“And?” she prompted gently.
“And I felt... safe. Protected. As though nothing in the world could harm me while his arms were around me.” Isadora’s voice dropped to barely above a whisper, as though speaking the words too loudly might somehow make them more real, more dangerous. “It was the most ridiculous thing, Charlotte. I barely knew the man, had spoken to him perhaps three times in my entire life, yet in that moment I felt more secure than I had in years.”
“Security is not such a terrible thing to find in a husband,” Charlotte observed mildly.
“But it wasn’t just security,” Isadora continued, her pacing resuming with renewed agitation. “It was the way he looked at me, as though he were seeing me clearly for the first time. Not as an ornament to be acquired or a problem to be solved, but as... as a woman. As someone worth catching.”
She moved to the window again, pressing her palm against the cold glass while Christmas lights twinkled in the village below like earthbound stars. “Do you know what it’s like, Charlotte, to spend years being evaluated like livestock at market? To have your worth calculated in terms of dowry and connections and breeding potential? Father paraded me before eligible gentlemen like I was a prize mare, and they all looked at me with the same calculating expression—wondering whether I would prove a good investment.”
“But Edmund doesn’t look at you that way?”
The use of his given name sent an odd flutter through Isadora’s chest, though she couldn’t say why. “No. He looks at me like... like I’m a puzzle he can’t quite solve. Sometimes I catch him watching me with this expression of complete bewilderment, as though he can’t understand why I’m not behaving according to his expectations.”
Charlotte laughed, the sound bright and warm in the austere chamber. “How deliciously refreshing for you both. I cannot imagine anything more tedious than a husband who thought he had you completely figured out.”
“There’s nothing refreshing about living with a man who alternately ignores you and glowers at you depending on his mood,” Isadora protested, though her voice lacked conviction. “Yesterday evening, I played the pianoforte in the drawing room. I thought myself alone, but when I finished, he was standing in the doorway. For just a moment, before he remembered to be stern and forbidding, he looked...”
She trailed off, searching for words to describe the expression that had transformed Edmund’s features from forbidding to achingly human.
“Yes?” Charlotte prompted.
“Hungry,” Isadora said finally. “As though he’d been starved for something beautiful and had forgotten what it felt like to wantsuch things. But then his walls came back up, and he was all cold politeness and formal distance again.”
“Fascinating,” Charlotte murmured, settling back in her chair with the expression of someone who had just been presented with a particularly intriguing mathematical theorem. “And how did this glimpse of vulnerability make you feel?”
The question forced Isadora to examine emotions she had been determinedly avoiding since her arrival at the Abbey. Because the truth was that Edmund’s momentary loss of control had affected her far more than was wise or safe or remotely appropriate for a marriage that was supposed to be purely practical.
“Interested,” she admitted reluctantly. “Which is terrifying, because I married him for sensible reasons, not to complicate my life with impossible feelings for a man who’s made it clear he has nothing to offer beyond duty and respect.”
“Has he made that clear? Or have you simply assumed it based on his reputation and his rather forbidding manner?”
Before Isadora could form a response, Charlotte was continuing with the sort of gentle persistence that had always made her impossible to deflect when she sensed vulnerability in those she cared about.
“Tell me about this household of his,” she said, her tone carefully neutral. “What’s it like, living in this ancient fortress with the Dangerous Duke and his mysterious ward?”
Isadora sank back into her chair, grateful for the shift to safer topics. “Cold,” she said immediately. “Not just the temperature, though Yorkshire in December is brutal enough to freeze one’s thoughts solid. The servants creep about like they’re afraid of their own shadows, speaking only when spoken to and jumping at unexpected sounds.”
“And the girl? Lillian, isn’t it?”
“Lillian is...” Isadora paused, considering how to describe the complex emotions that the girl’s situation stirred in her chest. “She’s remarkable, Charlotte. And too smart for the education she is receiving.”
“How so?”
“Mrs. Hale—that’s the governess—has her reading moral tales about virtuous shepherdesses and practicing watercolors of innocent country scenes. Meanwhile, Lillian is perfectly capable of discussing Paradise Lost and Byron’s political writings with the sort of insight that would shame most university graduates.” Indignation flared in Isadora’s chest as she remembered the girl’s careful answers, the way Lillian had swallowed her own intelligence to fit into the narrow mold Edmund had constructed around her existence. “It’s criminal, Charlotte. Absolutely criminal.”
“And this is why you confronted the Duke?”
“Among other things.” Isadora’s pacing resumed with renewed energy, her silk skirts rustling against the ancient furnitureas she moved. “He treats her like she’s made of spun glass, so fragile that any contact with the real world might shatter her completely. But she’s not fragile—she’s isolated. There’s a difference.”
A soft knock at the door interrupted their conversation, and Isadora looked up to see Lillian herself hovering in the doorway with the sort of hesitant posture that suggested she expected to be turned away.
“Forgive me, Your Grace,” the girl said, her voice carefully modulated to avoid giving offense. “I hoped I might join you for tea, if you wouldn’t mind the company.”
“Of course,” Isadora replied immediately, a smile tugging at her lips. “Lillian, may I present Lady Charlotte Wyndham? Charlotte, Miss Lillian Gray.”
As Lillian settled herself on the small settee with movements that spoke of years of deportment training, Isadora found herself studying the girl’s appearance with new eyes. Someone—presumably the same person who had arranged the Christmas decorations throughout the room—had helped her exchange her usual severe day dress for a gown of midnight blue that brought out the striking contrast between her dark hair and pale skin. More significantly, her hair had been freed from its typical rigid chignon to fall in soft waves around her shoulders, transforming her from the carefully subdued child Isadora had first encountered into something approaching the young woman she was meant to become.
“Miss Gray,” Charlotte said warmly, her natural charm immediately apparent as she offered the girl a genuine smile. “Lady Isadora has told me of your love for literature. I confess myself quite fascinated by intellectual discussions—so refreshing after the endless rounds of gossip that constitute most London drawing room conversation.”
