“Why? So you can categorically turn me down, and avoid me all Season?” he chuckled wryly. “No, thank you. I’m sure you’ll forgive the informality to my speech, since you have already made such a display of yourself in the Park. A lesser man wouldnot forgive you for such a humiliation.”
“Lord Raisin, we are closer than before. I will get out and walk, if you make me.”
He snorted. Clearly, he was less afraid of it now than he was before. Perhaps he thought the shame of letting a lady walk home in the rain would be lessened according to the distance.
“You must think of your future, Lady Isolde.”
“Why do people keep telling me that?” she wondered aloud. At long last, they turned into her street.
Almost home.
“Perhaps if everybody is telling you something, you might give it some thought. Or do you believe that you are right, and the rest of the world is wrong?”
The curricle lurched to an ungraceful stop in front of the front steps. Isolde saw the curtain of the front window – the drawing room – twitch. Beatrice had been watching out for her.
Without bothering to give him an answer, Isolde began to climb down. Lord Raisin did not get out and offer to help her down, and she did not expect him too. With the wind and heavy rain, the footmen no doubt had not heard the carriage’s approach. Frankly, Isolde thought she did very well, climbing down from the high curricle without falling onto her face.
“Lady Isolde!”
She paused, hand clamped on her bonnet to stop it being wrenched away by the gale, and glanced back up into the curricle. Lord Raisin was not looking at her, instead concentrating entirely on the reins in his hand.
“I am sorry,” he said at last. “And I hope that soon, you’ll have cause to think better of me.”
“So do I,” Isolde responded. She turned on her heel and hurried up the steps. The curricle pulled away before she even reached the door.
Beatrice was waiting in the hallway. Her eyes nearly popped out of her head when she saw the state of Isolde.
“Good heavens, Izzy! What happened? You are soaked, and your hem… six inches deep in mud! Your boots may not be saved! And your bonnet… oh, good heavens.”
“It was a curricle in the rain,” Isolde snapped, yanking at the damp ribbons tying her bonnet under her chin and tossing the thing away. “Of course I’m soaked. He was shockingly rude to me, Mama. He called me the Ice Queen!”
Beatrice bit her lip. “Oh, that was bad of him. But it is commonly said about you, my dear. Awful though it is, we know he must have heard of it.”
“Just because he has heard of it, does not mean that he can say it,” she mumbled, dropping down onto a chair to pull off her boots. The stockings underneath were so wet she could likely wring them out.
Beatrice stood in front of her, arms folded, foot tap-tap-tapping on the floor.
“I told you, Isolde, you should do your best to encourage Lord Raisin’s attentions.”
“I seem to recall that you only said I should allow them. I do not want to marry Lord Raisin.”
“You may not have a choice!” Beatrice snapped. “Ladies marry, Isolde. I’m sorry you do not like that, but that is the way the world is. If you would take your nose out of a book and look at reality, you would understand.”
Isolde put her head down, concentrating on the soaked laces of her boots, which refused to untie. There was a taut silence, then Beatrice leaned down to whisper in her ear.
“You are so determined to avoid the mistakes of your mother, you are going to make entirely new ones, and just as irrevocable.”
She turned on her heel and stormed away, leaving Isoldesitting by herself in the hallway, shivering in her wet clothes.
Chapter Twelve
Clayton chose a red-and-yellow silk waistcoat, with a trimming of copper around the gilt buttons.
Thomas hesitated, just a fraction, as he took the requested garment out of the wardrobe.
“Something wrong, Thomas?”
“It’s not my place, my Lord.”
