Chapter 18

“You seem happier lately,” Caroline commented as she helped Isabella dress the next day. “You seem as if you’re getting used to things here—really starting to settle in. Is it true?”

“Perhaps I am,” Isabella agreed. “I know that seeing my sister helped me. It’s good to know that she’s doing well and that she’s moving forward in her life. I hope she marries soon! When she’s out of my father’s house, I’ll be able to close that chapter for good.”

“And it seems as if you and His Grace are getting along better than you were,” Caroline continued. “You seemed very unhappy for a while, but now, it seems to me as if you’ve established a routine, and you’re beginning to like it here.”

“Things are getting easier,” Isabella said. “I’m beginning to understand what it means to live with Arthur. What he expects of a wife. Understanding that makes it easier for me to be the person he wants me to be, and I think that while he’s happy with me, he and I are both going to be happier in general.”

“That makes sense to me,” Caroline agreed. “Then there isn’t anything you would change about your circumstances? There’s nothing you would alter, if you could, to make your life here more enjoyable?”

“Well, no, I didn’t say that,” Isabella said. “I can think of changes I would make. I wish I knew more about him. Even though he’s responded well to my requests for more interaction between the two of us, I’ve never felt as if I have enough access to his life or enough information about him. I’ve never felt as if I understand him as well as I would like to. I don’t think he gets angry when I ask him questions—not anymore. He understands why I’m asking. But even so, he doesn’t give me much to go on, and sometimes I feel as if the two of us are strangers.”

“You know that I haven’t been here any longer than you yourself have,” Caroline said. “But the impression I get from the other maids, when we talk, is that he has been that way for years. He doesn’t want anyone to know very much about him. He’s very secretive, and no one is permitted to ask questions. They say that even his personal valet hardly knows him.”

“It sounds like such a lonely way to live,” Isabella murmured. “Never allowing anyone to get close to you—I don’t know how he can stand it.”

“Well, all I know is that it’s the way he is with everyone,” Caroline said, “so you mustn’t think that it’s because of you, Your Grace. The Duke just prefers to keep a distance from everybody.”

“Not everybody,” Isabella countered. “Not his aunt. He allows her to get at least somewhat close to him. From the moment she arrived at Windhill, he softened. And not only toward her. He’s been acting differently toward me as well. Warmer, somehow, as if he’s recognized that there’s a place for me in his life. As if he actually wants me here, rather than simply tolerating me so that he can tell the rest of society that he has a wife.”

“I agree,” Caroline said. “His aunt does seem to have brought out a different side of him. But I couldn’t say how or what that might mean. Only that I think you’re correct to have noticed it.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what I think it means.” Caroline had finished lacing Isabella into her gown, so Isabella turned to face her. “I think it means that if I’m to have any hope of speaking frankly to my husband and actually discovering any answers about him and his life, I’m going to have to do it while she’s here. I think that’s the only way I can hope to get him to speak with any candor about the things I’ve been wondering about. I have to get to him before she leaves and his walls go back up.”

“What do you mean to do?” Caroline asked in a hushed tone.

“I don’t know yet,” Isabella admitted, “but maybe I’ll be able to persuade him to tell me something about where he goes all the time. Have you noticed that he’s been out of the house even more than usual lately? I would have expected that he would be sticking closer to home because of his aunt’s presence here, but it’s the opposite. It’s as if he’s leaving the house because she’s here—but I know that can’t be it because he loves her deeply and wants to spend time in her presence. I can’t understand it.”

“Whatever’s drawing him out of the house must be very important,” Caroline suggested. “It must be the kind of thing that he simply can’t ignore, even when he would like to.”

“Yes, it must,” Isabella agreed. “I wish I knew what it was! Maybe now is the time to try to ask. If he’s feeling frustrated by the fact that he has to go out of the house even when he doesn’t want to, maybe he’ll be pleased that he has someone he can confide in.”

“Well, I suppose that’s possible,” Caroline said dubiously. “It doesn’t sound like what I know of him, but I admit I haven’t known him all that long. I would like to be wrong about this, I’ll say that. I would like it if you were right, and you could get the answers you want. I know how much it means to you.”

“It means a great deal to me to know that I have you on my side as well, Caroline,” Isabella said earnestly. “This would all be much more difficult than it is if I had to worry that you might report our conversations back to him.”

