Page 25 of The Lover’s Eye

When the trio returned to the manse, Trevelyan’s horses were stamping impatiently in their harnesses. Marriane was waiting, her black eyes squinting under her lavish bonnet.

“Betsey is waiting in the vestibule with your things,” she said, looking at Isobel. “We must make haste.”

Isobel recognized the sharpness in her sister’s eyes and her tightly interlaced fingers.

Marriane’s temper was bordering on rage.

Not only had Isobel read her private correspondence, she had run off without a word and thrown the day’s plans into disarray.

She went up the stairs in wordless compliance, her three companions waiting below.

Betsey was waiting on command. She stood just behind the open doors in a cast of shadow, already holding open a spencer jacket for Isobel to stick her arms into.

“Pray, Betsey, tell me truthfully. How awful do I look?” Isobel asked, fanning her stinging eyes with her hands. She felt hot and perpetually anxious, disbelieving the morning’s events.

The lady’s maid took her chin and tilted it a little, then gripped her by the arms and turned her toward the light. Her lips twitched before she replied, “Not awful, miss. Not so bad as you’re like to think.”

Isobel groaned. She wanted to walk over to the gilt mirror by the entry table, to see in full detail how she had presented herself to Trevelyan. She could still see his inquisitive eyes so close to her face, feel the elevations of his cool fingers and the brush of his knee.

But any stares of vanity would be visible to those waiting below the open doors.

Betsey adjusted the brim of Isobel’s bonnet until it was straight, and evened the lengths of the ribbon bow beneath her chin. “You’d best be off.”

Isobel forced a smile before whirling out the door. Marriane and Pemberton were engaged in lively conversation, but Trevelyan stood apart, watching the doors. Watching for her . Isobel’s heart tipped on its axis.

“There we are,” Pemberton said with an exasperated sigh. “Let’s get on with it, shall we?”

The phaeton boasted two rows of seats, the backmost sitting slightly lower. Marriane hovered there, daunted by the vehicle’s excessive height and scarce design. A footman let down the step and offered her his hand.

“All right,” she said, sighing once safely on her perch. She eyed the distance between herself and the ground. “Come along, Martin, dear.”

The erratic pulse in Isobel’s chest heightened further. The seats were narrow. There were no sidepieces to close travelers into the vehicle, either, but an open expanse in front of their feet. If she was to sit by Trevelyan, it would be impossible to not sit close against him.

He was letting down the step to the front seat, and when he turned back, met Isobel’s gaze.

He opened his mouth to speak, but Pemberton interrupted.

“I believe I’ll ride up front with Trev,” he said to his wife, mounting the turned-out stair before she could object.

“I wouldn’t mind seeing how this curious little vehicle handles. Might even want one for myself.”

“Martin, you can’t be serious! Why, that’s altogether impolite of you, and besides, I should like your arm for support. It’s really rather high,” Marriane said, her gaze drawn downward yet again.

“Bah, you’ll be fine, love.”

Pemberton was already settling his bulk into the front seat, bending over to examine different features of fine craftsmanship. Trevelyan’s lips pursed, but he advanced to where Isobel stood, waiting to join her sister. He offered his hand. “Allow me.”

Isobel took it, relishing the momentary squeeze of his gloved fingers.

It reminded her of his offered hand in the garden, the gentle pressure of his thumb beneath her chin.

His gestures had been small and perhaps a little uncertain, but they were unrelieved signs of affection.

The sweet welcomeness of them had not dawned on her until now—she had been too dumbfounded, too wonderstruck. She still was.

The phaeton started down the drive with light, swift speed.

There was no security about it, just the open breeze and the race of earth blurring below.

Marriane had her arms crossed over her midsection and her nose stuck in the air.

The adornments pinned to her bonnet struggled against the wind.

Isobel knew she was angry, but she also looked squeamish.

“Are you all right?” Isobel asked quietly. She owed her an apology for reading Lady Hambly’s letter, but it had faded into near insignificance now. What really must be discussed was Trevelyan’s …

Proposal . Good God—he really had proposed marriage to her!

“I am fine,” Marriane quipped.

Trevelyan was busy handling the ribbons, keeping the striking greys’ pace even, but he turned his face toward Isobel and leant back, raising his voice. “I hope you will be pleased by the peonies, Miss Ridgeway. The very first of the season are in bloom.”

“I cannot wait to see them all,” she replied, leaning up far enough that she caught the faint aroma of him: shaving soap and mint. It had ruffled her senses in the past, but now it set her fully on edge, a bloom of warmth growing in her midsection.

