James reached out and brushed one bloom between two fingers—an absent-minded gesture.
“I noticed this morning,” he said, not quite looking at her, “that it is in bloom. The color is the same as the pink gown you wore to dinner two nights ago. The one with the… uhh—” He stopped abruptly, as though the words had escaped before he’d given them permission. He looked faintly startled by himself.
Isadora stood very still. She didn’t know what to think.
“I do not know why I said that,” he admitted.
“Neither do I,” she said, “but I find I’m glad you did.”
He turned to look at her, and she immediately reached for the only defense available to her.
“James Harcliffe,” she teased, “I’m beginning to suspect you are considerably more romantic than you have spent years insisting you are.”
“I am not romantic.”
“You just compared my gown to a rosevine. Unprompted. With visible regret immediately afterward.”
“I observed a similarity. That is different from romance.”
“It is the entire foundation of romance. Keats built an entire career on precisely that kind of observation.”
“Keats would have made it considerably worse,” James countered. “Four stanzas, minimum. Possibly an entire ode.”
“And you managed it in one sentence, which you instantly tried to take back.”
“I have not taken it back.” His voice had lost its teasing edge. “I find I do not want to.”
The space between them had closed at some point without either of them knowing. She could not have said exactly when, only that the careful distance from a moment ago no longer existed, and his attention had shifted entirely off the roses and to her face.
“This is a far more romantic evening than I ever expected to have with you,” she said, a little unsteadily.
“I contain multitudes.” His voice was low. “I did warn you.”
She almost laughed. It caught somewhere in her throat because his expression had shifted again, and the teasing was replaced by something more serious—the same thing she’d glimpsed at the lake, in the nursery doorway, in a hundred unguarded half-seconds she’d been collecting without meaning to.
“Isadora,” he said.
She looked at him.
“Why do you fear it so much?” he asked quietly.
“Fear what?” she whispered.
“Love. You believe in it. You told me that yourself years ago, with absolute conviction. You believe in it more than anyone I’ve ever known.” He held her gaze in the fading light. “And yet you keep it at arm’s length every single time it gets close. Why?”
Her smile faded. She had no ready answer for his question.
The roses were heavy and dark in the last of the light. The lake lay still below them. James was close enough now that she could see every inch of his face, open and unguarded in a way she had rarely been permitted to see.
She opened her mouth.
She was not entirely certain what she meant to say. She felt the easy defense go, the one she had been hiding behind all evening—the teasing, the deflection, all of it dissolving under the steadiness of his gaze until there was nothing left to reach for.
“Blackmoor taught me,” she said quietly. “Very early.”
He waited for her to elaborate, and that patience finally undid her.
“My parents loved each other once. I believe that… I have to believe that, because I have seen the letters they wrote to each other when they were young, before William, before any of it. There was real warmth in them. Real tenderness.”
