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Chapter Eleven

“ T he Everseas are animals.” Isaiah's father sounded bored as he clipped his cheroot. “Everyone knows this.”

But his father's hand was trembling.

His father was, in truth, seething.

The Redmonds and their guests had departed the Pennyroyal Green assembly immediately after Isaiah was picked up off the floor.

Fanchette had been whisked away by her parents and Isaiah’s mother and sister to one of their sitting rooms, where she was soothed and plied with tea, while Isaiah and his father repaired to his father’s office at the top of Redmond house.

Presumably, the Everseas and Sylvaines had left the assembly, too.

One never knew with Everseas.

The whole shameful episode was over in seconds, really.

Isaiah seemed unable to speak. He could still only vaguely feel the outlines of his body, as though shock had scorched him into a rattling husk.

He’d had one cup of ratafia, which was not, unfortunately, enough to blunt the pain.

The place Jacob Eversea's fist had connected with his jaw burned like a brand.

Tomorrow his whole body would feel worse, of a certainty. The bruise would be difficult to disguise.

You will never have her never have her never have her. Eversea’s words echoed in his head.

Isaiah's fingers spasmed into a fist and he fought to flatten his hand again against his thigh.

“I think I'll have a little talk with Eversea about his son,” his father mused darkly.

“No.”

Only when his father's head jerked toward him did Isaiah realize he'd issued the word like a command.

He'd never spoken to his father that way before.

“That is, the matter isn't worth your time or mine.” Isaiah took pains to match his father’s bored delivery.

“I considered calling him out for his insolence, but decided doing so would impart a sort of gentlemanly sheen to mere...” Isaiah drew in a breath and delivered the last word on a sigh. “...thuggishness.”

It was theater.

But it was masterful.

His father stared at him for a good long while.

Then gave a short nod, acquiescing.

His eyebrows dipped as he tucked the cheroot into his mouth again.

Someone had neglected to draw the curtains and he could see his own face reflected, distorted and dark, in the window glass.

Eversea's eyes hadn't been blank and mindless with rage. They'd blazed with a very fixed and personal antipathy. Eversea hadn't attacked him because he'd lost control. He'd been entirely in control of himself.

It was Isaiah who had lost control.

The Everseas and Redmonds might be instinctive enemies.

But what now lay between Jacob and Isiah—and Isolde—was no byproduct of myth.

It was personal.

And it was dangerous.

“Why did he do it? Was it about a girl?”

Isaiah hadn't noticed his father watching him.

Isaiah returned his gaze to him.

So funny to think that his father's eyes were so very like his own. So very like twin hot pokers when the force of his displeasure shone through them.

For the first time, his father’s displeasure didn’t affect him at all. He was grateful for the numbness, because he could simply observe.

“You needn't concern yourself, father. The matter is between myself and Eversea. And the matter is done.”

And thusly Isaiah retrieved his power from his father.

He knew then that he was never going to cede it again. He decided he would, in fact, increase it a thousandfold when he had his own family.

He knew precisely his position and his worth. He understood the cards he held. He would soon be officially engaged to a beautiful, coveted, wealthy woman and the attachment could not be sundered without the sort of grave scandal his father wouldn't now risk.

Furthermore, he had money of his own. Nothing yet like the fortune that would be his when his father cocked up his toes. Oh, but it would be.

Currently, his father needed him more than he needed his father.

And after a fraught moment or two, during which his father's stare cooled not one whit, and during which Isaiah refused to blink or utter another word, his father shrugged.

“As you wish. In the context of the rest of your life, tonight's little altercation with Eversea will be meaningless. A mere...” he inhaled, then leisurely exhaled, a great stream of cheroot smoke. “...flyspeck.”

Of course, neither of them would ever forget it.

It would go on the ancient Redmond and Eversea score sheet.

It would join all the old resentments that ceaselessly, invisibly heaved beneath their careful civility like lava beneath the earth's crust. The anecdote of how Jacob Eversea attacked Isaiah Redmond (like a slavering beast!”) allegedly unprovoked would be told and re-told between Redmonds—and Everseas (“His smug face needed hitting”)— for centuries.

But only ever in private. Only ever in hushed rooms, and in tones of bored contempt.

And they would only ever have part of the truth.

Because Isaiah would never tell the truth to another soul.

