“You…you…yourascal! Mr. Redmond! That’s the plot ofA Venetian Romance!”
He’d just changed all the names. She’d in fact read the entire book just last night, too. She’d found it impossible to put down.
Once again, the churchyard echoed with their laughter.
She sighed happily. “What made you read it?”
He absently rubbed a little dirt from the last digit on Violet’s headstone. He was still smiling. But he didn’t look at her.
“Did you like the story?” he finally asked.
All at once she understood this was both a questionandhis answer.
He’d bought a book—a romantic novel, no less—because he’d wanted to know her.
Her heartbeat sped. She knew very well how the seeds of fascination could sprout and, with little encouragement, run riot. That was how it had been with Jacob.
She felt tender toward Isaiah yet again. She also felt shy and exposed, and as uneasy as if she were fumbling in the dark. Because what on earth were they doing? He’d been in London for the season; it was entirely possible he was courting another woman. Her enamel celandine throbbed reproachfully in her apron pocket. She was all but promised to another man. Wasn’t she? These weren’t questions they could easily ask each other.
Her parents would be deeply unhappy to see her cozily chatting—alone—with a young man they’d never formally met, regardless of his last name. If she’d explained “But it feels like I’ve always known him,” they would lock her in her bedroom until she was an old maid.
Still. Not one bit of reason or guilt seemed capable of infiltrating the wayward joy in her heart.
She cleared her throat. “Well, the slightly florid style of the authorAnonymousnotwithstanding… and even though I love my way of life here…it’s a way of experiencing another sort of world… and it’s exciting to empathize and feel all those emotions along with the hero and heroine.”
Her words emerged a little breathlessly.
Isaiah took this in, still absently rubbing at the number on the stone.
“It would definitely have been a less compelling story if she’d listened to his father,” he said dryly.
“Perhaps she wanted to please her father, but her heart gave her no say in the matter.”
He was quiet. When at last he slowly looked up at her, the vanishingly swift flicker of yearning in his eyes made her heart skip a beat.
“I suspect…her father just wanted to make certain she would be secure for the whole of her life, and making an alliance that would strengthen the family would be the best way to do that. My father always says that families are like castles. You’re only as strong as the weakest stone. You can’t allow the façade to crumble or crack.”
She was struck again by the complicated warmth and pride with which Isaiah said the word ‘father’. But she had formed her own opinion about the Redmond patriarch. She knew grievously wounded creatures could be dangerous, but it seemed to her that the Redmond patriarch had deliberately wielded the alleged saintliness of his poor lost son as a sort of cudgel against Isaiah, and it shook her.
And Isaiah surely faced all the pressures of being an heir.
Just like Jacob.
She was suddenly freshly grateful for her own lovable, uncomplicated father.
“What if someone in your family went astray, Mr. Redmond? Took it into their heads to fight a duel or rob a mail coach?”
“Oh, that’s an easy question. No Redmond has ever been a rogue, so I’ll never have to consider that.”
She laughed.
But then she realized he was only partly jesting.
He added, “And if anyone trespasses or tries to harm my family, well...”
“Out comes the boiling oil?”
“Whatever is required.”
