Page 125 of The Betrothal

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

ISABELLE

Iwoke up to darkness again with the heaviness of a chemically induced sleep leaving me groggy and confused.

I knew, from the echoing sadness, that I was home.

I wriggled with difficulty.

A voice groaned in the blackness and I stilled.

An arm clamped around my waist and pulled me against a large body, the smell familiar, but not in a good way.

My senses woke up. Teddy.

My hands glanced over my body, the nightdress I’d woken in yesterday remained in place, the sheets wrapped tightly around me. He wasn’t in the bed.

“Izzy?” he mumbled.

My heart skipped a beat. “Uh-huh.”

His arm tightened around me, I rolled and he loosened to allow it. Slowly, my eyes adjusted. There was a faint glow around the curtains behind him outlining his form on the top of the bed, the shroud of a blanket covering his long body. I could make out the angles of his face, the soft pursing of his lips, the peaceful rest of his face in sleep.

Conflict warred inside me.

This was bad, I knew it was bad. I needed to do something.

My mother’s voice echoed in my head ‘if it were my choice, I’d give you a few weeks in Cliffedge’.

Cliffedge was the most upmarket of institutions. But an institution, it still was.

Branded as a wellness facility, many society wives would go for weeks at a time, some even after birth. And although it marketed itself with an air of rejuvenation and replenishment, we all knew what was underneath.

It was carefully curated to be both a prison and a restoration clinic. A woman could disappear inside for days, or weeks.

Spending time at the facility could be frowned upon, but in the same breath, the clinic was revered. Women came out calm, content, compliant.

My spending a few weeks inside, that could easily be sold as a long retreat after an extremely devastating ordeal. And I had no doubt, at all, that I would come out the picture of Teddy’s perfect political trophy wife.

Perhaps that wouldn’t be the worst thing.

I thought back to the speed with which I’d lost myself to the drugs he gave me.

I’d been so naïve. So, deeply, naïve. After all, this was the best-case outcome if I were retrieved by my family.

This was the hand I had been dealt. The bed I had made. Now I had to figure out how to face my music. My rogue chickens had come home to roost.

Perhaps I could make some lemonade with the lemons life had given me.

I chastised myself for the disappointing pep talk slash bollocking.

Teddy’s eyes opened, almost devoid of colour in the gloom. They were nothing like my men’s.

His elegance in sleep washed away when the shutters on his personality slid open.

“I dreamed you had left me again.” He sounded wounded.

No doubt he was. Pride and all that.