“Then why did he let me leave?” Isadora sniffled, her voice cracking.
The room had no answer to that.
“Because he is an idiot,” Letitia said.
“Letitia—”
“I am sorry, but he is. He is a brilliant, complicated, emotionally avoidant idiot who has spent all this time convincing himself that keeping everyone at arm’s length is protection, when it is actually just—” She threw up her free hand. “Cowardice dressed as wisdom. Which is the most infuriating kind.”
“You cannot call James Harcliffe a coward,” William interjected.
“I can call him whatever I think he is when he has made my sister cry,” Letitia declared, with a calm that was considerably more alarming than anger would have been. “And what I think he is right now is a man who had something real in his hands and let it walk out the door because he was afraid of it. Which is cowardice, William, regardless of how many brave things he has done.”
William looked at his sister. Then he looked at his wife.
Cecily looked back at him with an expression that said,She is not wrong.
He plopped down into the armchair by the window and pressed his hands against his knees.
“Is he in love with you?” he asked without preamble.
Isadora looked at him.
“I thought—” She stopped. Started again. “I thought he might be. I thought… There were things he said, and the way he… Yes, I thought he was. I thought something had changed.” She looked at the fire. “But he let me leave, William. He stood there with the words hanging right in front of him. I could see them. I could see him deciding, and he said nothing. And I do not know how to reconcile…” Her voice failed her for a moment. She pressed the handkerchief to her face. “I do not know what to do with a man who looks at me as though I matter and then says nothing when it counts.”
“Isadora,” Cecily said, drawing her attention.
She was leaning forward in her chair, her elbows on her knees, her expression entirely unguarded.
“I married a man who was terrified of loving me,” she began quietly. “Who was so certain that the feeling would eventually destroy something that he could not bring himself to name it for a very long time. Who let me believe more than once that what existed between us was merely…” She paused. “Manageable. Contained. Nothing more than what we had agreed on.” She held Isadora’s gaze. “And I nearly left. I nearly decided that what I saw in him was not real because he would not say it out loud.”
“And?”
“And he came after me,” Cecily said simply.
The room fell quiet.
Isadora looked at her. “See, William came after you.”
“Yes.”
“James—” Her bottom lip quivered. “James did not come after me.”
“He has had—” Cecily glanced at the clock on the mantel. “Approximately six hours.”
“What—”
“I am not telling you to wait indefinitely,” Cecily spoke over her. “I am not telling you that the pain is not real or that you are wrong to feel it. I am saying that sometimes men who are afraid of the right thing need to be more afraid of losing it. And sometimes losing it is what it takes.”
Letitia was very still beside Isadora.
William was looking at his wife like she had said something he could not argue with and had no interest in arguing with.
Isadora looked at all of them. At William, who was furious with James on her behalf. At Letitia, who had called James a coward with absolute conviction. At Cecily, who had married a frightened man and was sitting here as evidence of what frightened men could become when they finally stopped being afraid.
It doesn’t matter if they think he loves me. He let me leave, and that is all I know. He doesn’t love me.
She pressed the handkerchief to her face one more time and sat up.
