“As you always do.”
“Yes.”
“Then what is—”
“I do not wish to go. I do not wish to leave.”
He understood without explanation because his own heart sank. This was insanity. They had played and pretended and eased their shared loneliness, but acting upon such nonsense was impossible. She must go to London. He must stay here. Both of them must fulfill their roles—and even if there were emotions between them, ’twould be better they were doused now than to flame higher.
“You will go as your father asks.”
“William, I—”
“You will go.” He held her eyes, lifted his fingers to her chin, ignored the jolt of her skin against his. “Now hurry back inside before you are missed.”
Her features scrunched, throat bobbed, but she nodded and whisked away.
He clutched the book in a death grip and returned to the bench. Disquiet, perhaps even pain, rippled through him in waves. He had grown more attached than he realized.
Far more.
“This dress, Miss Gresham?” A long pause. “Or shall I bring this one?”
“I quite detest both of them.” Isabella curled her legs under her in the chair by her bedchamber window. Outside, grey clouds stirred and churned, as forlorn and disquieted as if they too were forced to do what they did not wish.
Bridget knelt beside the chair, silk and satin dresses hugged against her. “Miss Gresham, do you feel well?”
No, she did not feel well. She felt a thousand things, but not well.
“Are you so very devoted to him?”
Devoted?Isabella turned to her maid, the same thread tightening until it choked. “I am not devoted to him at all.” William Kensley was her friend. Her companion. In a world of so much artifice, he was genuine and real, but devoted? How could she be devoted to him?
“Forgive me.” Bridget stood, ruffling the dresses. “I suppose I only imagined you were in love with him.”
Isabella’s breath hitched. She pressed her teeth into her lip so hard she tasted blood and forced her eyes back to the window while Bridget went about packing.I am not in love.
Yes, she’d admitted to herself she hardly considered him a brother. He was nearer than that, though how she did not know.
But she did not love him. Not in that way. Not in the way Father should have loved Mother.
“Perhaps this one then, Miss Gresham?” Bridget presented her with another gown, one Isabella used to coo over and twirl in.
She nodded approval without interest. “I am going for a ride.” To prove to herself she was not devoted. To prove to herself the lifelong assumption that love did not exist.
To prove to herself that even if it did, she held none for William Kensley.
She simply couldn’t.
Seeing her again stirred mayhem in his stomach. She came with no cheerful laugh, and the curls usually so bouncy and tight were as limp as her smile.
In silence, he saddled both Duke and Camilla, but when he led the animals outside, he glanced upward. Heavy, earthy scents of rain hung in the air. “I fear the weather may turn before we are returned.”
“We shall not ride long.”
He could not gainsay her. Not today when she seemed so uncertain. Was she this grieved to depart Sharottewood? Yet if she loathed the thought of leaving on his account, why would she not look at him?
They rode with the wind in their faces, and she galloped ahead of him instead of matching his pace.
