“That is not why I came,” he rasped.
She looked back at him. He had not moved from the chair. He was standing behind it with both hands on the back of it now. She recognized the gesture.
“I came because of the other letters,” he said. “The ones you didn’t read. Which I understand. I understand why you didn’t read them. I said things in that entrance hall that required—” He broke off. “I saidnothingin that entrance hall, which is the problem. Which is why I am standing in your library, because I said nothing and I should have said everything, and I am going to say it now, whether you want to hear it or not.”
She went very still.
“Caroline Pembley came to the townhouse uninvited,” he said. “I sent her away. Nothing occurred, and nothing would have occurred because…” He looked her right in the eye. “Because I don’t have room for anyone else.” He paused. “She means nothing. She never meant anything. Whatever existed ended long before I understood why it ended.”
“Why did it end?” she asked.
“Because of you,” he said simply.
The rain pressed at the windows.
Isadora could feel her heart racing, which it had no business doing because she had spent the past several days constructing a very reasonable case for why none of this was something she intended to permit herself to feel.
“James…”
“I let you leave,” he continued, his voice rough, uneven. “I stood in the entrance hall, and I had everything I needed to say, but I let you leave. I saw the tears you were trying to hold back, and I thought…” He pressed his hand harder against the chair, his knuckles turning white. “I thought that I had already hurt you. That I would go on hurting you simply by being who I am. That the kindest thing I could do was let you go.”
“And now?” she prompted.
“Now I am standing here because it turns out I cannot…” He exhaled, a short, unsteady sound. “I cannot do it. I cannot be in that house without you in it. I cannot walk past the nursery and see the chair by the window or sit at the breakfast table or look at the south shelving and—” He stopped again. “Violet has been asking for you, in the way she watches the door and holds out Archibald at nothing, offering him to a room with no one in it.”
Something cracked quietly in her chest.
“James,” she croaked, her vision blurring with tears.
“I am not finished,” he begged. “I have been aching to say this for four days, and if I stop, I will lose my nerve.” He pressed his lips together. “I thought loving someone would ruin me. I have spent years believing that… that if I allowed it, if I let it be real and named and present, it would dismantle something essential in me and I would not survive the dismantling.”
His eyes held hers. “I was wrong. I was completely wrong because the dismantling happened anyway. It happened the moment you walked out that door, and it happened faster than anything I was protecting myself against. I have understood that the thing I was afraid of losing was already the thing I was losing by being afraid.”
The room fell silent.
“You let me leave.” Her voice was not even, but she was not going to apologize for that.
“Yes.”
“You stood there and said nothing.”
“Yes.” He ran a hand through his wet hair.
“I was—” She pressed her hand against her sternum, against the place where the events of the past days had been sitting. “I stood there, and I needed you to say something. But you said nothing, and I thought—” She sniffled. “I thought I had imagined all ofit. Every bit of it. I thought I had constructed the whole thing because I wanted it to be true.”
“You did not imagine it,” he murmured. “You did not imagine any of it.” He came around the chair.
He crossed the room and stopped in front of her, close enough that she could see the tears in his eyes, the composure fraying at the edges.
“I love you,” he confessed.
She gasped.
“I have loved you for longer than I know how to account for, and I have been the last person to understand it, and I am asking you—” His voice broke slightly on the last word. “I am asking you to come home. Not because the household needs a duchess. Not because of Violet or the estate.” He exhaled. “But because I cannot imagine the house without you in it. Because I cannot imagine walking into any room without looking for you first.” He held her gaze. “Because you are the only home I have found, and I was too afraid to say so, and I am saying it now.”
The rain grew louder.
Isadora felt her eyes burn. She had told herself she was not going to cry. Alas, she was not going to manage that.
