Page 96 of Her Beast of a Duke
“Do you enjoy being back in your townhouse, sister?” Sibyl asked several days later.
“I do, but I always miss the countryside,” Hermia told her, glancing around at where the four sisters had gathered, along with Mary. Isabella knew it was all for her, but she had been silent during their dinner so far. The effort touched her, for Hermia had relocated her family to the townhouse for her convenience for this gathering, but Isabella had been falling into that hollowness.
She hated the distance between herself and Oscar. It made everything that had happened much worse. Yet, the proximity within Rochdale Castle had almost brought her to her knees, but somehow this felt even worse. She had thought distance would help, but she was so, so wrong.
It was terribly empty, but sometimes it was better than the pain.
“You should return,” Isabella found herself saying, her voice as hollow as her insides. “You should not have come back to London just for me.”
“Oh, Isabella,” Mary said, reaching out to take her hand from the seat beside her at the dinner table. “When Hermia wrote to me with the invitation, I jumped at the chance. You are surrounded here by people who would do a great deal to support you.”
“Indeed,” Sibyl chipped in. “We love you, Isabella, and doing my part in being here for you pleases me greatly, so just let us do that. Let us be here for you.”
Across the table, Alicia nodded, agreeing. She sighed heavily and shook her head a little. “I do not like that a man has caused you so much pain, and this is why I am dreading my debut more than ever, but I am also here for you. If anything, let me remind you that you are most powerful. A woman can stand strongly alone without a man at her side.”
“Alicia,” Sibyl laughed. “The sentiment is lovely, but life can be so beautiful when filled with love. Isabella, that is not something you lack.”
“I agree,” Mary said.
“Yes, but what if the person I want to love me does not?” Isabella asked miserably. In her mind’s eye, she saw the sparkling green of her husband’s gaze. As empty as it had been the last time he looked at her, she still recalled how startled she had been the first time she saw them in the full light of Edmund’s ballroom.
They were beautiful.Hewas beautiful, and she missed him so terribly.
“I think he does,” Sibyl told her. “I am sorry if that sounds a little cruel to say in such circumstances, but I saw how he looked at you at the ball last week. That is not a man who wants his life devoid of you, sister.”
“Sibyl,” Hermia said gently, shaking her head slightly. But Isabella both wanted and did not want to hear her romantic sister’s words.
“Please,” Isabella managed to get out, “please tell me.”
“Well, when you told our mother that you are not in a loveless marriage…” Sibyl sighed, her mouth twitching as if she fought a smile. “His face changed. It was as though the sun had come out, and he looked at you so intensely that it was almost unbearable to see. I just… I have looked at enough romantic paintings and read enough books to know that a look like that is not nothing.”
“And yet he let me leave.” Isabella frowned. She stabbed her fork into a potato and peered at it when she raised it to her eye level. “So where is the love? Where is the realization in those moments?”
“Buried in fear?” Mary suggested. “What happened at the ball was terrible, and I imagine he is not happy with himself for his behavior.”
“Men always drive themselves into a hardened position of protection,” Hermia sighed. “His judgment is clouded, but it is not a reflection on you.”
Isabella suddenly felt too exposed, and she fought not to shrink into herself. Her eyes stung with tears, and she forced herself to eat a bit of the food on her fork if only to do something other than think and feel things she could not untangle.
“Our mother forced me to speak and dance with an endless stream of suitors,” she whispered, “and yet I somehow found the one man who saw beneath my diamond façade. He saw through that, and he opened me up, let me into his own past, and yet he has now torn that away. I cannot stand it.”
She shook her head vigorously, shaking off the tears, falling back into that hollow ache. She wanted to rise above it all, for the four sisters had not gathered together in so long. She wanted to savor this, as well as her friend’s presence, but shecould not.She was a prisoner of too much pain, and she couldn’t break free. Was that how Oscar was when his anger consumed him?
“Then, in that case,” Alicia spoke up, sighing, “we shall storm his townhouse and destroy it. We could buy something sticky—like honey! We can take honey and throw it at the house.”
Isabella wanted to laugh, for the concept was humorous, but she could only muster a weak smile. “Thank you, Alicia.”
“I think it is a marvelous idea,” Mary chimed in. “We shall consider it, should you want it, Isabella.”
Again, she gave a weak smile, nodding. “We will not destroy the townhouse. Somebody else ought to speak about something else. Sibyl, what are you reading?”
“Oh, do not use me for a distraction!” Sibyl laughed. “Butif you are asking, then I am reading a beautiful tale…”
And as she launched into her recount of her book, Isabella forced herself to listen intently, desperate to distract her vacant heart and ruminating thoughts.
The following day, Isabella braved London’s center only because Hermia needed to go to the modiste, and Phoebe was enticed on the trip with the promise of going to one of the sweet shops.
However, when the carriage pulled up outside the townhouse, it was not one of Hermia’s own, but Mary’s, grinning brightly.