“I would never do that,” Caroline assured her. “In fact, His Grace told me I wasn’t to do that.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I was hired, he made it clear to me that you were to be my top priority,” Caroline explained. “He told me that, no matter what, I wasn’t to come to him with any of your secrets. He wanted you to feel as if you had someone you could speak to in strict confidence about anything you wanted to talk about.”

“Did he?” Isabella was impressed. Of course, that was the way a lady’s maid ought to behave, but at the same time, she hadn’t felt confident of it. It went without saying that her father—had he bothered to secure a lady’s maid for her—would never have allowed that sort of confidence. His stance would have been that because he paid the girl’s wages, she ought to tell him everything he wanted to know. There would have been no secrets.

She could believe this, though. Whatever else Arthur was, he had shown himself to be a good and honorable man. She believed what Caroline was telling her about his willingness to let her have her secrets.

“I’m glad to hear it,” she said. “It means a great deal to me to know that there is someone I can rely on. I feel less alone thanks to the fact that I have you here, Caroline.”

Caroline beamed. “I’m so glad, Your Grace,” she said. “But you had better hurry down to breakfast! I know the Duke has agreed to take his morning meal with you, but you’re running late today, and you wouldn’t want to miss him.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” Isabella agreed. Especially not because I’m considering asking him more questions about where it is he goes every day.

She hurried down to the dining room. Arthur and Aunt Olivia were already there, and they looked up as she arrived. “Here you are,” Aunt Olivia said warmly. “We were beginning to wonder whether or not you would be joining us today.”

“I wouldn’t have wanted to miss it,” Isabella assured her. “I overslept a bit, that’s all.”

“Up late reading that book?” Arthur asked her.

“Oh—yes,” Isabella said and reached for a roll. In truth, she hadn’t even looked at the book. She wasn’t even sure which one she had taken. She had been up later than usual, but it had been because she was daydreaming about the way she had felt when his fingertips had brushed against her cheek. There was nothing like that feeling. Even now, a day later, just remembering it was enough to set her hands trembling. If she could have arranged for the same thing to happen again, she knew she would have—and that was very dangerous. She couldn’t afford to waste time and energy; she couldn’t afford to put her heart on the line, desiring something that she knew perfectly well could never be true. Whatever his motives in getting close to her like that, she knew what he didn’t want. What he didn’t feel. He didn’t love her, and he never would, so how could she allow herself to fall in love with him.

“Well, you should confine your reading to the hours when the sun is up!” Aunt Olivia declared. She clearly had no idea that Isabella’s thoughts were elsewhere. “You’ll have plenty of time for it today, since Arthur will be away in his meetings all day.”

Ah. Here it was.Isabella looked across the table and made eye contact with Arthur. “You’ll be gone all day?” she asked.

“I’m afraid so,” he agreed. “I have quite a lot to do today. Very important meetings.”

“I’m sure Aunt Olivia would like it if you were at home,” Isabella said. She didn’t add and so would I—she was too afraid to name the thing she herself wanted most. But she wondered whether he understood that that was what she was really saying—that what she really wanted was for him to stay so that the two of them could spend time together for once.

If he understood it, he didn’t say anything. But he did look at her for several long moments as though he was trying to figure something out.

And Isabella knew, as their eyes locked on one another’s, that she couldn’t do the thing she had resolved to do. She couldn’t ask him where he was going. Not when he had been so clear with her about the fact that he didn’t want her to do that. Really, at the end of the day, even though the rules had changed a little bit from one day to the next, she knew that he had been kind to her. He had gone out of his way to try to make her comfortable. He had done almost everything she had asked of him since she had arrived here.

She wouldn’t ask this. Not now. She wouldn’t put him in a position of having to give her something he didn’t want to give or else having to tell her no.

Because the truth was, maybe she had been right in what she had said to Caroline. Maybe she would be able to get Arthur to open up to her today.

But he didn’t want to. He had told her again and again that he didn’t want to.

If he ever decided that it would suit him to let her know where he went every day, she would love to hear it. But she couldn’t try to manipulate an answer out of him. She simply didn’t want to know that way.

Arthur frowned. Maybe he had expected a question. Maybe he had thought she would ask again where he was going all day since she’d been willing to ask him not to go. But if that was what he expected, she would show him he was wrong.

She returned her attention to her bread, and for the time being, the family ate their breakfast in silence.