Page 22 of Love’s Refrain at Roslyn Court (Noble Hearts #2)

Twenty-Two

ISAAC

W hat was he to think? What to do?

For two days, Isaac had berated himself for his foolishness in the cottage with Sophia. Although, whether his most foolish action had been to almost kiss her, or to run away from her, he could not decide. Both led to misery.

Avoiding her was easy, for Lady Poole still exerted every effort to keep the young woman busy or sequestered, foisting that oaf Bladestock on her at every opportunity.

He saw Bladestock prance into her office in the mornings with the tea and buns she was not permitted to enjoy with the family at breakfast, or accompany her to the village on some errand, or once, drive her to Cheltenham to procure some particular item that Lady Poole insisted they needed for the reception and that could not be found in the village.

Indeed, with the amount of time Sophia and Bladestock were spending together, and much of it quite alone at that, it was a wonder that the local village tongues were not wagging.

And that thought set off another wave of the blue devils that threatened to drive him into the abyss. Only the distant clang of alarm bells and the vague notion that Sophia might somehow need him kept Isaac from succumbing to the billowing darkness and its tempting lure of oblivion.

Because, even through his torment-riddled dreams and self-recrimination, some pieces of a picture were beginning to take shape in Isaac’s befogged brain.

The settlement that Jeremy had mentioned, the money that Lady Poole was planning to put into a dowry for Sophia, after so many years of her being penniless…

the unchaperoned encounters between her and Bladestock…

Lady Poole’s obsessive need to remove all barriers between himself and Louisa…

Isaac thanked the heavens he had always insisted on a maid or other chaperone being present when he was out with Louisa Poole.

But that, then, must be Lady Poole’s plan.

She was not selling Sophia to Bladestock, but was going to force some sort of compromise that Bladestock could not turn down.

A man, after all, seldom had his reputation to worry about.

Where the faintest hint of rumour could ruin a young woman, the same would only earn a young man a raised eyebrow and a congratulatory clap on the shoulders, followed by revelry and brandy.

The lure such a man needed to be induced into matrimony was something else, and in Bladestock’s case, it was money.

The man himself was a decent sort; Isaac had reluctantly ascertained that. But he was destitute, and his only hope for any sort of independence was to marry a fortune. And Lady Poole would do anything to ensure that Sophia’s was the fortune he would marry.

Damnation.

Once again, Isaac determined that he had to leave, and once again, found himself unequal to it.

The reception, the expectations, the obligation—all these kept him mired to his place in this house, where he sustained himself on those occasional glimpses afforded him of Sophia as she scurried from one room to another, or on the stairs, or through the window.

She was the sip of water that sustained a dying man, the glance of freedom a prisoner had through his cell bars.

She was his hope, although she could never be his future.

And she was the real reason he could not make himself leave. He needed to be near her, even if every moment was torture. He would be forced to leave soon enough, and then he would need every one of these memories to keep him alive when the storm grew too heavy to bear.

He would rather suffer than be without her a moment longer than was necessary.

What a sad, pathetic creature he had become.

Over the few days remaining until the night of the reception, Isaac spent as much time as he could out of doors.

He walked for miles every day, or when possible, he rode.

Sometimes he did not speak to another soul all day until his return to the house; other times he met Ashburton or Jeremy, or one of the others near the village.

Jeremy was becoming as concerned as was Isaac about Lady Poole’s intentions, for if she were so determined to marry Louisa to a nobleman, she would not cease her efforts once Isaac had left the neighbourhood.

Louisa would not be one-and-twenty for another year and a half, and a great deal of damage could be done in that time by a woman more concerned about her place in the world than about her daughter’s happiness.

Isaac had even tried, with the greatest subtlety and tact, to raise the point with Sir Neville, but that gentleman, for all his affability and genuine good will, seemed quite baffled by any notion that his wife would seek to push one of his girls into the arms of a man she did not love.

Likewise, when Isaac had mentioned Jeremy’s name, the baronet gushed on about what a pleasant young man he was, and then opined that he would make an excellent husband for some merchant’s daughter or the like.

And so, on those occasions when Isaac and Jeremy crossed paths and stopped to talk, they found consolation in the other’s shared distress.

There was the old saying that a burden shared is a burden halved, and if the same could be said for heartache, it seemed to hold true.

It was a relief of sorts for Isaac to share his woes with his friend, and he hoped that Jeremy felt the same.

For Jeremy, at least, there was hope. He and Louisa needed only time or her father’s blessing. For Isaac, the obstacles were insurmountable, for the main obstacle was Isaac himself.

The day of the reception arrived at last.

Issac had made his plans, and this time he would not falter.

His trunks were packed and he had engaged a cart and driver to bear him and his belongings away the moment he could escape.

They would drive him only to the village, where he had taken a room for the night; at dawn, he would be away for good, first to Gloucester, and then to London, where he would find some temporary accommodation.

Tonight, then, would be the last time he would ever see Sophia.

The black cloud hovered.

The day seemed interminable. For all the mad scurrying around of the servants and Mrs Oswald’s constant questions for Lady Poole, his own role seemed to be to sit and wait.

He was implored not to leave the grounds lest some misfortune occur, and he wanted desperately for activity.

Even Louisa, whose company had been forced on him so often over the last few weeks, was genuinely needed and kept occupied at every moment, and he could not find the concentration to read or finally write those letters he had been meaning to attend to for several days.

As for Sophia, the one person he desperately longed to see and hoped equally desperately to avoid, she was nowhere to be found.

Isaac imagined she was below stairs, ensuring the food was ready to be served out, the musicians had arrived, the floor chalked, the staff taken on for this evening suitably instructed, the cloak room prepared, and all sorts of other vital tasks completed that he could not even imagine.

He walked around the lake again, and found the tiny cottage with its clavichord and old furniture, where he had almost broken his compact with himself and destroyed Sophia’s life.

It was the first time he had been inside the place in full daylight—it was the first time he had really seen it, and he allowed his eyes to soak in everything, to remember and store away in his head, like Henry Poole’s belongings that he had packed and stored away in their boxes.

He lifted the lid covering the clavichord’s row of keys, dark brown and pale in their particular grouping, and allowed his fingers to settle on them, feeling the wood that Sophia had touched, wishing for something of her to seep into his hands from that contact.

On a whim, he pressed down on one of the keys, and when rewarded with a delicate sound, dared another.

He had seen his sister at her pianoforte and knew enough of the instrument to have an idea of how it worked, and he tried to replicate one of the melodies Sophia had played for him.

It was that gentle rocking lullaby, that one that had helped ease his mind, with the sweet variations that followed.

He could not attempt the harmonies, but with trial and error found enough of the melody.

This, too, he stored in his mind. One day, perhaps, he would purchase a small instrument just so he could pluck out this tune and remember her. It would be all he had left.

What madness this was!

All at once, anger replaced misery, and he slammed down the lid before storming out of the cottage as he had some days before, vowing this time never to return.