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He had told Isolde the truth before he kissed her: he found the idea of her distress unbearable.

And yet he was the one who had just caused her grievous pain.

He conjured the feel of her body molded to his, and the hot, sweet taste of her mouth.

Hunger and yearning swept through him. He could not forget. He would never forget.

He placed a badly shaking hand on his chest as if he could still feel the press of Isolde’s head there.

And into that place spilled a cold terror of what life would be like if he never knew that feeling again.

His palms were sweating now.

Blindly, he fumbled for a half sheet of foolscap as if it was a rope thrown to a drowning man. He stared down at it. His breath was a roar in his ears. He reached for the quill. The plume trembled in his hand as he wrote.

My Dearest Isolde,

I have perhaps been too careful the whole of my life; I confess I've not much experience with being a fool, nor with being wrong. But tonight, I have been egregiously both. Nor have I much experience with being humble. Now, with these paltry words, I humbly beg your forgiveness. I only hope against hope that my clumsiness and inadvertent cruelty have not killed completely your feelings for me. I’ve no experience with love either, you see.

For it's true that I love you.

If you can imagine spending all of the minutes of your life with me, meet me at midnight tonight at the oak trees where first we spoke.

I think this is best, as the arrival of a harnessed carriage might wake your household.

Pack a valise and bring a lamp. We will go at once to Gretna Green, where we will wed.

As you know, I have money of my own. Furthermore, as I am my father's only heir, he cannot and will not disown me.

I am certain he will come to love you as I do, and it will be my honor to live out all of the minutes of my life with you.

I will live to make you happy, Isolde.

I regret the dishonor to Miss Tarbell but I know she will find a worthy and appropriate match.

No matter what you decide, I fear you have my heart, now and always.

Your servant,

I.R.

He was in fact certain of none of these things except that he loved her.

He did not know how to parse the origins of this love. It seemed to him that it had always existed and had merely been waiting for the two of them to claim it, the way that the land now called Pennyroyal Green had existed for eons before any humans settled and named it.

The force of his conviction, his willingness to win at any cost, would make the rest of what he’d written manifest, surely.

He could not stop to think of any of the “hows”; he could not now afford to consider what Fanchette might feel, let alone his father.

It seemed to him that he was saving his own life, so all other considerations were necessarily secondary.

When he had what he wanted and needed—Isolde—he would deal with the consequences, one by one.

He re-read the message. It struck him as stilted and formal. He was maddened that he could not seem to translate the true contents of his heart into words.

But Isolde knew his heart. She had felt it thudding against her cheek, after he’d kissed her.

He folded and sealed it with a press of his ring.

The last of the assembly-goers would be home by eleven, at the latest, he was certain.

Suddenly it seemed like kismet that she had told him that a red-headed boy named Dougal slept next to the Sylvaine’s kitchen fire, for he knew precisely what to tell a footman to do.

Isolde heard her own shallow, swift breathing as if another person sat next to her on the bed.

In her hands she held a letter; a sleepy and confused but thrilled Dougal had brought it to her door moments ago.

It was just past eleven; she hadn’t slept at all; her entire family had gone to sleep hours ago.

With a trembling finger she traced the “R” pressed into the red wax seal.

Finally, she gathered the courage to break it.

She tenderly smoothed out the letter in her lap.

The words slowly filled her like sunlight.

She breathed out very slowly. Then closed her eyes and basked in the glory of knowing that she was loved.

She pictured herself running to Isaiah in the dark, a valise thumping against her thigh.

Throwing herself into his arms, her lips meeting his lips.

Making love with him again and again in a Scottish inn, their bodies passionately entwined.

Returning triumphantly, scandalously, to Pennyroyal Green as Mrs. Isolde Redmond, chasing giggling green-eyed children in that beautiful rose garden at the Redmond house, waking next to him every morning.

For those few minutes, she allowed herself to live an entire lifetime with him.

And then she pictured Isaiah alone in the dark near the trees, his fragile, complicated heart filled with hope, and her eyes welled with tears.

“Oh, Isaiah,” she whispered.

She wept for how brave he’d been to bare his heart.

And for the mad fairy tale he'd written.

Because she knew it was impossible. The Redmonds would forever see her as evidence of Isaiah’s perfidy.

Isaiah would surely grow to resent and despise her for tempting him to betray his father.

Her family would always be made to feel inferior.

His own family would suffer grave social consequences if he jilted the daughter of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Isolde knew in her bones that she and Isaiah would never know peace together.

Why, then, did it feel like blasphemy to deny the pull of what felt like her destiny? She loved him.

Not only that: she knew definitively now that she could not ever, ever bring herself to hurt or shame Jacob. Because she loved him, too, whether or not he’d stopped wanting her.

And while defending her was Jacob’s very nature, Isaiah was struggling to transform his own nature. To shake off the shackles of his history and forge something new…for her.

This seemed to her the very definition of courage.

But she didn’t think he would have ever dared done this in the daylight. Which is why he wanted to run away in the dark.

The arbitrary cruelty of fate bludgeoned her airless.

