Page 3 of Revisit the Past (Society of Swans #3)
A neat array of sliced ham and egg stared back at Isabel as she poked it listlessly with her fork. She had coerced herself into taking at least one bite of everything on her plate and one sip of tea, hoping that her sleepless night of tossing and turning would have resulted in a healthy appetite.
Such was not the case this morning. Resigning herself to her stomach’s blatant refusal to feel hunger, Isabel fell back into the plush embrace of her pile of pillows and settled her fork onto her pearl-inlaid breakfast tray. Byrd, her motherly lady’s maid, would silently frown when she came to collect her mistress’s uneaten meal, especially after Isabel had claimed a terrible headache resulting from too much frolicking at the welcome ball.
“What does Byrd know?” Isabel grumbled to herself as she indulged in her rarely seen childlike side and burrowed deeper beneath her blankets, crossing her arms over the lace ruffles of her nightgown.
No, the lady’s maid—nor anyone else, for that matter—could not know that Isabel had spent the entire night reliving those few strange moments with the man she had once loved. That was one topic of conversation she could not bear first thing in the morning. Knowing Papa and Lewis, who had heard of Lord Murfield’s brief presence from other guests, they would be curious as to her feelings on the matter.
Isabel scrunched her nose and shook her head, as if that could banish the memory of how handsome he had looked with his bold, red hair that never stayed quite flat and his deep eyes that never failed to captivate her…even after all this time.
It was infuriating, really, that he should look so precisely the same as she remembered from their days of courtship. As if he had not shattered her heart and disappeared from her world, only to reappear in London without so much as a hint to Isabel.
The childish stubbornness slowly dissipated from her expression as she forced herself to remember her hard-won lesson. What else could she expect from a man who would do such a disgraceful thing as run away with an innocent girl’s love without looking back?
A different type of stubbornness seized Isabel. This one originated in that deep, dark corner of her traitorous heart that she had never quite been able to seal away. It shuddered now, pushing against Isabel’s harsh opinions of the earl’s character.
Isabel gritted her teeth. Had she not learned her lesson, after all? Had she not experienced any growth as a being of reason during these years after learning to live with her dejection? How could a few minutes in Lord Murfield’s presence undo the walls Isabel had so carefully built around her scarred heart?
A soft knock on the door jolted Isabel out of her frustrated thoughts. “Mail for you, miss,” called Byrd through the door.
“Enter,” Isabel replied, settling the tray along the edge of her bed.
“Miss Abbott.” The maid sighed as she closed the bedroom door, her attentive, blue eyes immediately landing upon the young lady’s uneaten food.
“I am sure I shall be famished by the time luncheon arrives,” Isabel promised with a sheepish smile as she accepted the letters from Byrd.
After a few more insistences that she wanted for nothing else, Isabel leaned back into her pillows once more and eyed the first letter. A smile tugged at the corner of her lips. Felicity’s slanted, hasty handwriting announced itself loudly across the first letter, recognizable anywhere.
“ …and with all this newfound energy since that terrible churning in my stomach seems to have ceased, I had begun to really regret not joining you all in London. Until Lydia told me more of what is to come. The comforts of Bainbridge seem far better suited to—well, I suppose you shall read about that the next time Lydia writes… ”
Intrigue hummed inside Isabel’s chest as she skimmed the remainder of Felicity’s letter and snatched the next one. It was indeed from Lydia, her handwriting far neater, an exact copy of her governess’s lessons.
“ Our healthy, happy little Mary has arrived, and with her comes a joy and love like I never thought possible. She is sheer perfection… ”
“Thank the heavens!” Isabel cheered quietly to herself, reading on.
She pressed the brief letter to her chest. The happy news from both her friends, but most especially of Lydia’s baby girl and assurances of the new mother’s growing strength, had done wonders to revive Isabel’s spirit.
Until she brought the next letter to her eyes.
Her leaping heart sputtered to a stop. She would also know this handwriting anywhere thanks to the hours she had spent rereading her friends’ mysterious letters in her mind, searching for clues…or perhaps simply enjoying the puzzle of it all.
And now one had arrived for Isabel. With a huff, she pursed her lips and turned over the folded sheet to reveal the telltale swan, stamped in purple. Isabel ran a fingertip over the raised wax and frowned.
This letter would contain nothing useful for her unless Lady Swan intended to point her in the direction of a tolerable, comfortably wealthy gentleman who sought a spouse for practical reasons, just as Isabel planned on doing.
It should have been her plan from the beginning. She would have saved herself much suffering. Instead, Isabel had had the misfortune of meeting the most incredible, most infuriating man she’d ever known during her very first Season.
Since the disappearance of the then-Mr. Caleb Smythe, Isabel had made it her goal to set aside any considerations of love in the marriage business. It was, after all, a business affair in many crucial ways.
Isabel had even found a few contenders who had all possessed the means of keeping Isabel and her future children secure and respectable in Society. Yet they had all fallen short for one reason or another. It was hardly Isabel’s fault if they did not appear to be compatible even on a platonic level or, worse, if they ended up deciding that they did want to be in love with someone.
Or perhaps it was because…
Isabel shook her head again, harder this time, her nightcap struggling to stay pinned in place. Surely, given Lady Swan’s two successes that Isabel had witnessed last year, she could trust the anonymous matchmaker to know what she needed. Granted, despite the strangely intimate knowledge Lady Swan seemed to possess of their lives and personalities, neither Lydia nor Felicity had been particularly convinced at the start that the mysterious letter writer had been leading them in the correct direction.
