“I did not even imagine you could be alady. What lady roams London as she pleases, pretending to be a maid? What duke lets his sister do that?” Rowan stalked toward the windows, still open, always open these days. “I need to think.”
“Think?” Aunt Lavinia spoke over the rustle of silk and soft footsteps. Her next words were next to his shoulder. “You are a gentleman, Rowan, and she was discovered on your lap. The time for pretending is over.”
“Mrs. Garrison,” Isabella said from farther away, “please, do not… no matter what compromising position I am discovered in, I will not be forced into marriage. You were the only one who saw. I know you will not…”
Ruin Isabella’s life by insisting she marry a man well beneath her station in life? No, Aunt Lavinia would not do that.
“I’m quite busy,” Rowan said, pushing between the two women and into his study.
“And I’m taking Isabella home,” Aunt Lavinia called out from the sitting room.
“I’ll return tomorrow. Before the Barlows leave.” Isabella lingered in the door between the study and sitting room, but he did not look away from his desk, from the items cluttered there, indistinguishable from one another in his blurred line of vision. “Rowan? Are you well? You’ve gone all… still. Are you going to faint?” Her footsteps across the floor behind him, light and airy, then her hand on his shoulder.
He tightened his hands on the desk edge.
LadyIsabella Merriweather.
“I’m fine. Go.”
Her hand disappeared, her warmth trailing away from him to the sound of more soft footsteps.
Over?
He strode after her, caught her hand, and pulled her close, her pulse at her wrist beating beneath the pad of his thumb.A chuisle.A lady. That he’d not expected. Perhaps because he hadn’t wanted to. Did that mean it was over?
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, the words like bile in his throat.
But they gained a smile. A feather of a thing she gave him gladly. And it became a curved blade in his hands, sharp enough to cut through bone and muscle.
He released her, and she wandered back into the sitting room, joined Aunt Lavinia, who watched him with a blank face.
After they left, Rowan fell into the chair behind his desk. Damn. It smelled of Isabella.
LadyIsabella Merriweather.
He’d fallen in love with the sort of woman he could never have.
Chapter Nineteen
Isabella couldn’t show fear. The admiral’s wife would smell it. And she’d pounce. So, she followed Mrs. Garrison out of Hestia and into her carriage with her chin held high.
Inside, she shook. Rowan at her leaving was a different beast than Rowan at her arrival, a distant beast retreating silently, deep into a cave of his own construction.
Hadn’t he said they were partners? Hadn’t he said they’d find a way to help Samuel together? Yes, he had!
She should have known better than to let him close when she knew so little, when he knew so little. The unknown was a powder keg eager to explode. And she’d put her heart down in the powder. He’d lit the match.
“Drain that rising ire right now, Lady Isabella.” Mrs. Garrison had returned to admiral mode, and she expected capitulation. “Rowan is not chasing the carriage down, is he?”
Isabella looked out the window. “No, of course not.” He’d sent her on her way with nothing but doubts.
“He knows better than to defy me, but I saw the set of his chin. It means he’s considering defying me.Hmph. Tothink, after all these years of attempting to persuade him to meet my friends. He went and found you himself!”
“Why wouldn’t he meet us?”
“Any time I mention it, he tells me what I already know. His father was a sailor and his mother a seamstress. Attempting to fit into society is like trying to sew a burlap patch onto a silk gown.”
“Exactly what he told me.”
