He was even more beautiful than she remembered. Eight years ago she’d seen him with a child’s eye, and he was her savior and, she had to admit, she’d confused him in her mind a little with the angel of the statue. She had, after all, only known him a day.
But she was a child no longer, and he was… he was breathtaking. Tall, dark, his skin burnished with the sun, a rich dark gold flush along his cheekbones, and such fine cheekbones they were. His nose was a strong, straight blade; his mouth, severe and beautiful. And his eyes, dark, so dark they looked black, but she knew from before they were the darkest blue she had ever seen. There was no sign of blue now.
All those nights dreaming of him… and now. He was not the same.
She remembered him as very tall and strong with a loose elegance of movement. Now he seemed bigger, more… solid, his shoulders broader, his chest deeper. A man, rather than a boy, with a soldier’s bearing—no, a hunter’s bearing. Alert, tense, wary.
She could see other changes in him, now that she looked. The brightness, the resilience of youth had been burned away, leaving the hardness of bone and bitter experience behind. And cynicism, she thought, looking at the hard, chiseled mouth.
The war had left none of them untouched.
Lieutenant Ripton might be as beautiful as an angel—a stern one, as Sister Josefina had said—but there was a darkness in those eyes of his that had nothing to do with any angel. Except a broken one.
His eyes, the eyes that had danced in her memory, now watched her with a flat, assessing look.
She swallowed and held her head higher, knowing what he would see in her, knowing they were ill-matched. The girls had done their best to make her look as beautiful as they could. It wasn’t their fault she looked as she did. She knew she’d never make a beauty. She desperately wished she looked pretty for him.
But she could see in his eyes she didn’t.
Dear God, but it was Mama and Papa again, Papa the handsome eagle soaring high and Mama the plain, dowdy little pigeon, bleeding with love for a husband who never looked twice at her.
Mama’s words rose unbidden to her mind.Guard your heart, my little one, for love is pain. Love is nothing but pain.
Lieutenant Ripton was still the handsomest man she’d ever seen. Lord, but the girls were going to have to eat their words when they saw him.
And she was not her mother.
“Isabella, how do you do?” he said, and his voice was deep and, oh, she remembered it, remembered the way it shivered through her, even though he was talking to her now like a polite stranger.
She managed to return some sort of polite response—something inane, she was certain, but this was why children were drilled in good manners, she thought irrelevantly; so when they couldn’t think what to say, the right thing popped out anyway.
He bowed and bent over her hand.
His hair was dark and thick and combed smooth and neat. She’d remembered it as constantly tousled, windblown. Now it was almost… regimented. She wanted to touch it, to run her fingers through it, to mess it up as it used to be. Reverend Mother would have had a fit.
It occurred to her that Lieutenant Ripton might not like it, either. There was no warmth in his eyes, the way she’d remembered. But perhaps he was nervous, too.
He pressed his lips to the back of Isabella’s hand, a light, dry pressure that was over almost before she felt it. Hardly worthy of the name of a kiss.
Certainly not the kind of kiss she’d dreamed about all these years. It was more like a meeting of strangers than a glorious reunion. He hadn’t even smiled at her.
She hadn’t smiled at him, either, she told herself. It was nerves, just nerves.
Her eyes ran over him as he straightened, trying to drink in the changes, boy to man. He was a young man still, younger than she’d expected. He could not yet be thirty, she was sure. As a child, she’d thought him much older.
“How old are you?” she blurted.
“I beg your pardon?” he said, and at the same time she heard Reverend Mother sigh. Isabella Ripton, putting her foot in her mouth again.
Too bad, Isabella thought. She wanted to know, and it wasn’t rude to ask. He was her husband. Herhusband.
“How old are you?” She wanted to know everything about him.
“Twenty-eight.” Just.
“So you were twenty when we married.” Younger than she was now.
“Nineteen, actually. I turned twenty a few weeks later.”
