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He came closer and sat beside her; the little dog’slarge eyes and oversized paws reminded him of his old pet. “W—” he swallowed. “—Where did you get him?”
“The Winston Estate where a friend of mine, Amelia, works,” Louisa replied quietly. “Her Lord only wanted one of the pups and was giving the rest away. I remembered your story about an old pet of yours, and I was not sure what breed he was, but I figured it would not matter. You would have another friend round and about.”
Isaac reached out to pet the pup,andit moved from Louisa’s knees to his, its pink tongue lolling out, with his happiness. “How can I thank you?”
“You do not need to,” she said.
Isaac met her guarded look in her eye and said, “Louisa, about today I—”
“The days I got ill, Lucy asked me if there was something between you and me. I made sure to put her off, but Isaac, what are we?” Louisa asked.“What am I to you?”
Isaac made to talk, but his mouth closed. He tried again, but the right words would not come to him, and in his long, long-drawn-out silence, Louisa must have taken it as a rejection. She turned away and made to stand. “I assumed as much. Good night, I—”
“Stop,” Isaac called and darted a hand out to grip her arm. “Don’t go.”
Her back was turned to him, but she began to pivot,and Isaac rested a hand on her shoulder to turn her back to him. He hated seeing the withdrawn look in her as he knew that his reluctance was the cause of it.
“Sit for a while,” he said. “I have a long explanation, and I need to tell you all of it. Please, I have something to tell you that…I have not told anyone before. And it all pertains to this, to us.”
Her brows creased at the grave tone of his voice.“Start from the beginning and leave nothing out.”
Turning to the couch, Louisa sat away from him, and even the two feet apart hurt him. He took in a shuddery breath.“I met Helena at a symposium of brilliant minds that William, Lord Ashburn, brought me to. It was at her father’s house, and I met her in a garden. At the mere sight of her, I swore that I had met my match, that she was going to be the love of mylife.
His eyes dipped to the floor,while his mind began to churn. “She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. The very next day, I came back to her father’s house and asked him to let her marry me. Her father was—is—an ambitious man; he wanted a title for his daughter. I fell in love with her, or what I thought was love.”
She reached for the pet.“What happened next?”
“We came to an agreement. He wanted the most auspicious courtship and the best wedding, to rival every monarch in England and the continent. And I when I agreed to put it all in place, he would offer no objection to my wedding his daughter,” Isaac said.
“I showered her with money, that I realized her father had taken for himself, but she kept thejewels I gave her. One thing led to another, and I told her that I loved her.” He cleared his throat. “But she never once told me the same thing. I kept saying it, but I was so blind that I never realized her feelings for me were more of an amusement to her than anything.”
“But why?” Louisa asked. “Why would she not pay you the same attention you gave her?”
“Because back then, I was only Mister Montagu, not Marquess Montague. I pretended to be a businessman instead of a lord, and I was not the title peer she wanted. She only realized who I waswhen I left to bury my mother. When I wentto her home, I found her kissing the Frenchman. My heart was shatteredagain.I said all that to explain how I grew sour to love.”
Isaac reached out to hold her cold hand and felt relief when she did not pull away.“As for what I said in the drawing-room, I did not mean it. I said all those things to dissuade her from trying to push this madcap supposition of hers that we could be together. I fear that she will not stop, so I said those because I do not know who Helena is now. If you heard what she said in the room, you know that she is selfish—I do not know if she is vindictive,and I do notwant her to hurt you. More than I have.”
“Do you still love her?” Louisa asked.
“No,” his words were said quietly but had weight. “No, I do not. Louisa, I feel horrible that you heard that; I never want you to believe that my feelings for you are not what they are.They do not rest on Helena, no matter how many times shetried to get me to come around.”
Louisa’s head snapped to him, and her eyes were wide.“Pardon me—times?”
Isaac grimaced. “Yes, times. That night when you first came to my room, the night of the ball I went to? We had danced that night. It was a colossal mistake that I regret to this day, and the ton now has enough material on us for them to be chatting for months on end.”
“What were the others?”
The pup's head was on his knee, and Isaac rubbed its ears.“We met in town one day, in the lobby of Almacks, and she sent a gift to my room at the hotel I had been staying in the past days. It was the same box she left with.”
When he looked at Louisa, her face was pallid, and her mouth was set tight as she hunched over. Her fingers clenched on the edgeof the bench hard enough that her knuckles went white. The tiny shivers of her shoulders did not seem like much—until tears began trickling down her face.
Alarmed, he reached out to touch her, but she jerked away, a movement that cut him more profoundly than she would ever imagine. “Louisa—”
“I tried, Isaac,” she said more calmly than he expected, “I did not think anything good wouldcome from our relationship. We were too different in so many ways, you are a Duke, and I am a maid. Countless nights, I worried that our differences would break something between us, and now, I am proven right. I hate to say it, but I think you were only using me as a passing interest. Possibly to get over Miss Follet, I do not know, but it's— if that was it, you could have told me that from the beginning so I would not have gotten my hopes up, even when I knew that nothing would come from it.”
“Louisa, no,” Isaac began flailing. “That is not it all. I had not intended for you to see it that way.”
“Then what was it?” she asked pointedly.
