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He slid his arms around her waist, loving how perfectly her slender petite body fit into his embrace. “Why were you on the road today?”
“I went to visit Amelia Johnson,” Louisa said. “We grewup together at the orphanage and she is a maid at the Winston Estate. She is my dearest friend.”
“Ah,” Isaac said. “William Langley, Lord Ashford is mine, but heaggravates me at times. Do not misunderstand me, I do appreciate him in my life and hisjoie de vivreis a welcomed foil to my reserve, but his devil-may-care attitude to some aspects of life rubs me the wrong way.”
He lethis lids drop lowas he realized his next words would counteract his decision to not bring Helena into the conversation. “He was the one who allowed me to meet Miss Follet too.”
Twisting on his lap, Louisa asked, “How?”
The memory of that day, that felt so long ago, surged back into his mind and Isaac told her how William had urged him to go to attend a gathering of academic figureheads and to meet other Lordsand gain more connections with other lands. And it so happened to be at the Follet country homes.
“I had been utterly bored with their drawling tone and avoided a pretentious group of men who held their conversation in Latin while sipping sherry and madeira wine,” Isaac said. “I escaped to the garden and I found her there, sitting under an elm tree and reading a book.”
The memory of Helena, in her soft blue morning dress, her hair down to her waist and fluttering with the breeze cut though Isaac’s heart like a heated knife. Back then, on the spot of land he had stood, Isaac had sworn that Cupid had woken from his long slumber and jammed his heart with a flaming arrow.
“I swore that I had fallen in love with her at first sight,” Isaac admitted.“I drifted to her like a leaf on the wind and she asked me to sit with her. She had been reading Metamorphoses by Ovid and asked me to examine a few passages with her.”
His heart clenched tight at the memory of her fluent reading, her glimmering eyes and her intuitive insights she brought out when they had picked the section of the poem apart.
“I left her soon because it would have been highly improper for me to have stayed with her,” Isaac replied. “But I went back the next day with flowers and an urgent plea to her father to allow me to court her.”
He had not planned it, nor did he wantit, but Isaac felt himself sinking intohis memories. “Her father is an academic, Louisa, but he is an ambitious man; he wanted a title for his daughter and had groomed her to expect one. She is beautifuland used her beauty as a bargaining chip with men. Unfortunately, it meant that she grew up vain and entitled to expect men to bow to her every whim.”
Louisa’s voice was thin.“Did you take her to bed?”
Isaac snorted.“No, I could never have gotten that far. In a year of courting, she had allowed me three kisses, but back then I had been so blinded by her beauty and the image of us having a lovely family that I ignored the puppetry strings her father used on me.”
“He forced you to do…unsavory things?” Louisa asked, alarmed.
“No, not directly, but I gave him money,” Isaac said. “Large sums of it. He told me that Helena was accustomed to a certain lavish style of living and that I had I had to proveto himby showing that I couldsustain her. He nor she knew that I was the heir to a dukedom, Louisa.
“They only knew me as a Lord of the Realm. At that time, my mother had father’s old steward to take on the Dukedom mantle. I had just finished Cambridge and was completinga small private tutelage in law from a professor to prepare for me taking over,” Isaac finished.
“Why hadn’t you told her?” Louisa asked.
Isaac shrugged.“For the same reason a king would disguise himself as a pauper. It was for me to not be judged by my wealth, and only on my personal merit.”
“Did they ask you where you were getting the money from?” Louisa asked incredulously. “Surely that would have come along sometime or the other?”
“Surprisingly, no,” Isaac said. “They asked me nothing,which now that I look at it, should have warned me to look at what I was doing instead of acting on pure infatuation.”
She twisted to sit sideways on his lap. “Infatuation? Were you not in love with her?”
“That was in the earlier days, Louisa, before I fell in love,” Isaac gently corrected her. “It’s a fixation, Louisa. I had thought that she was like I was, that she only had eyes for me, as I had for her. Sadly, that was not the case.”
Louisa drew a section of her bottom lip into her mouth. She knew what had happened with the Frenchman, but she wanted to hear it from him. “If you do not wish to tell me, then don’t. But what happened? Why did you break the courtship?”
Isaac titled his head and a lock of his hair fell over his eyes. “Why do I think you already have some idea about what happened?”
Blushing, she replied,“I may have heard a thing or two.”
Laughing softly, Isaac cupped her cheek. “You are so sweet, you know? I walked in on her and found her in the arms of a Frenchman artist her father was hosting at his home. She denied it, but from the doorway, I saw with my own eyesthem kissing. It was only when I stepped in and they broke apart that she noticed I had come.”
“And what did you do?”
“I left to my apartment and drank halfabottle of wine in utter shock. I managed to go back the next day and tell her father that the engagement was off. He tried to persuademe to stay, saying that it was all a misunderstanding, but I knew what I had seen. Helena had joined the puppetry show with her father.”
Louisa rested her head on his chestand placed her hand beside it. “I am so sorry, Isaac. No one deserved to have suffered that.”
He stroked her head and kissed her hair. “And you know that rest; how I grewdisillusioned and depressed, barely getting out of bed atthe best of times, and wishing the world would crumble around me, at the worst. But now, I have more reasons to try and see the light life is trying to give me.”
She peered up at him, and Isaac notchedhis knuckles under chin.“And yes, you are the light.” Before she would reply, he kissed her. “Please, stay that way.”
