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“Isolde.” Jacob said her name quietly, gravely. Warily. The way one might address someone who had just revealed symptoms of madness. As if he was going to give her one last chance to be honest. “No, you don’t. Not like that, you don’t. Not with just anyone. Please don’t try to tell me that.”

He was suffering, and she had done this to him.

Hot shame scorched her cheeks.

But as she finally found her footing in this exchange, her temper began to simmer.

“How long were you standing here without saying a word, Jacob? How long were you spying on me?”

His head went back a little, as if she’d confirmed something.

Determinedly, visibly, he gathered his composure with a shift of his shoulders, a long pull of air.

Both his pain and his dignity horrified her. It called to mind a judge who already tried and sentenced her. He was the very last person in the world she would ever want to hurt and she could not bear it.

“I heard you before I saw you…and I was so bloody grateful to hear your voice, I stood and listened. I couldn’t quite make out all the words.

I considered calling out to you. But when I saw with whom you were speaking…

I suppose I couldn’t believe my eyes. I could not decide whether I ought to just leave.

Because I began to feel as though I was.

..” His pause felt elegiac. Then resignedly, hoarsely, he said, “…intruding upon something very intimate.”

Her stomach roiled.

“But how did you…” her voice had gone arid.

“My impression, Isolde, is that anyone in town could have told me where you were.” The bitter irony in his voice flayed her.

And with that, brutal clarity descended. If even one person in the town knew she’d been in the churchyard or strolling with Isaiah, it was entirely possible everyone in the town knew. Such was the gossip stream in Pennyroyal Green.

She recalled the vicar popping out his head from the church when they were laughing, Mrs. Sneath’s bulging eyes, the clatter of cart wheels on the road.

God only knew how many villagers had passed the churchyard and seen them.

It might have been a servant in a kitchen garden or looking out a window, who told another servant…

Isaiah and Isolde had been so wholly absorbed in each other that none of the possible ramifications of this had even penetrated.

She was as aghast as if she was realizing all of this about a stranger, not herself: How could this person be so shockingly careless? With her reputation.

With Jacob’s pride.

With Jacob’s heart.

She knew her stunned silence incriminated her.

“Is this…is this thing with Redmond my punishment for leaving?” Jacob sounded bewildered. “Do you hate me so much?”

She reared back, astounded. “What on earth ? How can you think that of me?”

“If I hadn't said anything about it now, if you hadn’t seen me, would you even have told me about this later, when I saw you?” he pressed, relentlessly.

“I wouldn’t bother to tell you because I wouldn’t want to hurt you or upset you over nothing .”And yet her too-strident defense might as well have been a confession.

Not only that, she’d just betrayed both men with this lie.

She grew more appalling in her own eyes by the second. And likely in Jacob’s, too.

But Jacob’s injured self-righteousness had momentum. “If, as you say, you wouldn’t want to upset me, it implies you know full well how I feel about him. And yet here you are. Here you’ve been . With him. Isn’t that true?”

With that, her simmering temper combusted.

“I do not recall you ever specifically requesting that I never speak to Isaiah Redmond. If you had, I might have done it anyway. Because you aren't my lord and master, Jacob Eversea, are you? You’re not my husband. We’re not engaged. You've no rights over me at all.”

He flinched. God help her, she savored the landed blow.

Another ghastly silence ensued. Behind them, Jacob’s mare whickered softly. Her reins were looped about the tree branch.

She took a breath. “Jacob.” She turned his name into a soft plea. Her voice was shaking. “Please. Please . Let’s just walk together. You must be exhausted. You must know how I’ve missed you. Every moment of every day.”

“Yes,” he said bitterly. “Clearly you've been profoundly grieving my absence.”

She jerked as though he’d slapped her. “ I'm not the one who left!”

Her anguish echoed in the churchyard.

Too late she fully realized how much his absence had truly cost her.

His breath left him in an audible rush and he staggered back a step.

She'd just thrown into his face something she'd sworn to herself she’d never do.

She felt gutted with remorse and…

… free .

She’d needed to say it aloud. He’d needed to hear it.

Spiky misery circulated in her gut. Terror parched her mouth. They were careening toward something terrible and momentous, and she could not seem to stop it.

Jacob was white with fury. His eyes were like bruises.

“Jacob…” her voice was parched with fear. “Why were you gone so?—”

“Because I almost died,” he said flatly.

She froze in horror.

And in that moment shocking epiphany set in: He had just delivered that hideous news as remorselessly as any fencer landing a death blow, even though he surely knew how it would devastate her.

He’d wanted that badly to hurt her.

Or to win.

He did love to win.

Just like Isaiah Redmond.

She had never fully realized how dangerous this quality could be in another person.

All of these realizations were both disorienting and stark.

There were a lot of things she might have said then, tender things, beseeching things, and all would have been true: I love you so, Jacob . You were my last thought at night, every night, the first in the morning, and most of the thoughts in between.

And there were the things she didn’t dare ask now: Did you think of me at all while you were gone? Would my name have been your very last word? My face the last image you saw before you drew your last breath? Do you love me, or is your pride merely wounded?

Instead, she straightened to her full height, and said slowly and clearly, “Well. I hope your journey was worth it.”

His eyes flared in shock.

For a long moment they stood locked in silent, seething enmity.

At last, he gave a short, bitter laugh. “If Redmond is what you want, I won't stand in your way, Isolde.”

He spun on his heel, stalked over to his horse, and threw himself up into the saddle.

In an eye-blink, nothing remained of his presence but the echo of hoofbeats.