No, surely, within this note contained hints of the perfect, practically-minded man. Isabel steeled herself and broke the seal.
“ Dearest Miss Abbott, welcome back to London and what I pray will be a fruitful Season for you. If you are reading this, I am pleased to announce that you are already well on your way. Thank you for trusting me.
“For the ability to trust—both in ourselves and in those around us—is one of the most essential components of a truly happy life. This fact is all the more essential when one’s trust has been broken.”
Isabel paused, squeezed her eyes shut, and let her hand and the letter drop to her lap like a brick. The tentative interest that had been twisting her stomach froze over in an instant. She need not read any further to know what Lady Swan implied. Still, her innate drive to understand every piece of information the world had to offer spurred her to resume with knitted brow and clenched teeth.
“ If you are still reading, I thank you again.”
Feeling entirely too old as a woman of two-and-twenty to be even momentarily consumed by irrational fears, Isabel stopped once more and pulled her blanket up to her chin. She glanced about her tastefully appointed bedroom. Now she could appreciate for herself that feeling that her friends had described upon the arrival of their letters—the feeling of being watched, heard, understood, but without knowing how.
“ Once compromised, it may seem impossible for trust to ever be renewed. Pain takes its place and taints lovely memories. And while there are, of course, instances where such faith is best not renewed once betrayed, there are others where a different perspective may do wonders to bridge the gap of confusion and hurt.
“Above all, I pray you will remain open to a little-known truth: Past pains may lead to a lifetime of joy when two broken hearts heal as one.
“ Allow yourself to set the practical matters aside. You deserve the happiness and companionship your heart desires, and the gentleman who loves you wants nothing more than to make your every dream come true.
“Your most loyal servant, Lady Swan.”
Isabel’s hand curled into a fist, crushing the letter in it. Hot, angry, childish tears stung the corners of her eyes as her chest heaved up and down. How dare this stranger try to convince her that the very man who had broken her heart should be the one to heal it? The very notion was absurd!
Whatever else Lady Swan might have known, however she had managed to know it, there could be no way for her to have any idea of the pain Isabel had suffered, which had been made all the worse because she had not been the only one hurting.
Several months after Lord Murfield had disappeared, failing to return after a promised few days of business outside of London, the shocking news of the late earl’s unexpected passing had begun trickling through Society in hushed whispers laced with sordid fascination and a polite amount of pity.
When Papa had somberly relayed the tragedy to Isabel after hearing of it from someone at Brooks’s, her tattered heart had broken anew. The previous Lord Murfield, the present’s older brother, had been far too young for his fate. Isabel had known that her former suitor must have been grieving terribly.
Without much conviction, Isabel tossed the crumpled ball of paper away and sighed as it tumbled down to her powder-blue blankets and snagged upon the fine fabric.
Indeed, if the new earl had reached out to her then, perhaps Isabel would have still been tender enough to accept an apology and administer comfort to someone who had once been so very dear to her, so principle in both her easy, idyllic thoughts and her careful plans of the future. Perhaps it could still be so… Would there truly be much harm in it?
A surge of restless energy took hold of Isabel. She flung the thick blanket back and swung her legs over the side of the bed in one deft movement. She’d already paced two or three laps up and down the room by the time the bedcover had finished settling into careless, lumpy peaks.
“No!” she said in a sharp whisper as she kicked out the frilly hem of her nightdress, in a rush to get nowhere in particular. “I was young and it was all too much to bear back then. I am older and, hopefully, a little wiser now.”
No matter what her silly heart or anonymous writers had to say. Isabel finished that thought silently to herself. There were things that need not be said aloud, not even in the privacy of her own quarters.
“Besides,” she continued aloud, eager to leave those thoughts behind, “should not Lady Swan, with all her mysterious powers, know that Lord Murfield clearly has no desire to remain in Society properly? Of course, why should he? Gallivanting about the country is far more entertaining and stimulating than an endless repetition of Seasons in London. No doubt that friend of his, that Lord Wrighthall, bullied him into finally showing his face.”
After several more intervals of sullen silence and acrimonious mutters against both Lord Murfield and Lady Swan, Isabel’s initial agitation subsided long enough for her wits to return with a course of action. Thankfully, her mind had continued to work to her benefit under the surface while she had allowed herself a few moments of unbridled emotion.
Reaching across her unkempt bed and seizing the letter, Isabel made quick work of smoothing it out enough for Lady Swan’s admittedly handsome writing to be legible. She settled in at the carved, oak writing desk in the corner of her room and produced a tidy stack of quarto sheets from the right-hand drawer.
Stretching her neck from side to side in preparation for a long period of sitting, Isabel dabbed her pen into glossy, black ink.
“ Dearest Lydia, all my congratulations and blessings to you and Sebastian and your darling Mary! I cannot tell you how thrilled I am for you and how anxious I am to see you all happy and well with my very own eyes…”
Isabel’s quill flew across the blank page, populating it in an endless, effortless flow. Her skills at crossing her letters would be put to the test if she hoped to convey her well wishes in addition to the entirety of Lady Swan’s message, not to mention her own opinions, of which there were many . The need for more pages quickly became evident as she crossed every line up, down, and diagonal.
Still, Isabel knew her friends in both London and Bainbridge would be more than happy to offer up a few extra pence to learn that their hopes of Lady Swan’s continued involvement in their circle had not been in vain.