“You should tell her you love her.”
Nick shook his head. “That is a terrible idea.”
“Afraid she will not return the emotion? ”
Nick met the duke’s serious gaze. “Terrified of it.”
“The bulan. Terrified. How interesting.” Nick resisted the impulse to put his fist through Leighton’s face.
Leighton removed a watch from his pocket, checking the time. “As much as I would enjoy the fight you are so clearly itching to have, the girl is in mourning. You shall need a special license.”
“Which means I shall have to go to York.”
“Aren’t you lucky that I happen to know the archbishop there?”
Nick scowled. “Oh, yes, Leighton. Your arrival has brought with it the very best of luck.”
Twenty
It had not been the kind of wedding one imagined.
Nick had returned sometime in the early morning after traveling through the night to York for a special license, then back via Dunscroft to wake the town vicar and drag him to Townsend Park to perform the ceremony. He’d barely had time to change his clothes. If Isabel was to judge from his harried appearance, the deep circles under his eyes indicated that he had not slept since they had last seen each other—the graveled voice with which he spoke his vows serving as further proof.
They had married in her father’s study, with Lara and Rock as witnesses. The ceremony had been quick and perfunctory, explained to the minister as a way they could marry without desecrating the memory of her father.
The minister had not protested, so impressed had he been at the special license inked by the hand of the Archbishop of York himself.
Isabel had not protested, either.
It was, after all, the only solution.
So they had sworn to love and honor; they had pledged their mutual troth. And when he had bent to kiss her, she had turned just enough for the caress to land slightly off-center, a blessed relief, for she did not think she could bear the feel of his lips on hers in that moment when they were marrying for all the wrong reasons.
She’d left the house as soon as the vicar had, sneaking out into the western fields of the Park. She had been walking for some time—hours, perhaps—thinking.
She had seen the many faces of marriage in her life: marriage for love that dissolved into desolate isolation; marriage for escape that had become a marriage of desperation; marriage of duty that never blossomed into anything more.
In those rare moments when Isabel had allowed herself to fantasize about marriage, however, she had dreamed of a marriage that was more than isolation and desperation and duty. It was ironic, she supposed, that hers was born of all three.
But if she was honest with herself, two days earlier she had believed her marriage to Lord Nicholas might blossom into love.
His name was Nicholas Raphael Dorian St. John.
It was the most she could claim to know with certainty about her new husband.
The wind had picked up on the heath, and the long grass lashed at Isabel’s legs as she walked in a long, straight line out to the edge of the Townsend land—land that had been in her family for generations.
Land that would be saved for future generations because of what she had done that morning.
Not so selfish now.
She closed her eyes against the thought. When she opened them, the broken rails of the fence that marked the western edge of the property were in her field of vision. Another thing that would now be fixed.
She hadn’t wanted to marry him for money. Or for protection. Or because the Duke of Leighton willed it.
But, of course, she had, in part.
Hadn’t she?
”No.” She whispered the word, and it was carried away on the wind, lost in the sway of the reeds.
She had wanted to marry him because she cared for him. And because he cared for her.
But it was too late for that.
A vision flashed from yesterday, long ago now—a distant past. She had refused his suit, and he had made it seem as though she desperately needed him. As though they would not survive if he had not come and saved them. As though their time was up.
And he had been right.
She brushed a tear from her cheek. She could no longer hold it all together.
And she was terrified of what that meant.
Who was she if she was not this? If she was not the mistress of Townsend Park, the keeper of Minerva House, the one with the answers, the one to whom everyone else turned?
Who would she become?
”Isabel!” The shout, punctuated by hoofbeats, pulled her from her thoughts, and she whirled to face Nick, high atop his gray, bearing down on her. She froze as he pulled up on the reins, leaping down before the horse came to a stop. He held her gaze as he advanced, his voice raised above the wind. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
She shrugged. “I took a walk.”
“Rather a long walk for a bride on her wedding day,” he pointed out. “Were you attempting an escape? ”
She did not smile at the jest. “No, my lord.”
There was silence as he searched her face. “You are unhappy.”
She shook her head, tears welling. “No, my lord.”
“I have heard tell of brides weeping on their wedding day, Isabel, but I had always considered them tears of joy.” He paused, watching her carefully before pulling her to him in a warm embrace. “Call me my lord one more time and I shall not fix your fence. Which has something of a hole in it, if you had not noticed.”
“I noticed,” she said, the words muffled against his chest.
“Isabel. I am sorry. For the things I said. For the way I said them.” He spoke the words against her hair, the warm breath of them a promise. “Forgive me.”