Surprise and warmth softened his face. The corner of his mouth twitched.
“Done,” he said.
“I am serious.”
“So am I.” He looked at her steadily. “The library. Whatever else you need, consider it done.”
She looked at him for a long moment. James Harcliffe, the Duke of Ashbourne, standing in a dim corridor in his shirtsleeves, making promises and meaning all of them.
“That is enough.”
“Is that a yes? Will you marry me?” he asked.
She looked at the nursery door. At the thin strip of warm light beneath it. “Yes, I will marry you,” she said quietly.
James went still for a moment. Then he exhaled. “I will speak to William in the morning.”
“He is going to be furious.”
“I am aware.” A pause. “I will manage him.”
“You think so.”
“I have managed your brother for years,” he assured her.
A smile tugged at her lips, but she bit it back.
“Good night, James,” she said.
“Good night, Isadora.”
She turned to leave. She had made it perhaps four steps when he spoke again, his voice quiet.
“For what it’s worth, I am glad it is you.”
She stopped but did not turn. She stood in the corridor for a moment with her back to him, and the words sat somewhere they had no business sitting, warm and inconvenient and entirely genuine.
She did not answer.
She walked to her room, closed the door behind her, and went to her bed. She plopped down and lay back, staring at the ceiling.
Ashbourne was her home now, or would be soon enough.
She did not think about what that meant.
CHAPTER 9
“Have you lost your mind?” William snapped, his eyes flashing.
James had faced worse conversations than this. He was fairly certain of it. He stood near the window in his study and tried to remember, but failed as William paced in front of the fireplace with barely contained fury.
“I have not,” he replied.
He is going to keep pacing.He is going to pace and wear a hole into the floor, and we are going to have this conversation as if we were fifteen years old again and I had done something he particularly disapproved of. Which, to be fair, was most weeks.
“Of all the women,” William bit out. He stopped pacing and turned.
“I am aware?—”
