“I would like that,” Isadora replied.
Miss Caroline said her goodbyes. James heard her pause at the door, but he did not turn to look.
He glanced at Isadora. She was still in her chair, her hands still folded in her lap, looking at the window.
“Isadora,” he began.
“There is no need,” she said.
“I only want to?—”
“James.” She turned her head to look at him. Her voice was even and pleasant, and cost her something. He was sure of it. “There is no need. Your past is your own. I have no interest in your previous… arrangements, or whatever they were. It is not my business.”
He studied her. “You are being?—”
“Sensible,” she finished. “I am being sensible.”
The word landed with a slight edge that might have been entirely unintentional. He did not think it was entirely unintentional.
“We have agreed on what this is. I am simply… We should not forget that.” She held his eyes. “Our marriage is not real. It would be… It is better if we both remember that.”
A pause.
“You are right,” he said eventually, and her expression shuttered. “It is not real. And it is better… You are right that it is better if we remember that.”
He said it because she had asked for it and because she was right, and because the alternative was something he had notyet decided he was allowed to want. He said it with complete conviction, yet he did not believe a word of it.
Isadora looked back at the window.
“Thank you,” she muttered.
He nodded once and left.
He walked down the corridor without stopping, without looking back, thinking of her hands folded in her lap, her voice careful and distant as she said theirmarriage was not real.
He walked faster.
It did not help.
CHAPTER 15
“She is staring at you again.”
James did not look up. He was standing perhaps twelve feet from the blanket with his hands in his pockets, ostensibly regarding the lake, which was behind him.
“I am aware.”
He took another step away from the blanket. Violet’s arm extended immediately in his direction, reaching with grunts and half-whines.
“She will stop in a moment.”
“She has been staring at you since you stood up. I do not think she is changing her mind.”
“I am ignoring it. I needed to stretch my legs.”
“I do not think it is working,” Isadora chuckled.
She looked down at Violet, who was sitting on the blanket with her full attention focused on James, a pout forming on her lips. She had been doing that since James had stationed himself a few feet from the blanket.
