Page 3 of The Notorious Dashing Viscount
Isolde didn’t answer. For a moment, she was no longer three and twenty years old, in the library with her older brother. She was eighteen, on the cusp of her first Season, frisking downstairs to the parlour with the intention of showing her parents just how well a particular dress looked on her.
*********
The mint-coloured silk had been the perfect choice, of course. Isolde hummed to herself, admiring the way her skirts swished around her legs. It was a grown-up dress for a proper adult. Perfect.
It was late, and the lights were mostly out downstairs, aside from a few strategically placed candles. The parlour door was cracked out, warm firelight streaming out into the hallway. She could hear her parents’ voices in there, talking to each other. They usually spent a few hours together each evening before retiring. Isolde was comfortably aware that her parents loved each other, which was rare enough in Society.
Pausing in front of a long mirror in the hall, Isolde inspected herself one last time. The shadows made her look older, her figure a little fuller than her spindly eighteen-year-old frame. She had no gloves on, but one could imagine. Isolde smiled coyly at her reflection.
“Hello, my Lord,” she whispered. “Why yes, I would love to dance.”
And then her father’s voice raised a little higher, making her jump.
“You must be mad, Beatrice. You cannot be suggesting what I think you are suggesting.”
Isolde crept closer to the door, holding her breath. She could hear the sound of pacing, and imagined it was her father, walking up and down, up and down in front of the dying fireplace.
“I’m not saying we tell him right away,” Beatrice’s voice replied. “But Isolde is a pretty girl, and I imagine she will want to marry for love. And why should she not? The gentleman of her choice, whoever he may be, has a right to know the truth.”
“And so we must risk everything? No man would take her once he knew the truth.”
Isolde clapped a hand over her mouth. What secret was this? What was happening?
“Don’t speak of Isolde that way, Richard. It’s unbecoming, and untrue.”
“I am not being cruel,” Richard said, voice lowered. “I care for Isolde, of course I do. But Society simply does not tolerate these things. Secrecy is her only chance at an ordinary life.”
“But a man who truly loves her…”
“That love will wither away as soon as he knows the truth. No gentleman would wed himself to a bastard, no matter how pretty she is, or how wealthy her uncle and aunt might be. Certainly not a bastard who’s spent her life living as the trueborn daughter of a Duke and Duchess.”
This time, Isolde exclaimed aloud, a strangled gasp that was loud in the following silence. There were hurried footsteps, and the door whisked open.
Lord Richard Belford and his wife, Beatrice, stood there. The Duke and Duchess of Belbrooke respectively. They looked guilty, horrified, and angry. For a few moments, nobody spoke.
Isolde felt sure it had to be a joke. At any point, they would break into smiles and laughter, shaking their heads at the look on her face.
They didn’t.
Beatrice spoke first, in the end.
“Oh, my darling girl,” she whispered. “You were never meant to know.”
*********
The secret which Isolde was never meant to know was nothing new. In fact, it had probably played out over the country countless times over the centuries.
Beatrice had married well, while her younger sister had eloped with some man or another. He had not married her. Only a year after Beatrice gave birth to their son, James, the disgraced Dorothy Fairwood had arrived on their doorway. Sick, thin, alone, unwed, and pregnant.
She hadn’t lived through the pregnancy. Isolde had wondered, more than once, whether her life would have been different if Dorothy had lived. But she hadn’t, and the duke and duchess had made the decision to take Isolde in as their own.
It was easily done – a few months away, a hint of a pregnancy, then a return with one’s new baby.
But the fact remained that Isolde was not a Belford, and she was not legitimate. No respectable gentleman would marry such a woman.
“I can’t get married, James,” she repeated quietly. “It would be wrong.”
The rumble of carriage wheels sounded outside. The Duke and Duchess must be back. James was glancing over his shoulder, already distracted.
