Lillian’s entire demeanor transformed at the invitation to serious discourse, her careful posture relaxing as something approaching delight flickered across her features. “You enjoy literary discussion, Lady Charlotte? I’ve been working my way through the Romantic poets, though Mrs. Hale considers most of them rather inappropriate for young ladies.”
“Mrs. Hale sounds like a woman of unfortunately limited imagination,” Charlotte replied with the sort of dry humor that made Lillian’s eyes widen with surprise before crinkling with barely suppressed laughter. “Tell me, what do you make of Byron’s political writings? I find his defense of the working classes rather more interesting than his romantic scandals, though society seems determined to focus on the latter.”
“Exactly!” Lillian exclaimed. “But all anyone remembers are the whispers about his personal affairs.”
“As though a man’s principles become invalid the moment society disapproves of his private behavior,” Charlotte observed, and Isadora could see her friend’s shrewd intelligence taking measure of Lillian’s obvious hunger for intellectual engagement.
“I think it rather unfair,” Lillian continued, her voice growing stronger as she gained confidence in her audience. “A person should be judged by their actions in service of others, not by their mistakes in matters of the heart.”
Lillian suddenly looked down, seemingly rather wistful. “Sometimes I wonder what it would be like,” she whispered, “to be judged by one’s own merits rather than by the circumstances of one’s birth.”
Isadora felt a wave of compassion course through her. Here was the heart of the girl’s isolation—not merely the absence of intellectual challenge, but the weight of carrying someone else’s scandal, someone else’s disgrace.
“What circumstances concern you most?” Isadora asked gently, settling beside Lillian on the settee.
For a moment, she thought the girl might retreat behind the careful politeness that seemed to be her default response to difficult questions. But something in the atmosphere of the room—perhaps the Christmas candles burning warmly on every surface, or the genuine interest in Charlotte’s expression—seemed to encourage honesty.
“I dream about my father sometimes,” Lillian admitted now. “Dreams of what he might have been like if he’d lived to see me grow up.”
Isadora’s throat tightened at the longing in the girl’s voice, the unconscious echo of needs that went far beyond intellectual stimulation or social acceptance.
“What sort of dreams?” Charlotte asked softly.
“I dream that he would have understood my questions about the world, would have encouraged my reading instead of restricting it to moral tales about obedient daughters. I dream that he would have looked at me and seen someone worth knowing, worth protecting, worth...” She trailed off, color rising in her cheeks as though she had revealed more than intended.
“Worth loving,” Isadora finished gently, and Lillian’s sharp intake of breath confirmed the accuracy of the observation.
“Is that terribly selfish of me? Uncle Edmund has given me so much. I should be grateful.”
“Wanting to be cherished is not selfish,” Charlotte said firmly. “It’s human. Every child deserves to feel valued for their own sake, not merely as an obligation to be discharged.”
“Sometimes I think he looks at me and sees something painful, a reminder of promises he wishes he’d never made,” Lillian said with a sigh.
“I don’t think that’s true,” Isadora said carefully, though uncertainty colored her voice. “Perhaps he has merely... forgotten how to show that he cares..”
“Do you really think so?” Lillian asked, hope evident in her tone.
The question forced Isadora to examine observations she had made without fully understanding their significance—the way Edmund’s expression softened almost imperceptibly when he looked at Lillian, the careful distance he maintained that spoke more of fear than indifference, the guilt that shadowed his features whenever the girl’s father was mentioned.
“I do. I’ve seen the way he watches you when he thinks no one is looking,” she said quietly. “There’s pride there, Lillian. And yes, fear—but not fear of you. Fear for you. Fear that he might fail you somehow.”
And this, Isadora realized, was entirely true. As dangerous as Edmund was thought to be, she knew that the hard shell around his true emotions was just that: a shell.
CHAPTER 13
The confrontation with Bickham had done nothing to ease the restlessness that clawed at Edmund’s chest like a caged beast. If anything, the brief taste of violence had only sharpened his awareness of how thoroughly unsettled he felt, how completely Isadora’s presence had disrupted the careful equilibrium he’d maintained for years.
“You know,” Tobias observed mildly, swirling the amber liquid in his glass, “for a man who just successfully defended his family’s honor, you look remarkably dissatisfied with the outcome.”
Edmund’s fingers drummed against the leather arm of his chair, a restless rhythm that spoke of barely contained energy seeking an outlet. Around them, White’s had returned to its usual evening hum—the soft murmur of political discourse, the occasional burst of laughter from the card room, the comfortable rustle of newspapers being turned by men who’d never doubted their place in the world.
“Bickham was a gnat,” Edmund said dismissively. “Hardly worth the effort of swatting.”
“Yet you invoked James’s memory to do it. That particular weapon hasn’t emerged from your arsenal in quite some time.” Tobias leaned forward, his dark eyes sharp with the sort of attention that had made him invaluable during their military years. “What has you so thoroughly agitated, my friend?”
Edmund rose abruptly, beginning the restless pacing that had marked his worst moments for the past decade. The Christmas decorations adorning the club’s mantels seemed to mock him with their cheerful greenery—holly and ivy wound through silver, their red berries bright as drops of blood against the dark wood.
“She called me afraid,” he said finally, the words torn from his throat like a confession under torture.
