And she’d thought herself safe.
It was only when she reached a solid wooden door at the end of a corridor—what long corridors dukes had—that she realized she’d fled the breakfast room through an exit different from the one she’d entered. She twisted its brass handle and pulled the door open, finding herself in unfamiliar surroundings, a tiny gem of a pond sitting complacently in the not-too-far distance.
Accompanied by her pounding heart and heaving breath, she dashed across springy, close-cropped turf toward the water. It occurred to her that she could hie herself to Rosebud Cottage, gather Eva, Ariel, Tilly, and Nell, and flee, yet again.
It wasn’t too late . . . Or was it?
She needed a moment, just one moment, to collect herself and a rational thought. This pond with its elegant willows draped over the water’s edge and its quaint white pavilion on the far side was the perfect spot to amass enough rational thoughts to formulate a plan. A breeze lifted off the water, rippling the placid surface and permeating the wool of her dress. As the sheen of perspiration cooled across her skin, her eyes drifted shut with the pleasing sensation. At last, the space to think.
“Isabel Galante,” she heard at her back.
Her fingernails dug into her palms. On the count of three, she pivoted and found Montfort approaching and wearing a smile, one that could be construed as paternal, if one didn’t know better. Unfortunately, she did.
“Or should I call you Lady Percival and offer my congratulations?”
Isabel’s mouth pressed into a firm line, and her jaw clenched. She was unable to trust herself to speak. Not that he expected her to. Not when he was toying with her.
“My dear, you do look peaked, but if ever a view could cure a megrim, it would be this one.” He knew her excuse to leave the breakfast room had been a lie. “You know,” he continued conversationally, “I doubt there’s a single fish in there.”
Dios mío. Her heart was thundering in her chest and her future flashing before her eyes, and he was talking about a pond? “Then what is its use?” she asked, irritation bleeding into her tone. She wished he’d get to it—whatever it he had planned.
“Funny you should ask,” he replied. Somehow, she’d asked the exact question he wanted to answer. “You’re rather like an ornamental pond.”
Isabel blinked. How did one react to such an outlandish comparison? “Your logic may be too advanced for my feeble brain.”
“Only that there is great value in pure ornamentation. Beauty can distract.”
Was he saying she was of no more value than her face?
“With your beauty,” Montfort went on, “you could have married some sort of landed gentry or a widowed lord. It’s even possible a brash lordling would have overlooked your rather unfortunate lineage. After all, you don’t look like one of them.”
Isabel’s stomach flipped, and annoyance shifted into a rising anger. “One of who?” She knew exactly who, but she wanted him to speak it plainly, so she could hate him more.
Montfort flicked a dismissive wrist. “Your people.”
She resisted the impulse to touch Mama’s pendant, the hamsa, a symbol of their people that was said to ward off the evil eye. If only it could work its power on one evil man.
“Your mother and father took their responsibility of protecting you from your heritage seriously. It was quite well done of them. I see no evidence that it infects your relationships out in the world. You don’t speak the language, do you?”
Isabel wished she could throw offensive Hebrew syllables at this man. But their parents had refused to teach either her or Eva.
Montfort jutted his chin toward the manor house. “I doubt anyone in that room suspects.” His gaze narrowed, penetrating. “It won’t serve you to take my words hard, Isabel. I’m simply stating the truth of the world in which we live. Eva understands it.”
Anger turned to acid in Isabel’s stomach. “Do not speak to me of Eva.”
“Now, now, no need for all that.” He’d become all paternal placation. “She came with me by choice, as did you.”
“And the laudanum you gave her?” Isabel spat. The question had wrung her insides to rags for too many months.
“Provided by a most reputable physician—”
“A physician provided by whom?”
“—For her nerves.”
“Nonsense,” Isabel said, unable not to. She understood precisely why Montfort had encouraged Eva’s dependence on laudanum. To ensure her compliancy. “Eva has nerves of steel.” Had, Isabel silently amended. Eva had returned to her six months ago a shell of the woman she’d once been.
“It was her choice.”
And what of her babe? Isabel didn’t ask. She swung around, no longer able to lay eyes on Montfort. What choice had Ariel?
She shuddered at the memory of him as a newborn, struggling and shivering, squirming in pain that wouldn’t resolve, causing him to cry when awake and be fitful when asleep. Its cause was the laudanum, the midwife had said. She’d seen it before.
“Laudanum?” Isabel had asked the woman, confused.
“Aye.”
“But she needs it. She trembles without it.”
“I’m tellin’ ye what I’ve observed these last thirty years of midwifin’. And babes born to mums ’oo take it, come out like this, all shaky and mis’rable, poor mite. Two more things I’ll tell ye fer free: git ye a wet nurse and stop givin’ yer sister that rubbish.”
Montfort drew abreast with Isabel, and they stared out in parallel at the pond. “Speaking of dear Eva, where is she while you’re off gallivanting about the countryside and marrying the younger sons of dukes?”
It hadn’t occurred to Isabel that Montfort wouldn’t know Eva was here. He seemed to know all. But not this. Well, she wouldn’t be the one to tell him.
Neither would she tell Eva that Montfort was here. She didn’t know how her sister might react, but no good could come from it, that she knew with certainty.
“She’s with the babe.” It was the truth, if only a fraction of it. Isabel had never developed the knack for telling a convincing lie.
When Eva had returned to the shop, ripe with child, Isabel hadn’t been able to contain the first question out of her mouth. “Who is the father?”