He held out a hand. “No, no, it’s not that. I am a man of mature years, and I am quite capable of accepting a simple refusal.”
“So, the invitation did come from you, then?”
He had to bite back a smile. “I thought that was quite clear.”
“Yes, it was, which was probably why Lord Raisin was so quick to refuse.”
There was a brief silence after that. Isolde’s eyes glittered in the gloom, and Clayton found a lump rising to his throat.
“And that was the issue I took with your refusal. It wasn’t yours. You’re the sort of lady who has no trouble at all speaking up for herself, and so it’s a little galling to see a man speaking up for you.”
She gave an unladylike snort. “If it vexes you, consider of how I might be affected.”
“He seemed to have upset you when you were dancing. Are… are you quite well?”
She glanced sharply up at him, and he just knew she was dying to ask how long he had been looking at her. Nothing escaped Isolde’s notice.
Well, almost nothing.
“I told him, continuing on a prior conversation, that I would never allow the man I married to dictate what company I kept or how I spent my time. He took exception to that, as you canimagine. I knew this before, naturally, but Lord Raisin has… has a rather antiquated view of what a wife’s duties ought to be. I suggested we agree to differ, but he spent the entirety of the dance trying to convince me that women are only truly happy when they submit to their husbands. Perhaps I am a bluestocking and a shrew, but I must respectfully disagree with that notion.”
She tilted up her chin, looking him dead in the eyes, daring him to argue.
“You are right,” he heard himself say. “In my experience, men who call women shrews are generally just annoyed at being contradicted, or made to look silly. And I’m not sure why bluestocking is considered an insult, or something that makes a woman unsuitable for marriage. What fool would not want an intelligent wife?”
“Ah, but there is the crux of the matter. Men do want intelligent wives, only not more intelligent than themselves.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “As I said. Fools.”
“Am I to take this as something of a compliment?”
“You can, if you like,” he said, shrugging. “I consider it a compliment, but I don’t believe my compliments are important enough to give a woman pause for thought. My telling you that you are intelligent and fascinating does not make you intelligent and fascinating, any more than remarking on the sunrise’s beauty gives it the beauty itself. A compliment is a remark on a fact. The fact existed before the remark upon it.”
There was a brief silence after that. At some point, the five feet of distance between them had narrowed to four, then three, then two, then less than an arm’s reach. Clayton was not such which one of them had closed the gap, only that he wanted so badly to reach out and graze his fingertips along the line of Isolde’s jaw. Her face was pale in the moonlight and he felt as though he hadn’t breathed for minutes. His chest hurt, his heartpounded, and the lump in his throat had lodged itself there with a painful sharpness.
“Do not wed him, Isolde,” he implored, his voice quivering with earnestness. “He is… he is unworthy of you. He lacks the regard you deserve. He does not comprehend the depths of your being.”
“And who should I marry, then? My family are at pains to make me understand that marriage is my only choice at an ordinary life.” She shot back, and her voice was bitter. “I am tired, so very tired, of being pushed this way and that and told what sort of life I ought to be leading.
Can you fathom the weight of such an experience? Nay, I daresay you cannot, for you are a gentleman.”
“True, but I wasn’t always a man of means and independence,” he replied.
It would have been easy, so easy, to leave the conversation there, and just blurt out the truth, leaving before she had time to process what he had said.
Instead, Clayton drew in a deep breath, closed his eyes, and began to speak.
“You saw the bruise on my stepmother’s face today. My father is known to be a harsh man, cruel, a bad father and worse husband. For years, it was just me and my mother. She endured the kind of cruelty Eliza endures, but my mother… she did not have the intellect of Eliza, or the fortitude. She was a kind, sweet woman, who ought to have been treated kindly and with love. Instead, she got my father. I won’t burden you with tales of what she suffered, or what I did. My father enjoyed exercising control over us, and until I inherited my own fortune and title, I was a slave to him in all but name. And now I am free, and I enjoy my freedom. But please, know what I mean when I say I can understand what it’s like to be trapped.”
She bit her lip. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed. I…”
“Please, don’t apologise. You don’t owe me an apology. I just… I can’t bear to see that man pursuing you, wearing down your resolve day by day. It’s not fair. Pray, for your own well-being, do not accept his hand in matrimony.”
“That brings us back to our earlier query,” Isolde remarked, and her voice quavered slightly. “Whom ought I to consider for matrimony?”
No, screamed a voice in Clayton’s head. Not yet!
But he couldn’t help himself. He closed the distance between them and found Isolde’s hands in his. Had she given him her hands, or had he taken them? Either way, her fingers were cool and soft against his skin, and he could feel her heartbeat pulsing through her wrists.