What earthly reason could there be for her to love and be loved by two men when none of them would have what they wanted?

Once the tears started, her heart seemed an endless geyser of grief and love. She stifled her sobs in her pillow.

The air was so cold and clean it hurt to pull it into his lungs. The gleam of the watch in his palm echoed the perfect circle of the moon above. Isaiah stamped his feet to ward off the chill.

Midnight was ten minutes away.

Suddenly he jerked backward, heart in his throat. Holy Mother of—the tree was on fire!

No. Christ.

It was lamplight. His hands were shaking, sending the beam of the lantern he was clutching dancing so fitfully over the leaves it looked like flames.

He was almost delirious from excruciatingly heightened awareness. He felt simultaneously like a madman and saner than he’d ever been.

He willed Isolde to emerge from the dark, pitching his senses for the sound of her footfall. For the huff of her breath. For the glow of her lamp.

He would take her into his arms. He would soothe her, and whisper, “Everything will be all right, forever. Thank you for coming. I love you.”

He imagined the sweet heat of her mouth when he kissed her again. The soft shape of her tucked into his side in the dark of the carriage as they hurtled through the dark toward Scotland. Toward forever.

By this time tomorrow, he would have made love to her in a coaching inn.

Desire lanced him so violently his breath seized and every muscle tensed.

The uproar when he was discovered missing would be nothing compared to the uproar when he returned from Scotland with a wife. It seemed not to matter. Inside his turmoil was a core of calm certainty, within which pulsed a tiny, dark exultation.

Jacob Eversea would have to live with knowing that Isolde would be sharing a bed with Isaiah Redmond for the rest of her life.

One of the horses whickered what sounded like a soft question: why are we here ?

What would it do if he whickered back? He half-smiled.

Absently, he rested a soothing hand on its neck.

“Soon,” he promised it. “She’ll be here soon.”

He knew his message had been delivered to Isolde, because the footman—who went on horseback—told him he’d given it to the red-headed kitchen boy, and he’d waited at the kitchen door for the boy to return for the half crown Isaiah had donated to the cause.

Isaiah had deliberately withheld the color of Dougal’s hair so he could test the footman’s honesty when he returned for his shilling reward.

And so Isaiah waited. His bruised face stung in the cold.

The minutes bore on.

And on.

He postponed looking for as long as he could. But when he next glanced at his watch, it was a quarter past midnight.

And just like that, his beloved watch became his enemy. Because with every second it ticked off, the truth sank into him like the chill night air.

Until it supplanted hope entirely.

Until he knew definitively.

She wasn't coming.

For a few blessed moments, he felt nothing. Erased. Empty as if he’d never existed. Beyond panic, or terror, or anger or hope.

Slowly, into the emptiness, like smoke, seeped a bracing fury.

How. Bloody. Dare she.

Who the bloody hell did she think she was, to cast aside his heart? To shun this opportunity to be a Redmond ? The little nobody of a girl who had made him whinny . Who had nearly caused him to bring shame upon his family, to defy his father, to shirk his duty? She had made him ridiculous .

He suddenly had a vision of how pathetic he must look standing there: Look at that fool who had written a love letter throwing away his future, only to be rejected by a silly girl!

He was as choked with rage as if he was trapped in a burning room.

He fumbled in the pocket of his coat and found the small knife he always carried with him. He viciously tugged his hand free of his glove and touched the blade to his fingertip until blood beaded.

And then he whirled and with a grunt plunged the point of his knife into the tree as if it was his own heart. As if in so doing he could excise it from his body, and with it, all pain, all grief, all hope, all love, anything at all that meant Isolde.

He dragged the knife down, down, gouging a deep, straight line.

Heaving with ragged breaths, he stared at it.

It looked like an “I”.

He traced it with his bleeding finger.

And then he knew what to do.

One after another, he deliberately, deeply scarred the tree with six letters.

I-S-O-L-D-E.

High enough up on the trunk, deep enough into the branches, small enough so that it would be disguised from the road. So that likely no one would ever see it, apart from a squirrel or two.

But for the rest of his life, every time he walked by these trees, he would be reminded of this shame, this folly, this narrow escape.

He stood back. Sweat glued his hair to his forehead; his harsh, swift breathing seemed deafening in the dark.

He absently rubbed at his chest. As if he could feel those letters permanently carved into his heart. A secret mutilation.

He took himself home.

Isaiah awoke on top of his bed a few hours later.

The maids had not yet been in build up the fires, and silvery dawn light was pushing through the gap in his drawn curtains.

He was fully clothed, down to his boots.

His eyelashes were sticky and his cheeks felt rough from salt.

He had wept like an exhausted child when the blessed, numbing fury, a temporary defense, eventually proved no match for the enormity of his grief.

For the slashing pain and disbelief of loss.

He wasn’t quite sure whether he’d wept from relief or devastation or some shameful combination thereof. Either way, his heart was broken.

And he wasn’t going to bloody weep ever again.

He lay still for a long time, familiarizing himself with the heaviness of his body in this new world. This was the version of himself he would need to live with for the rest of his life.

It seemed his decision about what to do next had been made for him.