“Isadora.”
“I do not.”
“You are sitting in a garden in the dark,” Cecily said gently, “because you care.”
The words landed with the accuracy of something that had been waiting to be said by someone willing to say it.
Isadora said nothing. She looked at the roses instead.
A long silence settled between them. Somewhere in the parkland beyond the wall, something rustled.
Cecily was quiet for a moment. Then, she took Isadora’s hands in her own. “Can I tell you something?”
“I suspect you’re going to.”
“When William proposed to me,” Cecily said with a smile, “I was entirely convinced it would be a loveless arrangement. I knew his reputation. I knew he was not—I knew he kept people at a distance. I knew he was not the kind of man who loved easily or said things he did not mean.” She paused. “I married him believing that what we had was practical. That it would remain practical. That I was sensible enough and realistic enough not to expect anything more from a man who had made it clear there was nothing more on offer.”
“Cecily.” Isadora turned to her, searching for the right words. “I am glad for it, truly. But William was guarded. James is…” She paused. “James is not guarded in the way a locked room is guarded. James dismantles the room entirely. He does not allowthe attachment to form in the first place. It is not the same architecture. William?—”
“Is not James. I know.” Cecily nodded.
Isadora blinked. She had expected an argument.
“They are different men with different characters. James is…” Cecily seemed to be choosing her words carefully. “James has spent a great deal of effort becoming very difficult to reach. That is not the same as being unreachable.” She met Isadora’s eyes. “People do not build walls around things that do not matter to them.”
“That is a very generous interpretation.”
“It is an honest one,” she countered. “The question is not whether James is capable of feeling. It is whether he is ever going to stop being afraid of it long enough to admit that he does.”
Isadora looked away. She thought about the nursery. About James standing in the center of the room with a crying baby against his shoulder and his cravat undone and every layer of his usual performance simply… gone.
She thought about the way he had stood in the doorway afterward, watching Violet sleep with an expression that had nothing performative in it whatsoever.
“He told me it would not be romantic,” she repeated, but it came out differently this time. Less a reason and more a question.
“Yes,” Cecily said. “He did.”
“He meant it.”
“Probably.” She paused. “Or he meant that he does not know how to be romantic, which is not the same thing, and he told you the truest version of it he was capable of at the time.” She tilted her head. “James is not a man who says things he does not believe. You know that.”
Isadora did know that.
She opened her mouth to say something. She wasn’t certain what. Perhaps something composed and reasonable that would steer the conversation in a different direction. The back door burst open.
A young maid ran toward them, her cap askew as though she had run the length of the house and not paused to right it. Her face was pale, and her hands were clasped together at her waist as if she were trying hard to hold herself steady.
“My Lady.” Her eyes darted between them and landed on Cecily with the instinct of someone seeking the most useful person in a room. “Your Grace—forgive me—it’s the baby?—”
Isadora was already on her feet.
“What’s happened?” she asked.
“She’s… the nurse says she cannot—” The maid swallowed visibly. “She’s struggling to breathe, My Lady. We cannot… She cannot seem to catch it. Mr. Briggs has sent for the physician, but he has not arrived yet, and the nurse is?—”
“Where is she?”
“The nursery, My Lady. His Grace is already there, but he… The nurse does not know what to?—”
