James had not looked away from her once.
She made the mistake of meeting his eyes. There was something in them she had not expected—not irritation, not the cool dismissal of a man whose plans were being thwarted, but something more attentive than that. More still. The attention he gave to things he was genuinely trying to understand. And it was fixed on her with an earnestness that made the back of her neck warm and her composure considerably more difficult to maintain.
James held her gaze. She held his.
He looked at her for a long, quiet moment before she looked away.
“Violet deserves better,” she said to the table. “That is all I am saying.”
The moment the words left her mouth, something happened underneath them.
A sharp and unwelcome feeling twisted in her chest that had nothing to do with Violet and everything to do with the image her own mind had just conjured without her permission—James at the altar beside Caroline Pembley, who was beautiful and accomplished and would stand in exactly the right way and look at him with exactly the right expression, and who he had agreed was very pretty in a ballroom two weeks ago with the easy certainty of a man who had already noticed.
She pressed her fingers flat against the tablecloth.
She had refused him. She had refused him clearly, calmly, with excellent reasons that she stood by entirely, then had walked out of the nursery with her head up and her composure intact.
She had not regretted it then.
She did not regret it now.
She simply wished, with a force that was becoming increasingly difficult to attribute to concern for the child alone, that Jameswould look at the idea of marrying someone else with slightly less equanimity.
“I think,” Cecily spoke up, with the serene timing of a woman who had assessed the room and decided an intervention was required, “that the fish course has been sitting for a long time. Shall we?—”
“Yes,” William said quickly, reaching for his fork with the relief of a man offered an exit. “Yes, let’s.”
The conversation moved. James allowed it to. He said something to William about the estate, easy and unremarkable, and the table reassembled itself into the appearance of normalcy.
Isadora ate the rest of her dinner without tasting any of it.
CHAPTER 7
She had refused him. She had refused him because he was charming and reckless and had looked her in the eye and told her plainly that he was not capable of love and did not intend to pretend otherwise.
Those were excellent reasons, comprehensive reasons, the kind of reasons that did not require supplementing. And yet here she was, walking circles around a rose garden because the thought of James proposing to Caroline Pembley had stirred a feeling in her chest that she could not attribute entirely to concern for Violet’s welfare, no matter how she tried.
The rosebush she was passing was extremely large. She walked faster.
He is a rake,she told herself firmly.He is charming and emotionally unavailable, and has spent all his years treating commitment as something that happened to other people. You were right to refuse him, and Caroline Pembley is welcome to have him.
“You cannot do this.”
She stopped walking.
She had said that. At the dinner table. In front of her brother, Cecily, and James. She pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose.
She was not embarrassed. She had meant what she said about Violet, and she would say it again if given the opportunity. Caroline Pembley was cold—she had observed it on five separate occasions with the clarity of a woman who knew how to read other women in rooms. That was the reason she had spoken up.
That was the only reason.
You were right,she repeated inwardly, with slightly more force.
She sat down on the low stone bench in the first alcove, the one with the white climber growing above it, and looked out through the open end of the wall at the darkening parkland beyond. Somewhere in the distance, a bird was chirping. The last of the daylight sat on the horizon with a stubborn, golden patience.
You refused him.The voice in her head had become slightly pained, as though it too were growing tired of this particular circuit.You refused him, and you were right. Whether he proposes to Caroline Pembley or Lady Hastings is entirely none of your concern.
She did not have feelings for James.