He didn't need to. It didn't need to be spoken aloud. Three people already knew it without it being articulated. And it would remain between him, and Jacob Eversea, and Isolde.

“No one died,” George reported, poking his head into Isolde’s Room. “Believe it or not, everyone was dancing when I left. Jacob and the Redmonds went home. Separately. But that goes without saying.”

Isolde had revived from her faint on the assembly hall floor, ringed by concerned ladies.

While the rest of the Pennyroyal Green citizenry milled about like ants from a kicked anthill, she was smuggled out of the hall and installed in Lady Fennimore’s carriage (she’d volunteered it), then taken home, along with Maria and her parents.

Whereupon she been had been tucked into bed and forced to drink a tisane.

George had lingered at the assembly to collect, as he’d dryly put it to his parents, “intelligence,” and had made his own way home.

Physically, she felt more or less fine.

Inwardly, numbness currently blunted the pain of a destroyed heart.

“I expect it was a bit of silly competition that got out of hand,” she told her parents vaguely. “You know how boys can be. I didn’t know I would be alarmed into a swoon. How embarrassing. I’m so sorry to ruin everyone’s evening.”

She refused to expound, no matter how sternly or woefully they stared at her. And as she was unharmed physically, they finally consented to stop fussing and left her alone with Maria, who sat companionably by her bed.

When Isolde suddenly shivered as she pictured Jacob hovering over Isaiah's prone body, Maria leaned over and tucked her shawl around her.

Isolde couldn’t suppress an unworthy satisfaction that Jacob had gone mad and attacked Isaiah, though she couldn’t know exactly what had motivated him. But she would wager it was for the same reason he’d raced to rescue his nephew from toppling from a fence.

And she still didn’t think he’d overheard her conversation with Isaiah. But he had seen her expression when Isaiah had walked away from her. And she was fairly certain this had told him enough.

She remained horrified and embarrassed that he’d witnessed both her perfidy and her pain.

“Isolde…did you know Jacob had returned?” Maria ventured.

After a moment, Isolde nodded.

“Do you think Jacob is jealous of Mr. Redmond because of you?” Maria whispered it.

“I think he could be.”

Maria peered intently at her. Clearly contemplating whether to ask another question.

Isolde cleared her throat. “Maria, have you heard any gossip about me lately about…?”

Maria shook her head. “But I don’t think anyone would say anything to me directly, anyway.” She paused, then whispered. “Have you done anything worth gossiping about? Is that why you were late to the picnic?”

It was a bold and astute question.

And Isolde didn’t answer, which was answer enough.

“Maria…what if I’m a pariah now because an Eversea and a Redmond came to blows? Am I going to be a burden to my relatives?” This scared her badly.

“I'm not certain no one will marry you,” Maria suggested carefully. “There are men living on other continents, for instance.”

Isolde couldn’t help but give a little shout of bleak laughter. “ Must you be prosaic when my life is a melodrama?”

“I'm sorry! It’s just that I hate to see you so distressed.”

“You are very sweet, and I’m so sorry you were forced to miss the dancing. The decorations were beautiful.”

“There will be other Pennyroyal Green assemblies, but none will be as memorable as this one, mark my words.”

Maria gave her a noisy forehead kiss and went off to bed.

By the time Isaiah left his father, everyone else currently residing beneath the Redmond roof seem to have gone up to their rooms. The house was almost desolately quiet.

But perhaps it merely felt that way because his soul was ringing as though it had been battered with a mallet.

The clock showed half past ten.

He settled his body gingerly at his writing desk. He rested his head on his hands and breathed in and out. Raggedly. Slowly.

And then he pressed his fists against his forehead and squeezed his eyes closed and, by sheer force of will, filled his mind with the image of the stunning woman who was expecting a proposal from him.

If he married Fanchette, they would be one of the most envied couples in England.

And any man would feel honored and privileged to make love to Fanchette. Surely it would be no hardship.

Did she love him?

How could she? She didn’t know him. She did not… see him. She could not see him. She wasn’t made that way. Perhaps this was his fault. Perhaps they weren’t made that way for each other.

But did this even matter? Was being in love even necessary for a brilliant marriage? Perhaps it was even an impediment? Love could devastate and transport. He knew that now. And the potential for devastation seemed a threat to a peaceful life. He loathed the loss of control.

But what bloody cruel… travesty …of fate was it that he now knew the difference between loving and not loving? Like breathing and not breathing.