“Whatever you would like,” Isadora said. “My sisters would call me Izzie when I was growing up, but ever since we’ve been separated, everyone has called me by my full name.”
Sophia tilted her head as she considered. “Then I shall call you Isadora to begin with, too,” she decided. “Come, meet my aunts. I think you will like them.”
Isadora spared a quick smile at the duke, whose expression briefly showed something that appeared like longing before all feeling was wiped from his eyes, and he retreated back behind his metaphorical mask.
While he began greeting the arriving guests, Sophia introduced her to her aunts, holding court by the long windows. Both of whom were, of course, just as charming as Sophia had promised. Marie Skeffington, twenty and fizzing like something uncorked, kissed her cheek before Isadora finished her curtsy while Elizabeth Hortington watched her sister do it with the weary calm of a woman resigned to a lifetime of apologizing for her.
At twenty and unmarried, Marie was quite clearly the baby of the family, and rebellious for it too.
“Soyou’rethe one who’s pulled off the miracle,” she said by way of greeting. “We’d nearly given him up. Another year and we meant to start leaving eligible ladies on his doorstep—”
“Marie,” her sister scolded.
“—in baskets,” Marie finished, unrepentant, and stole a lily to tuck behind her sister’s ear.
So this was what an affectionate family looked like from the inside. It almost reminded Isadora of her own old relationship with her younger sister, Unity.
Elizabeth, at twenty-seven and comfortably married, was a steady, dark-haired lady with a pretty face and serene eyes. Marie apparently lived with her, down in Leicestershire; they had traveled up for the wedding.
“Yes, yes,” Marie said hurriedly. “But, we are delighted. And you do so lookdivine.”
“We are,” Elizabeth agreed. “Don’t let him trick you otherwise; we are very fond of him, though from how seldom he invites us, one would think we’d cast him out of Eden.”
“Seldom is putting it tragically,” Marie groaned as she lowered to Sophia’s height. “You know it has been an age since he last visited. And kept our darling Sophia from us, too, the wretch.” She tweaked her niece’s cheek and was rewarded with giggles all around, before taking her hand and dragging her off to the refreshments table.
Oddly enough, they seemed an open and endearing family—aside from Nicholas, who always seemed to stand so aloof. Even when he eventually greeted his sisters, he merely nodded at them from a measured distance and asked if they were well before taking his leave.
Isadora found him again without meaning to look. The man of the hour stood at the window, apart from his own wedding breakfast, the afternoon sun gilding one side of his elbow and abandoning the rest of him to shadow. A hundred guests drank his champagne, and the empty carpet around him might as well have been a moat.
“You’ve noticed then, too,” Elizabeth said quietly, following her gaze.
“Noticed what?”
“That he’s the loneliest man in any room he owns.” She chuckled half-heartedly. “He wasn’t always like that, you know. I was a girl when he first married, but I had a brother once who laughed until he wheezed, and climbed the orchard wall in his dinner clothes over a sixpence bet. Ask him about it sometime. Watch him pretend not to remember.”
Isadora tried to hang that picture on the still figure by the window. It would not fit. “More like Marie, you mean?”
“No one is quite like our Marie,” Elizabeth murmured, a fond, exasperated smile touching her lips. “But a little more like her, certainly. He could be the life of the party. Things changed when our father passed.”
“So it was the dukedom?”
“The dukedom, first. Then—” Elizabeth trailed off. Turned her glass by the stem.
Isadora itched to ask about his late wife. She had died, but Isadora did not know how nor why. She knew nothing, but there was an air around as though everyone else did, and there was a certain amount of pity directed at both Nicholas and her.
She was the duke’s new wife, and her fate was in his hands.
Not that she imagined he was capable of anything nefarious. But she could feel people’s gazes burning her neck sometimes. The murmurs that quietened when she got too close. Nicholas hadpicked her out of an unfavorable situation and given her the title of his wife—ofduchess—and everyone speculated as to why.
“Be patient with him,” Elizabeth said after a long moment. “He is not always perfect, but he will try, and whatever he may think, he needs someone to help guide him and Sophia through whatever demons he’s facing. Marie and I have long given up believing it could be us.”
Isadora frowned, nipping her lower lip. “Yet you are confident I am the right person for that?”
The raven-haired lady patted her hand reassuringly. “Well, he chose you, didn’t he? Have a little faith in yourself.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Nicholas kept the polite mask nailed in place until the last carriage rolled down the drive. He could have allowed Isadora’s aunt and uncle to host the wedding breakfast—tradition gave them the right—but tradition also would have given them the satisfaction, and he’d wager the whole affair would have run on watered wine and grudges. From the very little he’d had to do with them the last week, they appeared to begrudge every shilling they spent on their niece.
