The nonsense with Mr. Eversea had occurred after that. Thank God Isaiah was so steady! He had endured it with grace.
She gazed happily about as Isaiah talked, deciding how she would redecorate this grand pile of a home when she and Isaiah inherited it.
Isaiah had been affiancedfor a few hours when he passed his sister Diana in the hallway on the way to his bedroom.
He blocked her path. She looked up at him, startled.
“Were you the one who told her?” he said shortly.
Diana blanched at once. “I’m not sure what you?—”
Isaiah repeated slowly, evenly, “Were you the person who told Miss Sylvaine I was planning to become engaged to Fanchette?”
Diana’s voice evaporated in the face of his cold, green gaze.
Her frightened, pleading silence was his answer.
His head went back, then came down in a nod. “You are dead to me.”
He continued on to his room.
ChapterThirteen
Out of sheer, stubborn bravado, Jacob accompanied his parents to church that Sunday, the day after the assembly.
Neither the Sylvaines nor Redmonds were present.
Then again, the crowd in the pews was sparser and less alert than usual, probably thanks to all the ratafia imbibed the night before. Jacob intercepted a few curious glances, one wink, and one eyebrow wag. All in all, it wasn’t too different from the usual Sunday. Mostly, his neighbors seemed pleased enough to see him back in Pennyroyal Green, and greeted him politely after the service.
Most importantly, no banns were read in church that day. Until he heard that Redmond was officially engaged to Miss Tarbell—this eventuality was the assumption of everyone in Pennyroyal Green, he’d learned from his parents—the possibility remained that Redmond might find a spine and abscond with Isolde.
But Jacob needed time to sort himself out. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about Isolde, or what he wanted. And as Monday became Tuesday became Wednesday, his days remained restless and his nights tense and sleepless. The emotional tumult of the past few days— the pride and anger and shock—continued to sift down like the smoke from a battle.
At last, it cleared enough for him to see a miserably uncomfortable truth: he’d been grossly unfair to Isolde—he’d been anass—because his biggest fear was losing her.
Not only that, but the notion that Isolde might truly care for a man like Redmond implied she contained complexities Jacob hadn’t anticipated. The possibility that she might, in fact, be a world to be discovered spoke to his questing spirit. To his surprise, a new sort of restless yearning and tenderness, a fresh fascination, stirred within him.
He had taken her love for granted. He did not feel he had ever really needed towinher. And the notion of fightingforher filled him with determination, too. He had already fought because of her.
It was time to learn the truth, no matter whether it crushed him.
It struckIsolde as surreal and almost outrageous that mundane daily life would march on as usual in the aftermath of devastation. Apart from Sunday, that was, when she awoke looking exactly like someone who had sobbed themselves to sleep the night before. Her kind and worried family did not press her for details, but they stayed home from church out of solidarity. They ate ginger cake and played Whist, among other things. She picked at the first and lost badly at the second but she was discovering her bravado was more muscular than she’d anticipated. Besides, she would need to save some emotional resources for possible new levels of anguish: the official announcement of Isaiah’s engagement, for instance, or, horror or horror’s, Jacob’s, eventually, to someone else. Or the announcement that they had fought a duel and were both dead. The possibilities seemed endless.
George went back to London and Lincoln’s Inn, and her father’s tutoring pupils appeared at the house, and she discovered the poppies had the nerve to burst into bloom as usual, laying their yearly red carpet up the hill to Miss Marietta Endicott’s Academy.
In the spirit of someone unraveling their knitting until they found the mistake, Isolde finally ventured out on Friday to the folly, the place where it all began. Maria had gone with their mother to a meeting of the Lady’s Society, and bless them, they didn’t press when Isolde begged off, claiming a headache.
The day was perversely beautiful; the breeze a caress, only a few lamblike clouds frisking in the blue sky.
She leaned against the railing on the folly landing and closed her eyes, an ache in her chest as she recalled Jacob’s absurd performances on this very stage.
When she opened them again, she saw a man watching her from the road.
Her heart launched like a bird.
She sternly called it to heel. She didn’t yet know why he was here. She was just unutterably glad to see him.
“Do you remember how I used to think Romeo was an idiot?” Jacob called from his safe distance. He appeared to be on foot.