Chapter 4

I sabel found it intoxicating to be liked. Only a few hours in this gentleman’s company and he appeared to like her far better than Mr. Ball or Mr. Wheelock ever had.

And the things she was saying. They were only true; but truth had never served her in the past. She couldn’t believe how well it was going now.

The gentleman beside her greeted this news as he did everything, with serious concentration. Isabel wondered what it would be like to have that concentration centered upon her for even longer.

My.

He noticed her shiver.

“The hour is late and the shop grows chilled,” he said in that way that she liked, simple, direct. “Don’t let me disrupt your plans.”

Disrupt her plans? He’d disrupted her dreams. She had always thought of Mr. Ball and Mr. Wheelock as charges of a sort. Imagined herself watching over their houses and their meals, and if she were lucky, their children. The details of that were murky, but she knew it involved getting close. That part she had tried not to imagine.

Now she could imagine nothing else.

She knew nothing of his house or meals, or how to keep them. Nor did she wish to learn.

She wanted to know what the skin of his throat was like there where it disappeared under his neckcloth. Wanted to tuck a scarf around his neck when he went out into the chill.

Wanted him to stay in with her, and keep her warm.

Wanted him to explain the law, or walks in Wales, anything, absolutely anything he wished to say to her.

He looked sad as his blunt gloved fingers settled upon the little stack of novels. “Do as you intended, and so shall I.”

“What do you intend?” The question slipped out before she could hold it back.

“To return to the Continent.”

“Oh.” The disappointment was physical. Cold and sickening in her stomach. “To live?”

“One kind of life.” There flashed some of the irritation, the bitterness, he’d worn when he’d walked in the door. Only hours ago, but it felt like a distant memory returned.

This Isabel couldn’t contradict, only gently question. “But if you don’t enjoy it?”

“The solitude of being an unwelcome foreigner is preferable to the solitude of being unwelcome at home.”

His honesty called for her to give the same. “I think so too.”

His eyes flashed as they met hers, then dropped.

She hoped she hadn’t offended. He’d put words to something she’d felt, that was all. London was very different from anything she’d known, but she preferred her lonely room here to a place among disappointed family.

His restless bitterness should have driven her away. She did not really know him. Perhaps this was his true self. Angry, hard.

But she didn’t think so.

She felt balanced on a string over a deep, deep chasm. She had tried so hard to please her former suitors, and they had chosen elsewhere. Now this gentleman seemed well-disposed toward her for doing nothing. Isabel could not imagine why she interested him. She could not imagine it would persist.

She was trying hard to think of something clever that would amuse him, soften him, let her find out why he was so troubled today, let her plumb more of his history.

But before she could think what to say, the bookseller returned.

And her erstwhile rescuer made another decision for her. “The lady will have these,” he spread his hand over the little group of novels, “and anything else she likes.” He looked around as if just realizing where he was. “I believe you have an account for my family. Lord Hartwick.”

A lord!

Isabel swallowed. Here she was, spinning fantasies of little cottages in Wales, and he was a lord. Not only had she never met anyone titled, her family had never met anyone titled. Her father’s earnings had a sheen of gentility as long as they stayed in the country. In the city, his name was connected only to the scent of beer. He owned pubs and breweries and his descendants would not inherit a title. Ever.

No wonder the gentleman thought her common. Compared to him, she was.

A worse thought struck her. He spoke of his family. There must already be a Lady Hartwick. No wonder he kept her at arm’s length. His comfort in conversing with her came from experience because he was married.

Here she had interpreted his attention as—well, as flirtation. She was the most appalling fool. This was the most appalling afternoon.

The most pleasant one of her life, yet she must hurry home to die of embarrassment in private.

Whatever had moved him, now he moved quickly. The swing of his greatcoat followed him through the little room. He seemed to survey it all from a height, and find none of it particularly pleasing. “Whatever the lady wants. She will give you the direction. Good afternoon.”

Then with the most haunting look, he turned to her. “Good afternoon, madame.”

Isabel could not imagine a man giving such a good-bye to his wife.

Such a longing look. So sad.

If he was married, something was terribly wrong.

Abruptly he’d gone, yet their words felt so unfinished that Isabel was compelled to follow him into the street. Still open-mouthed with surprise as he waved to a hackney carriage.

Immediately it made straight toward them.

Apparently the gentleman regretted giving his name. No doubt he feared blackmail. He worked for the law; importuning young women in bookstores could not be attached to his reputation. Isabel had a faint idea it was illegal as well as immoral.

“Whoa there.” The carriage’s fat, red-faced driver snapped his reins; its horse danced to a stop, making its wheels rock. It seemed too small for the man beside her.

