And strategy.
She stiffened. Her face fleetingly tensed, as if she’d absorbed some inner blow.
She turned and wandered distractedly through the stones.
Isaiah stayed rooted to the spot, on the theory that perhaps a little physical distance from her would help clear his head and sort out his motivations. Because he suffered for two reasons: his truth had caused her pain.
And if she was hurt, it meant she must care very much for Eversea.
“Your sense of dutyisvery noble,” she finally allowed politely. “Your loved ones are fortunate.”
“Dutyislove, Miss Sylvaine.”
She turned her head swiftly toward him.
He didn’t know why that “l” word would shimmer and echo in the air between them like heresy, or a magic spell. He wasn’t a poet. He never glibly came out with things like that.
He understood it was because he’d never before had a reason.
She appeared to be mulling this assertion. He sensed there were a dozen things she wanted to say, and he wanted to hear all of them.
“Duty is one expression of it, surely,” she agreed, finally.
The very way she moved—the sway of her skirts, the set of her shoulders, all of it—made him think untoward thoughts about other expressions of it.
Suddenly she halted near the little angel bench to read the inscription.
Bloody hell.
She slowly turned to him. A hesitant question was written all over her face.
Reluctantly he told her, “Yes. Nathaniel Duncan Redmond was my older brother.”
“Oh, my goodness. He was only nine years old.” Her voice drifted with sadness.
He moved closer to her. “Tragic, I know. He was remarkable. Far more brilliant than I, of a certainty. Could charm the birds from the trees. Born with intellectual and athletic gifts of all sorts. He was everything a man would want in a son and heir.”
He’d managed to make his tone match his usual internal dialogue about his brother: somber, yet lightly ironic.
Why he would tell her these things, he didn’t know. It was just that it oddly didn’t seem much different than saying them aloud to himself.
“He sounds remarkable, indeed,” she said gently. “And I’m not a wrangler, but I can do arithmetic, Mr. Redmond.” She tipped her head toward the dates on the plaque. “And if you’re just recently out of university, I do wonder how you know these things about him.”
He smiled faintly. “You’re right. I never met him. He died of an illness two years before I was born. But my father made certain I knew all about him. And my mother arranged to have the bench made.”
“Good heaven, your poor parents.” She paused. “It can’t have been easy at all for you to grow up that way, Mr. Redmond. Amidst their grief. I’m sorry foryourloss, too.”
He went warily still. No one—no one—had ever before made such an observation to him. Let alone with such tenderness.
It occurred to him that it had never felt likehisloss. His invisible brother had been a rival and an enemy and after a fashion the weapon wielded by his father to mold Isaiah and his sister. He’d been someone to resent. An unsettling invisible presence, like a ghost. He had seemed to belong to his parents, but never to him.
But his brother would have been the heir, with all the responsibility that entailed. He could have been a dear friend, a rival, a confidant, anything.
A surprisingly powerful, bittersweet sorrow swept through him for the first time, as though it had simply been waiting for a safe place and a safe moment to make itself known. Which was apparently in this quiet, homely churchyard, in the presence of this particular girl.
He sat down on his brother’s bench, and exhaled in a gust.
He was embarrassed and angry with himself for being momentarily too overwhelmed to speak. He willed his face to remain impassive.
