sorry. Whatmustyou think of the Sylvaine girls?”
For a luxurious few moments, they merely regarded each other.
He was reasonably certain that she could see in his eyes what he thought of one particular Sylvaine girl.
Everything was wrong about this, at least according to everything he’d been taught. He had an ironclad sense of honor and propriety. They ought to be chaperoned. He was not, had never been, a cad. And if this girl had been claimed by Eversea, Isaiah wouldn’t dream of overstepping, not even for the pure visceral pleasure of triumphing over him. Gentlemen simply did not do that sort of thing. He was above all a gentleman.
Any day now he would be engaged to be married to a beautiful girl he greatly esteemed, and this alliance would bring happiness and honor to his family. Every beat of his heart brought Fanchette closer to Pennyroyal Green, and to that moment.
Yet when he looked into Isolde’s eyes, he could feel something long misaligned in his spirit notch back into its place. The result was an almost dizzying relief. As if he could finally, at last, take a full breath.
“You’re not sorry at all,” he accused softly, teasing.
She smiled again. The dimple at the corner of the pale pink curve of her lower lip beset him with the sort of spiky restlessness that was the very reason she ought to be chaperoned.
She sighed contentedly as she looked about. “I think I’d like to be buried here.”
He was amused. “Surely not for a good while yet.”
“Oh no, not until I have atleastten or twelve grandchildren.”
It was impossible to imagine this laughing, lithe girl as a grandmother.
But as a mother…
He suddenly imagined little girls like her and her sister, gamboling like horses around the lawns of Redmond house, and his heart squeezed painfully.
His heart accelerated to a gamboling pace as he asked the next question.
