“This is where I live.”
“In hiding?” he asked.
“In peace.”
He studied her. “What happened to you, Isobel?”
She shook her head. “I’m no longer the woman you remember.”
“Yes, you are. I see it in your eyes.”
A flicker of something crossed her face. Pain? Regret?
She turned away, beginning to walk back toward the cottage. “If you want answers, come inside. But you may not like what you hear.”
*
The cottage wasdim and close, its low ceilings and crooked beams pressing in with familiar weight. The scent of dried lavender, rosemary, and earth clung to the air, comforting to her, though Elias’s presence disrupted the peace like a stone cast into still water.
The oil lamp on the side table sputtered slightly, casting golden light across the worn spines of her books. She avoided looking at him as she unfastened her rain-damp cloak and hung it by the hearth, her fingers slower than usual, as if buying time. Time to gather her thoughts. To steady the frantic rhythm of her heart.
She heard his footsteps behind her, quiet and measured. He was taking it all in, she was certain. The cramped space. The odd books. The coffin-shaped planter near the hearth, where she grew night-blooming flowers to place on graves no one else visited.
“I faked nothing.” Her voice broke the silence. Low, steady, but far more fragile than she intended. She didn’t turn to look at him. Couldn’t. Not yet. “The fire was real. But it wasn’t an accident.”
After a few moments passed without him speaking, she glanced over her shoulder. His jaw was clenched, his eyes sharp with comprehension.
“Was someone trying to kill you?” he asked.
Isobel gave a small nod. Her throat felt tight, like it had been wrapped in gauze. “It was my guardian. After my parents died, Lord Norton took control of everything. The estate. The finances. My future. I was a legal burden and a political pawn, nothing more.”
She turned toward him now, slowly. “When I refused the marriage contract he arranged, he threatened me. Told me that defiance would not be tolerated in his household. I made plans to run that night. I had a bag hidden, and I had arranged a coach for my maid and I. But then…”
She swallowed hard. “The fire started before I left. I don’t know if it was Norton himself or one of his men, but it gave me my chance. Sadly, my maid wasn’t as fortunate. But I escaped through the servants’ passage and fled into the woods. I wasbarefoot. Half blind with smoke.” Her voice caught. “They found my maid’s body. They assumed it was mine. No one questioned it.”
Silence swelled in the space between them, broken only by the soft crackle of the lamp flame.
“Why not go to the authorities?” Elias’s voice was quieter now, less certain.
Isobel gave a bitter laugh, short and joyless. “Because Nortonwasthe authorities. He held favors from half the magistrates and paid the rest. If I’d gone to them, I would’ve ended up locked away… or worse.”
She touched the bookshelf, running her fingers across the cracked leather cover of her funeral customs book. “So, I vanished. I let the world bury me.” She paused long enough to watch him absorb her words, his expression unreadable. “And I stayed buried. For my own safety.”
He looked at her then, not with pity, but something else. Something she didn’t want to name.
“All this time,” he said, “you’ve been… here?”
She nodded. “Among the dead. The ones no one claims. I help where I can. I grow flowers for forgotten graves. I write obituaries for those without family. I’ve become part of the cemetery.”
She glanced at the planter beside the hearth and ran her palm across its wooden edge, the shape unmistakably that of a small coffin. Her voice was calm, but her eyes betrayed the weariness she’d lived with for years. “It’s a quiet life. A safe one.”
“But not a full one.”
The words struck like a blow. She met his gaze again, and for a heartbeat, the world stilled. His eyes hadn’t changed, still that same solemn blue that had lingered in her thoughts far too long. A hundred memories pressed in at once. A stolen dance. Thebrush of gloved hands. A conversation on the terrace where he’d almost kissed her and then hadn’t.
She turned away first, retreating behind the veil of distance she’d worn for five long years. “You should go, Captain Blackwood. You’ve done your duty.”
His boots echoed on the hardwood floor, but they weren’t moving toward the door. Instead, they came toward her.