His greatcoat flapped as he swept up to it, a black eagle in rain-spattered wool.

She had to say something before he disappeared. She would never see him again. “I apologize for my silly game.” It was all she could say without blurting out too much truth in the street. A plain, plumpish country girl could not have hurt such a man; yet he looked hurt, and she wanted to reassure him without saying aloud I would never cause you pain.

He looked down at her from the little carriage’s window. Unreadable. Stiff. Nothing like the last few hours. “Games, madame, have winners and losers. Has either of us won?”

Frozen in place by the chill of his words, she watched the driver lift his reins. She was confused, spinning, convinced she would never see him again, that she would forever regret this moment.

She rushed forward. “I don’t?—”

“Madame!” He was so fast. He’d opened the door and shouted in the instant she stepped towards him; she let her impulse carry her forward, into the waiting door. She didn’t remember the rest of what she was going to say.

He touched her again, this time his wide hands under both her arms. He hauled her closer, her knees steadying on the floor of the carriage. His deep-set eyes were wide with something like fright. “The wheels could crush you.”

She knelt, uncaring of her clothes, one thin wool mitten balanced on the seat beside him. “Everything will be fine once we’ve parted,” she gasped, hardly knowing what she meant.

“Of course.” Still simple, decisive. “Yet the parting is agony.”

Before she could decipher his words, his hands, still around her, grasping her, pulled her towards him, as if she weighed nothing.

His stony face crumbled into a mix of despair, hunger, longing, an agony she’d never seen before and hoped never to see again.

And he kissed her.

It was so quick, and yet time slowed and Isabel registered each impression like a separate bolt of lightning to her core. The length of his eyelashes against his cheek as his eyes closed. The shocking softness of his lips. His skin against hers, his face aligned to hers, sliding close, sliding away.

It was over far too quickly, the most incredible flood of sensations barely touching her then gone, leaving her with the taste of him as he set her—impossibly strong—back on her knees. For a fleeting instant she hoped he would drive away.

Instead his hands waved her backwards and he barked sharply at the driver to keep the horses still.

She found herself on her feet again, cold hard paving stones underneath.

“Now be careful,” he said solemnly before he closed the door again, and Isabel just glimpsed the hackney driver above looking down with a red-cheeked wink.

Then the carriage rolled into the street, soon hidden by wagons and horses and other people walking. In moments it was soon gone.

Isabel drifted back into the store. She felt like she was already waiting for him to return.

He couldn’t simply be gone. Not so quickly. Not finally. Surely.

She imagined herself climbing up to sit beside him on his carriage seat. Or staying at his feet. Why had she let him go? He was the only thing that had ever happened to her.

The only thing that had not hurt , she corrected herself.

She drifted among the bookshop’s tables. The books, so absorbing an hour before, now seemed pointless.

Why had she not asked his direction?

Why had she not given him her name?

“Ah, Lady Hartwick.” The always-inconvenient bookseller bustled after her, his coat bristling with pleasure at the impending sale. “Your husband mentioned these three novels, and... were there other items you wished to purchase?”

“I’d like to sit.” Her legs weren’t working.

Had she just knelt between his knees? Had that been real?

Most solicitously, the bookseller, less sweaty now that night had fallen, escorted her back to the table in the corner, dashed away and in seconds returned with a stool. He bowed and offered it, his wool coat creaking.

Isabel just numbly sat.

What had just happened to her? Hours of living in a dream. One where she belonged to someone. One with possibilities.

She would never visit Cairo or even Wales; it had been pleasant to imagine such things with someone else. Someone who wasn’t constantly correcting her speech, her looks, or both.

Then the horrifying revelation of the gulf between them, and that she had been spinning pleasant fantasies about someone else’s husband.

All capped with the chill of his departure, which had been shattered by the heat of his hands, his pull, his sudden kiss.

She had no idea what had happened. She certainly had no idea what she should do next.

It was impossible to take the books he had offered her.

She had failed him somehow. She had so enjoyed the last few hours, then in an instant he was gone, in more distress than he’d arrived. Somehow she had failed to make their game as much fun for him as it had been for her.

Then a temper she didn’t know she had reared its head. He’d enjoyed their time together, and should not have. No wonder he said not to trust him. If he were married...

Rather, he was married, and ought not to have let another woman pretend to be his wife.

Not even for shopping.

Certainly not for that kiss.

Isabel was a staid, quiet person. It was not her nature to have all these whirling impulses fighting inside her, all these impulses to soothe him, berate him, and kiss him all at once.

And feed him. She definitely wanted to feed him. He was far too thin.

