“The carriage overturned around a corner against someone who had come speeding their way.” He spoke dispassionately, but his fingers were clenched into a fist. She took his hand, clasping it in both of hers.
If it pained him to tell this story, then she would do everything she could to ease that passage. This pain weighing him down would not simply disappear; for the wound to heal, the infection must be cut away.
“She was thrown, and she broke her neck. The physician says it would have happened instantly.”
“At least she didn’t suffer,” Isadora murmured.
His eyes found hers, blue and bleak. “The reason she was in that carriage, Isadora, is because we argued. Oh, we argued a great deal back then. She wanted a different life—more social from the one we lived, and I wanted a wife content with my home as I made it for her. We bickered constantly. In retrospect, I can accept that it was not a good marriage. I think we both entered it because it was what our families expected from us, and not because it was what we truly wanted.”
“But you loved her,” Isadora said, trying to understand, conflicting emotions clashing in her chest. Selfish relief that Grace was not a paragon of virtue, that he admitted that they should not have been married; sincere grief that he felt that way about the mother of his child. His tone spoke of disillusion.
Nicholas brought his other hand to rest over Isadora’s. “I did. But I think part of that love came because she was the mother of my daughter, and because I always expected it of myself, that I would love my wife.”
So why don’t you love me?Isadora clamped her mouth shut before she could say the damaging words.
“I pushed her too hard. In some ways, I think I loved her too much, and wanted too much from her. And in the end, I let my temper get the better of me. The way we argued—it was terrible. Dreadful. I shouted in a way I have never shouted before, and she screamed back. The… the fight was the reason she took the carriage out alone. There was nowhere for her to be, and we had no engagements. I pushed her into running away from me, and because of that, she died.”
“It was anaccident, Nicholas.” Isadora hung on tighter. Finally, some pieces of his character started making sense. Of course he would not allow himself to love her, to feel things for her, if he blamed himself for Grace’s death. If he believed that his emotional investment—in wanting things from her she could never give—was the reason she fell from her carriage, then why would he ever let himself give in to those feelings again?
“An accident that took place because of me,” Nicholas muttered. “Sophia is without a mother because of me.”
Isadora searched for the right words. “Anyone can get into an accident at any time. Perhaps you should not have argued, but she argued with you in return. You say you loved her too much and wanted too much from her—but what of her? What of the things she wanted, that she pushed you to provide? You said she wasn’t happy with the life you provided. Is that also your fault? Is it hers? In blaming yourself, you rid her of her own agency. She was a woman, fully grown, with a child, and she was capable of making her own decisions. Did you demand that she leave?”
The frown on his brows didn’t ease, but his eyes searched hers. “No, of course not.”
“Then shechoseto. You said she had no engagements and that she left so she could get away, but you have been avoiding me in this very house for days on end, and there was very little I could do about it. If she had wanted space, all she needed to do was be in a room you were not in, and there are plenty.
“No. Shechoseto leave, and what followed was tragic—and I am not saying you shouldn’t grieve her, Nicholas. Of course you should. She was your wife, the mother of Sophia, and you loved her. But you cannot let yourself carry the entire weight of the blame, when at most it ought to be equally shared. You were both part of the marriage, and you were both dissatisfied with how it was progressing.”
He scoffed lightly. “And I am the only one alive to tell the tale.”
“My parents are both dead.”
This was the first time Isadora had ever spoken about her parents’ deaths, and she felt the soft weight of grief pressing down her shoulders. Her throat tightened.
“They did not die together, but they are still dead, and sometimes, on my darker days, I would blame myself. What if I cried less as a child, was less of a burden? Would they have been happier? Would they have lived longer from that happiness?
“But in truth, I had nothing to do with their deaths. I think, sometimes, it’s more comforting to find faults, so we have something orsomeoneto blame. It is terrifying when a loved one dies if there is no one and nothing at fault, isn’t it? That we could lose someone we love on a whim… isfrightening. And so, when they die, there is so much pain, so much resentment.” She touched a hand against her chest, where her heart still ached. “And where can it go if there’s nowhere to send it?
“But your grief, it… it’s poisoning you, Nicholas. Think of Sophia. She needs a father who knows how to love himself.”And others, she wished she could say.
In this moment, she didn’t think she cared if thatotherwas her or not. To see him happy for himself, for his eight-year-old daughter, might have satiated her foolish heart for the rest of her life.
Nicholas’s hand moved in hers, turning so his palm pressed against hers and his fingers entwined with hers. “For Sophia’s sake?” he asked quietly. “What about you?”
There was much she wished to answer that with.
She only sighed instead. “I think I would be happy with a husband who merely sees me.”
He swallowed, the motion so great she found her attention drawn to it. “I see you, Isadora. The trouble is… The trouble is I keep seeing you, even when I think it would be best for us both if we lived our separate lives.”
“I don’t want to live separate lives,” she whispered. “I want to see the man who rescued me from humiliation and neglect. I want the man who looks at Sophia as though she holds the sun in her hands. Is that so wrong?”
He groaned, then took her face in his hands and kissed her.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The kiss was incandescent. With that single, devastating touch, Nicholas seemed to loosen every thread by which Isadora had bound her composure. Restraint fell away. Reason dimmed. She was reduced to sensation and longing, to the primitive certainty of her body answering his.
