The front door closed, and the townhouse went quiet.
James remained in the chair. He did not reach for the brandy. He did not move to the window or the fire or any of the places a man moved when he needed to think. He simply sat, looking at the fire, and thought.
He thought about Miss Caroline saying that practical marriages stayed practical.
He thought about himself agreeing with that six months ago. Two months ago. In a nursery at midnight, if he was being honest, saying it would not be romantic, nothing more than practical, with the full conviction of a man protecting himself and calling it honesty.
He was not available because he was occupied. Not by the marriage as an arrangement. Not by the household or the child or the practical requirements of a situation that had required a practical solution. But by Isadora. Specifically, irreplaceably, in the way William had said at the dinner table, in the way that made all the abstract arguments about love and architecture andthe unreliability of feeling fall apart into something considerably simpler.
Miss Caroline had said marriage had changed him, and she was right, but it was not marriage that had changed him. It was Isadora.
Isadora, who had walked into a house that wasn’t hers and made it hers without announcing it. Who had named carved animals and stayed up all night with a frightened baby and reorganized the shelves and argued with him about warmth and duty and the difference between protection and armor with the direct, undeflected honesty of someone who said things because they were true rather than because they were comfortable.
Who had told him their marriage was not real in a corridor at midnight in the voice of a woman protecting herself.
Who had kissed him back on the terrace as though she had been deciding to do so for a very long time.
I am no longer uncertain.I have feelings for my wife.
That made his heart race.
He rubbed his jaw and stood. He went to the writing desk in the corner of the room—it was smaller than the one at Ashbourne—sat down, and pulled a sheet of paper toward him.
He picked up the quill. Held it. Put it down.
There were things he needed to say to his wife that could not be said in a letter. That required the specific, unreproducible medium of the same room, the same air, her face where he could see it properly.
He picked the quill back up.
Isadora,he wrote.The reverend is in Alderton. I leave tomorrow morning. I will be home before the week’s end.
He paused.
I have something to tell you, but it will have to wait.
He paused again for a long moment, looking at the paper. Then he added, before he could decide against it:
I should not have forgotten to say goodbye.
He folded the letter before he could revise it, sealed it, and prayed for the boldness to send it. He sat for another moment in the quiet drawing room of his London townhouse, where he had lived the better part of his adult life as a marquess and which had always felt, until recently, enough.
Now, it felt very far from Ashbourne.
He couldn’t wait to go back home.
He went to bed and slept better than he had in three days.
CHAPTER 26
“Mrs. Farrow wanted to know about the pheasant,” Mrs. Holt said, appearing in the breakfast room, not looking entirely too pleased about relaying this information. “For Thursday.”
“The pheasant,” Isadora repeated.
“Whether you wished to continue with it or whether you had preferences about the preparation.” Mrs. Holt stepped further into the room and set a small list on the table beside the coffee pot. “Mrs. Farrow has opinions about the sauce.”
“Mrs. Farrow has quite the array of options, doesn’t she?”
“She does, Your Grace. They are generally correct, which makes them easier to accommodate.” Mrs. Holt folded her hands. “I told her you would likely defer to her judgment. Was I right?”