His wife could not be taking proper care of him. Perhaps she did not love him. Perhaps she hated him. Perhaps that was why he intended to live on the Continent.

Perhaps he was ill.

Spreading a hand on the table’s top, Isabel used it to steady herself. She was too sturdy to faint. Her mother had often said so. Now she felt the danger of it looming, something else she’d never imagined that today had threatened her twice.

Was he ill? Was that why he had looked so sad, so hopeless? Was he seriously ill? His wife might be taking the best care of him she could.

Or perhaps she wasn’t, and that was even worse.

Night had fallen. It was Christmas Eve. Shouts and cries of laughter sounded faintly outside the gray paned windows. Isabel was alone.

And the gentleman had left her with nothing but the power to purchase books.

She had to think. There must be something she could do. Unless she intended to spend the rest of her life on this stool, she must decide something , and she could not think what that should be with her mind was spinning like this.

She picked up another volume and stared at it without seeing, willing her mind to settle and to think.

The bookseller, increasingly desperate for his sale after all these hours, brought her volume after volume.

Slowly her thoughts settled. Outside, merchants lit oil lamps along the street, and in their dancing orange light her thoughts settled into forms she could comprehend.

Of course her first thought was what she had done wrong. That was always how her mother had started every conversation. What she had said, eaten, stitched, or worn incorrectly.

Today those were mere distractions.

Outside the cross-paned windows she saw women walking by, woolen shawls pulled over their heads against the cold. There were many of them walking alone. London was full of women who were not fine ladies.

Nor was Isabel a fine lady.

In this evening’s orange light she could see that she had some trappings of a lady but none of the substance. She could read, do sums, draw ivy vines. She could pluck out some tunes on the harpsichord. But she had no real skills, no tutors. The nurse she’d shared with her sister had instructed her a little, then Isabel had done her best.

Which was never very good, according to her mother.

What must his Lady Hartwick be like? Gowned in silk, no doubt, with hair dressed in the most fashionable Grecian curls. She must speak French and Italian, draw the most elegant flowers. Perhaps ones she had seen upon walks in Wales. Or even abroad.

Surely such an accomplished woman must know many ways to please him. The him that loomed large now in her mind.

He had come to this shop with no intention of making her acquaintance; he had left it with no hint that their acquaintance would continue.

He’d done nothing more improper than speak to her in a familiar way.

But that kiss.

He had not looked like a happy man because he was not a happy man. The possibility was in him. Isabel knew that, as surely as she knew her father was happy everywhere but at home. She saw it in him when he returned, smelling of beer and friendly fireplaces. She saw it fall away when he crossed their threshold.

She knew this Lord Hartwick was not always taciturn, the same way she knew that he ought not to be so thin, that he had a fine mind, that he was generous and kind. Their time together had been brief, but she had learned so much.

Especially about herself.

She had left Leicester Square with every intention of purchasing a book and returning home to live out her Christmas, her year, her life in those same four walls.

One conversation with a stranger—no, two, she reminded herself of her first accoster with a wince of shame—and Isabel had learned she was too curious for that.

She wanted things not found within those walls. She wanted company. She wanted conversation. She wanted to learn more things, and she wanted to do more with her time than wait to die.

She wanted more kisses.

Pressing a hand to her cheek so its warmth wouldn’t show, she turned a page of the book in front of her without knowing what it was.

An idea bloomed in her that had never crossed her mind before in any way.

A shocking, terrible, fantastic, horrible idea.

She might never be a wife. She certainly would not be a lady. Nor did she wish to be a prostitute, not for books or any other purchasable pleasures.

But what if she were a mistress?

The belonging, the tie to a man like that was out of her reach. But what if the man was not?

She could imagine him coming to her little room, where she might boil him fresh eggs. There was an excellent bakery nearby where she could buy him the freshest bread. She could butter it for him. They even sold cake.

The idea of serving his lordship a piece of cake gave her shivers that started in her knees and went up her spine to burst like bubbles somewhere in the region of her heart.

She could serve him cake, and read him The Wanderer, and ask what he thought about it and listen. She had the feeling—no, she knew— that he’d ask what she thought of the story as well.

She’d have more of his kisses. And anything else he wanted. As close as she had come to two proposals, her mother had warned her that men wanted their wives to submit to their baser urges like animals in the barn, and nothing had ever sounded less appealing to Isabel; but if the urges were Lord Hartwick’s...

They might even go on walks in Wales someday. Mistresses did that, didn’t they?

It was all a great deal to contemplate and Isabel felt like she could easily spend another ten years of her life teasing out all the possible details. She could spend another ten years simply sitting at this table in this book shop.

