“He went because of the letters, Mortimer, and the solicitor. There is a great deal to manage, and he is the only one who canmanage it.” She paused. “I know that. I know that is why he went. It is entirely reasonable.”
Archibald was examined and replaced by Sebastian.
“What is less reasonable is his departure,” Isadora continued. “Which was… He was distracted. He was in his study with his papers, and he said it would be better if I stayed. I think he already moved on to the next thing before I had finished processing the first one.” She adjusted Violet’s blanket. “Which is… fine. It is fine. He is managing a crisis, and I am a grown woman who does not require…” She sighed.
A crow landed on the balustrade three feet away and regarded her with the flat, assessing gaze of a creature with no particular agenda.
“He forgot to say goodbye,” she said in a small voice.
The crow cawed.
“I was in the nursery. He could have… It takes two minutes to come to the nursery. He came to the nursery at midnight during a storm. He comes to the nursery at all hours for no particular reason. But this time, he…” She stopped and looked at Violet. “He could have come to say goodbye, but he did not.”
Violet had stopped the arbitration between Sebastian and Archibald and was looking at Isadora.
“I am not being dramatic,” Isadora scoffed.
Violet’s expression suggested she was reserving judgment.
“He is in London,” Isadora said. “Where he spent the better part of his adult life, where he was… where he knew people and went places and—” She looked at the rosevine. “He is a rake, Violet. That is a fact. Society knows it. My brother knows it. I knew it before I came to this house, and I have spent the past several weeks apparently deciding not to care about it, which is either growth or catastrophic foolishness. I cannot currently decide which.”
The crow flew away.
“There could be someone there,” she mumbled. “In London. Someone who has known him longer than I have, who knows his past, who does not… who was not his practical solution to an estate problem.” She looked at her hands. “Someone he would not have to ask twice.”
Violet pressed Archibald in her palm, and Isadora looked down at him.
“He kissed me,” she whispered. “He kissed me as though… He looked at me afterward and said my name, and his voice was—” She pressed her lips together. “It did not feel like nothing. It did not feel like a rake kissing a convenient wife on a terrace because the moment presented itself.” She looked back at the rosevine. “It felt like something he had been deciding for a long time. It was the most magical thing I have ever felt.”
The lake sat still at the bottom of the slope.
“But I do not know,” she continued. “That is the problem. I do not know because I have never… I have not had sufficient experience of James Harcliffe kissing people to know which version that was. Perhaps that is always what it feels like. Perhaps he is simply very good at it.” She paused and bit her bottom lip. “Heisvery good at it. That is not actually reassuring, given my concerns.”
Violet took Archibald back, examined him, and put him on Isadora’s knee as though placing him there for safekeeping.
Isadora looked at the baby. The baby looked at her and smiled.
Something was building in her chest, had been building since the carriage left that morning, the accumulated weight of a day of not-quite-thinking-about-it finally reaching the point where not-quite was no longer a feasible strategy.
“I am in love with him,” she whispered softly.
A brief silence followed.
“I am in love with him,” she repeated louder, her voice trembling as if in shock.
It was the first time she had said it aloud. It sounded… She had not known how it would sound. She had been aware of the feeling in pieces, in guarded increments, and had been carefulnot to assemble the pieces. But here, in the cold afternoon with Violet in her lap, it simply came out. Clear and quiet and irrevocably true.
“I am in love with my husband,” she said.
Violet blinked.
“I know.” Isadora nodded. “I know. I specifically… I told him the arrangement was not real, Violet. I stood in a corridor at midnight and told him the marriage was not real and that it was better if we both remembered that, and he agreed with me. I have spent every day since then—” Her voice caught slightly.
“I have spent every day since then discovering that I did not mean it at all. Not a single word of it. I said it because I was frightened, and it was true when I said it, but it is not—it stopped being true. I do not know when it stopped being true. It was true and then it was not, and I kept saying it anyway because saying it felt like protection.”
Her eyes stung, and she blinked.
“I am not going to cry about this,” she declared.
