“Why not?”
He paused as they neared the end of the garden and removed himself from her touch. He bowed with firm, tight lips and a gaze that rent through her. “I always attain what I desire. Good day, Miss Gresham.”
Isabella lifted her chin a notch as he walked away. Partly to hide the tremor that coursed through her, and partly to make known the resolution she would not be shaken from.
In this desire, my lord, you shall not.
William departed Rosenleigh with no more than a knapsack of food, his horse, and the clothes on his back. Twice, he almost looked back.
If he had, he likely would have seen Miss Ettie at the nursery window. Or Mr. Nolan and his dog looking solemn in the stable doorway. Or the new gardener trimming bushes by the labyrinth, doing the work no one would ever do with such care as Shelton.
I am nothing.The words returned at breakneck speed and released poison into William’s body. All his life he had disliked his aunt. Perhaps he had hated her.
But now the hatred morphed into something more. This was too much. She had hurt him one too many times. He was glad she was dead. He wanted her dead. But even that was scant punishment for what she had done to him—
No.He tried to push back the thoughts.I cannot think this way.He rode faster down the rutted road, knowing Rosenleigh, even if he did glance back, was now long out of sight. His precious Rosenleigh. The only thing that had ever belonged to him, and now he was penniless. A pauper. Nothing.
He rode until he reached the village, then Greyfriar Street, then the enormous black gates of the workhouse. Why should he come here?
He had passed by it a hundred times. He had scarcely ever looked up.
But now he dismounted, looped Duke’s reins around the gate, and clenched two bars in his fists. His mother had lain here? Destitute at these gates?
William squinted up at the building. Grey, grimy, with twisting vines crawling up the sides of the walls. A hundred windows peered out of the stone like miserable eyes, all watching him, all haunting him.
An old woman hobbled around the side of the house. She was sallow, thin, and her linen dress was threadbare enough that her white skin was visible at every hole in the fabric. She glanced at William. With a deadened expression, she limped on to one of the entrance doors and disappeared inside.
Her misery stayed behind her and tainted the air.
William breathed it inside him. He tightened his fists on the bars.God, why?All these years, he had taken for granted the thought that his mother was the beautiful woman in the painting and his father was good and respected.
Now all he had was this.
A dark, destitute place, with some faint image in his mind of a woman curled at the gates in one desperate attempt to gain shelter for her child. Forhim.This was who he was. What he’d come from.
Nothing.
He climbed back atop Duke and rode away from the place, wishing he could rid the ill-smelling air from his lungs. No matter how far he rode, though, he did not imagine the place would ever get away from him.
They were a part of each other, he and this workhouse.
Part of nothing.
All day long it had bothered Isabella. She didn’t know why. Perhaps if it had not been for the look on Lord Livingstone’s face this morning, she would have assumed he had overheard her plan to visit the garden and reached it ahead of her, all for the purpose of a chance meeting.
But it was more than that. She was certain.
And her curiosity, at all costs, must be assuaged.
“Miss Gresham, pray, do you play?” With dinner finished and the gentlemen just rejoining the ladies in the drawing room, Lady Sarsfield raised her brows at Isabella in waiting.
Isabella cleared her throat. “I fear I am little more than learning, my lady.”
“Oh, how funny she is.” From beside her on the couch, Lilias fluttered her ivory fan and laughed. “Do not listen to a word of it, Lady Sarsfield. She plays wonderfully. Much better than me, I daresay. I could never play well with such tiny hands and fingers. It is an intolerable curse, you know. Having small hands, I mean.”
“Well, I should very much like to hear you play.” Lady Sarsfield motioned to the piano-forte, one whose glistening wood and bright keys rivaled any Isabella had seen.
At the moment, she would not have cared if the thing were made of gold. The last thing she wanted to do was make apparent all the days she’d failed to practice.