He leant back to speak again, but Pemberton was turned full around in his seat, examining a folding canopy that was currently in disuse. “Say, Trevelyan, now how the devil’s this work?”

Before he could offer a response, the black canopy sprung up on its metal framework, arching over the inhabitants of the front seat and cutting them off from the ladies in back. Through the thick fabric, Isobel heard Pemberton’s voice at a vague mumble. “Ah. That’s quite nice!”

Marriane sighed, allowing her hands to flop at her sides. “Is a romantic drive too much for a lady to ask of her husband?”

Isobel giggled softly, even though she felt the barrier just as keenly. It was almost painful, knowing Trevelyan was right there, nearly within arm’s reach, and she could not see him or speak to him.

A few seconds of silence lapsed between them. “I am sorry for reading Lady Hambly’s letter. It was never my intention. I caught a glimpse of it on the table, just enough to know …” Isobel sighed. “There was no stopping me then. I had to read the whole of it. And I apologize.”

Marriane studied her sister for a moment, finding a comfortable slouch in her seat. “I accept your apology. Though I am deeply perplexed by your reaction to the letter. I expected you to be devastated, for now you surely must—”

She stopped short.

Isobel’s eyes cut to the thick canopy before them. It seemed highly impertinent to begin their discussion this way, but she could not stand it a moment longer. “Trevelyan asked Papa if he could court me,” she whispered, moving her lips close to Marriane’s ear.

Marriane gasped, and Isobel made desperate gestures with her hands, urging her to keep quiet. “Papa rejected him. But …”

Marriane jerked into an upright position. After deliberating the floor for a moment, she turned to Isobel and took up her hands with voracious swiftness. “How positively wonderful .”

“Are you certain? What about Papa’s temper, and there is no time for us to have a proper courtship, you know, and heaven knows what the Sempills will attempt—”

“ Isobel. ” Marriane squeezed her sister’s fingers until the joints cramped against one another. “Hush.” Their eyes crinkled with mixed amusement and excitement. “I cannot think of a better solution to your problem. I feel certain there is not one, not in all the world.”

A solution to her problem. The words pinched in Isobel’s stomach, an unpleasant feeling that dimmed her budding happiness.

She did not see Trevelyan as an escape from her difficulties, but as someone she already cared for.

Marriage aside, he had offered to help her navigate freedom.

The very fact he had given her options made her answer simple.

Isobel’s mind had recently been thrust between two opposing nightmares, afraid of being alone, but petrified of being married to someone who would mistreat her. It seemed Trevelyan was single-handedly unknotting both of those fears.

“Do you think he’s only offering for me to help quiet the gossip?” Isobel whispered, eyeing the canopy again.

That had been her first instinct. She could but imagine the effect Trevelyan had on a packed ballroom, remembering the awestruck tones of the ladies at the Everly Ball and the turned heads on the village street.

People could not call him a recluse if he was sequestered at home with a wife.

They would no longer dare discuss him as a man lost to grief, if he had married and moved on.

They wouldn’t, would they?

“Are you absurd?” Marriane laughed with animation, seeming to forget all about her fear of heights. “This will only have them talking more. There’s but one reason for his offer, I tell you, and it’s got nothing to do with his past.” She took Isobel’s hands. “He cares for you.”

Isobel swallowed. It seemed impossible. It had been agony reading Lady Hambly’s letter, but her declarations were true enough.

Isobel was a bit of a hoyden, untrained in the ways of the world.

She paled in beauty when placed against her sister for comparison.

She was not suited to be a governess, in regard to both rank and rumor.

Was it possible Trevelyan did not see that for fact?

Or, more unbelievable yet, that he saw something different when he looked at her?

“W-What about Miss Gouldsmith?” Isobel managed to ask, her quietest inquiry yet.

“I would love to ease your mind, but Trevelyan is not easy to read,” Marriane whispered. Her breath tickled the fine hair around Isobel’s ear until she itched. “I can undoubtedly say if Miss Gouldsmith had not vanished, she would be his wife. But she did, and he wants you, now, Isobel.”

Marriane backed away and frowned at whatever she saw in her sister’s face. “Do not fret, dearest. A history is only natural for men. You mustn’t be troubled by it.”

Isobel realized with an icicle-like jolt that Trevelyan probably did not know what experience she had so unwillingly acquired. The strictest interpreters of deportment would declare her ruined by Elias’s advances. No doubt many gentlemen would reject her for less.

If Trevelyan’s offer was made in earnest and she chose to say yes, Isobel knew she must make a clean breast of things to ease her own conscience. She wondered if he, in turn, would ever divulge any of his own history, murky with commemorations to the missing Miss Gouldsmith.