But it was growing late, the shop would soon close, and she must make some decisions. Life would not wait forever for her to become whoever she was meant to be. She would have to take action.

“Sir,” and with the merest lift of her hand, the shopkeeper was there. He looked desperate for the conclusion of their mutual day. She took pity on him. “My decision. I will have Mrs. Burney’s novel, Lady Craven’s travel book too, please, and Waverly. You said it has been warmly received.”

“Indeed, madame.” He looked so desperately relieved to finally have her selections. Few customers remained, and likely he had been waiting for her order, hoping that his lordship would have expensive enough taste to make it worthwhile to host this woman in her dull gray coat all this time.

Or perhaps he was just eager to go home for his Christmas Eve.

She had made other decisions too. “I want that book on walks in Wales now.”

He tensed. “I have no bound copies at present, madame.”

“I’ll take the pages.”

He stammered that it was irregular even as he led the way back to his small desk. He had already written Lord Hartwick’s name on a slip of paper cut there.

And his direction.

All she need do was take the paper. She could read it for herself. Find out his direction.

Her resolve cracked.

What would she do, present herself on his doorstep? At the house of his wife? And say what?

She swallowed. “The direction?—”

“We will deliver the books next week,” the bookseller said with determination, wiping a fingertip over one lens of his spectacles. He would not let this sale get away.

“No need,” she said quietly. “I shall return for them.”

She didn’t want to relinquish those books to oblivion.

She must know for certain that he had them. They were for him. For them . She would find a way to find him. No one had ever needed her before; but he did. Her instinct said so.

Four books was extravagant, but if Isabel shied away from spending others’ money, her plan would never bear fruit.

She had no idea what mistresses did, but hazily she perceived that they were supported by their lovers. Her family would certainly cut ties with her if they heard anything about Isabel receiving a man’s visits.

If she threw herself on Lord Hartwick’s mercy, if he took advantage of her and then dropped her, she would be in much more dire straits. Without her father’s money she would have to learn a trade. The prospect was terrifying.

But not as terrifying as the prospect of counting down all her days living a safe life in her safe room all alone.

“As you wish.” He didn’t argue. “If you bring back the unbound pages we will bind them for you then.”

“As long as you don’t charge for the binding till it is at hand.” She would have to be a responsible mistress, responsible with his money, with all of him. If she amused him, perhaps she wouldn’t have to learn to curb her urge to correct people. Perhaps mistresses were allowed to say what they thought.

“As you say,” and he didn’t look as happy with his sale now.

But he finished writing the slip, and Isabel found herself out of the shop clutching the unbound sheets of Walks in Wales to her chest. They came in bunches, folded and tied with string, and the bunches slid as she walked.

Already she had regrets. She should simply have given him her direction. He would have delivered the books to her, all paid for by Lord Hartwick, and the whole affair would be concluded. She was no mistress. She could never.

Yet she also had regrets the other way. Why hadn’t she simply picked up the paper and read the direction? He had taken a hackney, so his house was not near. But she could have walked. Somehow. Someday. She could have saved another month’s pin money and engaged a hackney as well.

This was an agony of freedom.

Torn by competing impulses, Isabel stood by the shop, half desperate to run back inside and simply wrest the direction from the hapless shopkeeper.

It seemed as final as running off a cliff.

While she stared into what might have been, a carriage rolled to a stop by the pavement at her feet.

“Bless me, if it isn’t the missus!”

“What?” Isabel was startled from her spinning thoughts. If there was one thing she wasn’t and would never be, it was a missus.

Above her she saw the same red-faced, round-cheeked driver that had taken Lord Hartwick away.

“‘E shouldn’a let you shop alone,” said the man with a disapproving wag of his chin. “‘Tain’t right. These young men. Climb in, missus, I’ll have you home in a minute.”

The possible futures spun faster. “I haven’t any coin,” she managed to get out, hearing herself sound half-strangled.

“No fear, missus, ‘e’ll put it right. Climb on in.” He lifted his reins as he had done before Lord Hartwick rolled away.

She remembered the kiss, but also his fear for her safety.

All other possible futures collapsed. Was she really so frightened that it would better to spend her life alone in those rooms? Forty, sixty more years?

She wasn’t afraid of snakes, and she wouldn’t be afraid of this.

“Hold fast,” she told him. “I will.”

A little boy, some street urchin, darted forward between the dangerous wheels to pull down the step before the driver could dismount.

She climbed in and tossed the boy a penny.

“Thank you!” she called back as the cab rolled away, wondering if this adventure would end with her clutching rags around herself, darting between wheels to earn a penny.

She would just have to find out.