Isadora winced and padded along the damp grass alongside, not daring to make a sound as she trailed behind the bobbing light. Not the stables, certainly. But where could he be going? After he’d reassured her he had no romantic trysts, she believed him, but she couldn’t determine where this path led. The church?
The spire blocked out the sky, and she felt another burst of curiosity. Why was Nicholas going to the church? To pray?
Not by the looks of it. Instead of walking up to the front doors, he went around the side into the small graveyard. Without missing a beat, he approached a large marble tombstone and kneeled before it.
Isadora hovered behind a bush, staring. She couldn’t make out the words, but she knew with a sickening rush whose grave that was.
Grace’s.
She would have no issues with him visiting his former wife’s grave during the day if he had chosen to do so—but to the best of her knowledge, he had not. No, instead, he came in the middle of the night for a clandestine visit.
The night air bit at her thin robe, and she shivered. Nicholas didn’t move, cast in shadow, kneeling before the grave of his former wife—the woman he had loved so fiercely, she saw the remnants in his life even now.
A stone sank deep in her stomach.
It was one thing to compete with another woman who lived and breathed. There, she might have a chance. But how could she vie for the affection of a man who had given it all to someone who had passed beyond this world? There, Grace could not misstep or reveal fatal flaws. In death, she had been rendered in perfection, and Isadora knew she would never be perfect.
She turned to leave, the stone in her stomach rising to her throat and stinging her eyes with tears.
“I know you’re there,” Nicholas called out, his voice almost too calm for the darkness. Isadora jumped. “You may as well come into the light.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Nicholas had felt the pressure of Isadora’s gaze long before he left the house. His first impulse had been irritation, but fairness soon overcame it. There was no malice in her curiosity. She watched him because she hoped that, someday, he might trust her with the things he kept locked inside himself.
Grace was not a secret, however.
She was a shame.
And that was infinitely worse.
Isadora stepped into the spill of lamplight, hair tumbling loose and a simple robe drawn over her nightdress. He fixed his attention on her face. Anywhere but the lush contours beneath the thin fabric.
The sash cinched around her waist made a mockery of modesty. It flaunted the opulent sweep of her hips, the heavy softness of her breasts. Hunger struck him low and hard. He wanted his mouth buried there, both hands grasping her splendid bottom, spreading her thighs and driving into her until neither of them remembered how to speak.
She would welcome him, he was sure.
What a terrible thing to be thinking of in front of his wife.
“Why did you come at night?” Isadora asked, coming to stand beside him. Her feet were bare.
“Because I couldn’t sleep,” he said honestly. “And because today made me think of her.”
“Do you miss her?” she asked.
How did he answer a question like that? She was the mother of his child—hischild—and therefore of course he ought to miss her. He had loved her, despite her faults and their incompatibility, and he ought to miss her for that reason, too.
But the words wouldn’t come. Because despite his shame, despite all the reasons he knew he ought to love her, there was blessed peace in his life where once there had been anger and frustration and hurt. They had fought like wildcats, and all the love in the world could not make up for the tension that had lingered between them.
“For Sophia’s sake, I used to,” he murmured. “We shared a portion of our lives together, and for that, I will always remember.”
“At her graveside at night?”
He chuckled, the sound devoid of humor. “I suppose I had hoped to find answers here.”
She quirked a thin brow. “To which questions?”
He couldn’t tell her the truth—or at least, not all of it. “I… wonder what she would want for Sophia.”
