The relief that flooded her now was out of all proportion; she wanted to laugh and weep at once.
Her feet sank into the carpet, and she padded across the dark room. Returning from the bathing chamber, she felt a piece of thread clinging to her damp feet and lowered to free it, but when she raised her head, it was only to find Nicholas half sitting up. His eyes were heavy-lidded, and he looked exactly as though he truly had risen from sleep a handful of seconds before. His hair stuck up at all angles, and there was an openness to his face that she was not accustomed to seeing.
“Dora?” he breathed tiredly. He moved, suddenly, all at once. One moment, he was still in the bed, and the next, he was on the floor, crouching beside her, holding her face in his hands. “Are you all right? Does anything hurt?”
She could only stare at him. Was this the man she remembered, who told her that his business was none of her concern? Who chose to keep his secrets from her and not allow her in—not because he had no choice, but because leaving her behindwashis choice.
There was desperation in his voice now. And he had stayed with her.
She reached up a hand to touch her head again. “What… happened?”
“Best I can understand is Sherborne pushed you. You kept trying to get to Sophia, but I was able to stumble across you and make you sit down. I carried you to bed and summoned a physician, who bound your wound and prescribed some medicine.” He gestured to the side table and its bottle of tincture and silver spoon. “And I’ve been at your side ever since…mostly.”
Isadora caught his wrist, unsure whether she wanted to push his hand away or hold it so he’d never turn back into his old self. “I don’t understand.”
“Which part, sweetheart?”
“Everypart.” She drew a breath. “Who is this Sherborne, and why did he try to steal Sophia? He said she was his daughter, but…” She searched his face for the truth. “Surely that can’t be true?”
“Not exactly.” He sighed and took her hand. “Come to bed, and I’ll explain everything.”
“Everything?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. Learning of it made me question things I never should have—things that never mattered in the grand scheme.” He carried her in a bridal swing andsettled her tenderly against the pillows. “There. Comfortable? Shall I fetch you anything?”
“I just want you to tell me, Nicholas.”
“Very well.” He lit a lamp, setting the room aglow, and sat beside her, taking her limp hand. “The man who tried to take Sophia is Sherborne. He was Grace’s lover.”
Isadora gasped. “Herlover?”
“So far as I can tell. I believe him that much.”
“But—she was unfaithful? Or was this before you married?”
“Oh no,” Nicholas said grimly. “This was after. And I never knew until recently. I thought our marriage flawed, yes, but not so fundamentally. I believed in her, and she took that trust and shattered it. But that’s not the heart of it. Sherborne loved Grace—more than I did, perhaps—and he blamed me for her death.”
“Why?”
“The same reason I blamed myself, until you taught me why I shouldn’t.” He stroked her cheek tenderly. “He had no one to guide him, and so he was lost. He wanted Sophia not because he wantedher, but because he wanted to hurt me.”
Such a terrible way to cause pain—and so effective. Isadora could only imagine what Nicholas would have gone through if Sophia had gone missing. He would have torn apart the entire country to get her back.
“So all this time,” she said slowly, “when you were shutting yourself away from me, it was because you were worried about Sophia?”
He hesitated, then gathered her in his arms. “In… part. The other part, I have no excuse for. I was coming to terms with the fact that Grace betrayed me in the worst way I could imagine, and I knew if you did something similar, I would be broken beyond repair. Grace was one thing, but you were entirely another. I got in my head about it.”
Isadora wiggled free, shuffling back to the other side of the bed and staring at him. “You thoughtIwould take a lover?”
He couldn’t look at her. “I thought if you did, it would crush my soul.”
“Then you might have spoken to me about it!”
He sighed, then murmured, “To do that, I would have to confess that Sophia may not be mine, and to dothat, I would have to admit to another soul that such a thing were possible. Already, I could not help looking at her slightly differently, trying to find reasons to believe she was mine, all the while hating myself for needing to.”
“What makes a family is not blood,” Isadora said heatedly. “I am her stepmother, and I love her as though she were my own. If you wanted support or encouragement, you could have come to me. I might have helped.”
“Youwouldhave,” he breathed. “I know it. I have no excuse, Dora. No justification. If I could go back, I would change my actions, but I cannot. All I can do is apologize and swear to you—Iswear—that I will never do it again.”
