She had to be a factory owner’s daughter or banker’s daughter. The child of a man with enough blunt to afford the fine clothes she wore, the education she’d clearly had. Maybe a widower without time enoughor a spinster sister to keep track of his daughter’s movements about Town. She surely possessed enough freedom to disappear frequently.
That freedom… that freedom told him more than anything else. Most likely, she was a young widow whose husband had left her well-off. She had the money and agency to spend her time how she pleased.
And she pleased to use it all to wear herself thin for him, for Hestia. That told him more about her than anything else. Whether she was a wealthy man’s unmarried daughter or an independent widow didn’t matter.
But the bruised skin beneath her eyes did. She was the type of woman who gave of herself too easily, the type who kept her promises, no matter how the consequences made her already light form seem bird-bone hollow and breakable.
Still, he could not answer his aunt’s question with ink and paper until he had a true name.
When the door closed behind the Barlows, he guided Isabella to the sofa and sat next to her. She crumpled into a heap, her head falling onto the back of the sofa. Another yawn, this one opening her small mouth until all her teeth showed. She attempted to raise her hand to hide it. She failed.
“You can't go home like this,” he said. “You're too tired.”
“Just bundle me into a hack. I'll take care of it.”
“Rest a mere moment.”
“No, no.” She popped upright, eyes wide. “There is no resting for me. Only deep sleep. If I doze off, I’ll remain right here until morning, and we cannot have that.”
“You are correct, of course.” They had not spoken of the kiss in Hyde Park, and he’d closed his memory to it when in her presence. He wanted more. But he couldn’t have it. Not until heknewmore.
“I simply need to wake myself up first.” She slapped her cheek lightly, shook her head, sending curls flying into a chaotic halo. “I need a book.”
“I’ve something.” He retrieved the copy ofAckermann’sfrom a drawer in his study and returned to find her sleeping, slumped against the side of the couch, her jaw slack.
His heart squeezed, tight, tight, tight, and he rubbed his chest torelieve the pain. But then she snorted, and the little puff of air parted her lips even more. And his heart became a full moon—large and glowing in a clear sky. No rubbing out that feeling, no dimming it.
“Bloody hell.”
She flinched and blinked awake. “I wasn’t sleeping.”
“Of course not. Here.” He passed her theAckermann’s. “There are several pages of furniture design in there. I’ve decided to purchase permanent pieces for my rooms so we—I—can put these back in their proper places throughout the hotel.”
She flipped through the magazine. “That’s reassuring. I keep remembering the emptiness of this room when I first saw it.” She shivered. “I do not like to think of it being so empty after all this is over.”
After all this is over.
That phrase did it, that phrase, the clouds that blocked the moon, the darkness that swallowed its light. That made his sky-bright heart plummet back to earth.
She didn’t notice, not a bit, how still he’d gone beside her. She flipped and flipped, now and then bending a corner of the magazine over to mark a spot. “What is your favorite color?”
“Blue.”
“What shade?”
“Look in a mirror.” He stretched an arm across the back of the sofa. “What color are your eyes?”
“I-I.” Her cheeks flamed red. “You are terrible.”
“Do everything as it pleasesyou.”
She stood and disappeared into his bedroom. She reappeared almost instantly, shrugging into her spencer and preoccupied with the view out the windows. He rarely closed the curtains these days, no matter how many sneezes the sun squeezed from him.
Her breathing seemed to fill up the room the way the rest of her had. Her gloves lay on a small table near the door, just peeking out from the brim of her discarded bonnet. Bits of paper with her handwriting were scattered across a small writing desk she’d procured for this room. She was everywhere here, and it had become his most favorite room in the entire hotel. Yet, he’d done nothing to put it together. All her.
“Stay tonight,” he said. “It is for the best.”
“You know I cannot.”
