Yet tonight, there was something arresting about the sight of her in the firelight. She had her brother’s dark coloring softened into something more her own with dark blonde hair, blue eyes that missed very little, and an elegance that had nothing to do with fashion and everything to do with the way she occupied a room.
James had simply never stood still long enough to notice.
She was looking at Violet, who was already sleeping, the way she looked at things she cared about—directly and without pretense, with the entirety of her attention.
James lingered in the doorway. He had come up to check on the baby. That was all. That was his intention.
He looked at the two of them, at Isadora’s bowed head, at the unselfconscious gentleness of her hands, at the sleeping weight of the baby who had no one in the world but the people willing to stand between her and it, and something suddenly shifted in the architecture of his thinking.
How did I not see it before?
The thought came with a kick to his pulse. He stood very still and let it return to normal.
Isadora was already here. She already knew the child, already held her with ease as if she had been doing it for years rather than hours. She was William’s sister, steady, principled, impossible to rattle, and constitutionally incapable of doing anything with less than her whole attention. She was of impeccable family, excellent character, and had no more appetite for the performance of society than he did on his best days.
He had known her almost all her life.
Isadora glanced up. He looked at her long enough that something shifted in her expression.
“James.”
His name, without the title, without the formality. She said it the way she said most things—directly, as though it were simply the most accurate word available.
“How did I not see it before?” he muttered to himself.
She frowned. “See what?”
He did not answer immediately. He was still looking at her—at the baby asleep against her shoulder, at the loose strands of hair against her cheek, at the steady, non-performative warmth of her in a room that had been cold for two weeks.
“I think,” he said slowly, his gaze fixed on her face, “I have just found the answer to all my problems.”
Silence ensued.
Isadora looked at him like she was not sure she had heard correctly.
“I beg your pardon?”
He crossed the room and stopped before her chair, close enough that she had to crane her neck to look him in the eye, close enough that he could see her lips part in confusion.
Her chin lifted slightly, and her arms tightened almost imperceptibly around Violet.
The lamp burned between them. The fire settled in the grate. Outside, Ashbourne was dark in every direction, and the only sound in the room was the soft breathing of a baby who had fallen asleep, trusting that the arms holding her would still be there when she woke.
The silence stretched.
“Will you marry me, Isadora?” he asked.
CHAPTER 4
“Have you lost your mind?”
Isadora said it quietly, because of the baby, but the words were not quiet. They landed in the room with the full weight of everything she had not said in the past thirty seconds while she sat and stared at him and tried to determine whether she had somehow misheard.
She had not misheard.
James stood before her chair with the expression of a man who had made a calculation and was waiting, with reasonable patience, for the other party to catch up.
“I am entirely in possession of it,” he assured her.
