Terrified? He was… he was… who the hell knew! Felt a bit as if a cannon ball had ripped off his head.
“Oh!” Aunt Lavinia wobbled and fell against the desk, hanging her head. Before Rowan could round the desk to help her to a seat, she shot back upright and stomped a foot. “Sit, the both of you.”
Rowan rounded the chair, looked at it, then at the barren room. The chair Isabella currently sat in was the only chair in the room.
His aunt looked, too, found Isabella’s hat discarded in the middle of the bare floor. She threw her arms up. “An entire hotel of chairs and but one for yourself? Not even a place to set a bonnet!”
Isabella stood and strode for the door that led to the sitting room. She flung it open and marched inside. When no one followed, she poked her head back into his study and said, “Well? What are you waiting for?”
Rowan stretched out his arm to let his aunt go first and then followed her into the room. Or rather, he walked right into her when she froze just inside the doorway.
“What has happened here?” she demanded.
“Don't you like it?” Isabella asked. “I did most of it, but of courseRowan”—she coughed—“Mr. Trent, I mean, picked out all the pieces for the hotel. I merely moved them up here.”
“For what purpose?” Aunt Lavinia was wobbling again.
Rowan took her arm and led her to the sofa. “Yousit. We will tell you everything.”
She folded her hands precisely on her lap, and he and Isabella stood before her, telling the story in turns.
“Rowan needs this inn in Stevenage.”
“And Isabella needs a letter. Though I didn’t know it was a letter at the time.”
“We fashioned an arrangement that would allow us to secure both.”
The marital ruse, the Barlows’ unexpected stay at Hestia. No need to discuss last night, though. He wasn’t about to lay bare those details with the woman who’d been his mother for over half his life.
“The Barlows leave tomorrow,” Rowan said. “They intend to deliver their decision before they leave, though I am confident I know what it will be.” He smiled at Isabella.
She smiled back, and it felt like they were in this together. Ineverythingtogether. “I agree. They do not have to announce it so dramatically.”
Aunt Lavinia cleared her throat. “And then this ruse is over?”
He watched Isabella’s grin melt away, feeling his own drain down to his feet. Over? But Aunt Lavinia knew what he wanted. He’d written that letter, and she appeared this morning expressly to demand more information.
But she had more information now, didn’t she?
So did Rowan.
Isabella was a duke’s sister. A lady. And that made all the difference. No matter how much Lavinia loved him, even she knew—ladies of that sort had nothing to do with men like Rowan.
A wave crashed over his head—cold, salty, drowning, filling his lungs, sinking his body to the bottomless murky depths no man had yet explored.
Both women were staring at him, the collected heat of their concentration as hot as the damn sun. He might sneeze any moment.
Over?
“Rowan,” his aunt barked, “it will be over, will it not?”
“Rowan?” Isabella’s voice softer, her fingertips on his arm gentle yet probing.
“You are… you are a duke’s sister. And I am a sailor’s son.”
“Those do appear to be the facts,” Isabella snapped. “Last night you did not seem to care who I was as long as I was not a murderess.”
Aunt Lavinia laughed, a short hard sound.
