Chapter 23
Isabella had waited several days for the opportunity to happen upon her husband in daylight. She knew that he must, at some point, make his way to the little tower in the woodlands once again. It was his habit, and she could not imagine him breaking it very easily, even though he had said it was time to let it be, or knock it down.
Isabella had hovered in her own chamber day after day so that she might have the best view of the little pathway into the woods. She sat in her window hour after hour, hardly daring to let her attention wander in case she missed him.
More than once, she had peered back into the room and then hurriedly turned back to look out of the window, wondering if Elliot had managed to evade her notice at the moment her concentration had lapsed.
She had seen him every evening in the library, without fail, but had never quite found the courage to ask him if he had visited the tower lately or if he intended to. In truth, she still did not dare ask him what it was that he did with his days and where he spent his time since she never accidentally found herself in his company.
In the end, she had simply had to rely on a steady observation of the only place she had ever seen him apart from the drawing room and the library.
And, when she finally saw him slowly walking towards the woodland from her window, Isabella exclaimed loudly in excitement.
She hastily gathered up the shawl that she had left ready and waiting for just such an opportunity, and tore out of the room and down the stairs.
She was relieved not to have encountered any of the servants along the way, lest they make any inquiry and hinder her progress. By the time she had reached the woodland itself, Isabella was already out of breath from her speedy exertions.
She walked so quickly she was almost running in a bid to catch up with him, although he seemed already to be out of sight. He would undoubtedly already be in the tower by the time she reached it, and she knew that she would have to, once more, enter that building whether she wanted to or not.
And, sure enough, when she reached the tower, she could see that the door was ajar. Elliot was already inside.
She peered in and knew instantly that he was up on the next floor, standing in the room where his mother and sister had perished eighteen years before.
“Elliot?” she called out softly so as not to startle him. “Elliot, are you in here?”
For a moment, there was silence. Then she heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps on the floor above.
“Isabella?” he called down quizzically. “Isabella, is that you?”
“It is, Elliot,” she called gently. “May I come up? May I speak with you for a moment?”
“Well… Yes, of course.” She winced as she heard the uncertainty in his voice.
Isabella hurriedly made her way inside and up the stairs before Elliot had a chance to change his mind. But still, she gave him opportunity enough to arrange his position, as he always did. As much as she wanted to make looking upon him normal, she did not want to charge into it, acting boorishly and in a manner that would see him turning away from her again.
“Forgive me, Elliot, I saw you from afar making your way into the woods, and I thought to join you. I hope that you do not mind.”
“No, not at all,” he said, but she did not think he sounded entirely convincing.
“Do you walk a great deal around the estate, Elliot?” Isabella could feel her conversation was a little stunted, almost as if they had not known each other for long, or were meeting for the first time.
“Yes, I try to walk the perimeter of the estate every week. It is a vast area to cover, but I usually manage it. I suppose I spend a good deal of my time out of doors.”
“But I never see you anywhere, Elliot,” she said quietly, feeling a little awkward.
“No, I suppose not. But I am more out and about on the further reaches of the estate, rather than the walled gardens and lawns and what have you. The whole estate is many miles across.”
“Yes, I suppose so. But please, do you keep out of the house and away from the gardens to keep away from me?”
“No, not at all,” he answered a little too quickly for her liking.
“Because if you do, there really is no need.” Even as she spoke, Isabella could see him conscious at every moment that she should not see his face.
“I suppose the truth of it, Isabella, is that I am a good deal more comfortable conversing in the evening. Truly, it is nothing that you have done, and there is nothing at all for you to worry about. I am just more comfortable that way, and that is all.” He shrugged and tried to appear at ease when it was clear he was not.
Moving infinitesimally, Isabella tried to work her way through the room so that she might be face-to-face with him. But every time she took the tiniest of steps, Elliot countered with one of his own, leaving them in the same position as before.
“But do you not feel lonely in the daytime?” she tried again.
“I do not know. Perhaps I am just used to my own company, Isabella.” He peered down at the floor for a moment. “Do you feel lonely in the daytime?”
“Yes, sometimes I do,” Isabella spoke quietly and studied what she could see of his face.
She had never seen a face more handsome than his and wished that the other side was equally as handsome. If only fate had not been so unkind; and if only she did not have to test herself in such a way.
“But your afternoon tea with Miss Montague went well, did it not? And you may invite her here to Coldwell Hall as much as you choose.”
“I thank you, Elliot. And it really was wonderful to see Esme again; I should like her to be a regular visitor if you allow it.”
“Of course.” He seemed relieved for a moment as if the pressure to truly answer her had been lifted.
“But it would be nice if Esme could meet my husband also.” Isabella knew that her voice trembled just a little.
“Oh… I…” He turned away from her, walking towards the window behind the blackened little armchair his sister had once sat in.
“I do not wish to cause you concern, Elliot. And I know that my interference has not been welcome in the past, and I am afraid, in truth, of blundering where I ought not to again.”
“It has been a very long time since I have met anybody outside of this house. I have not met anybody new these last eighteen years barring new staff. And your father, and you, of course.” Again, his head dropped.
Isabella knew that he was thinking of that awful day in the chapel. She knew it without a doubt. She was the last new person he had met, and she had passed out, fainted away in front of his eyes. And now here she was expecting him to go through it again. No doubt he was dwelling on the idea that Esme Montague would also fall to the floor in horror. Or perhaps he thought she would laugh, just as the cruel people in the street had done so many years before.
“I know that I did not behave well when we first met, Elliot, and I am truly sorry. But I should not like to see you hidden away from the world forevermore because of my reaction. And please know that it was my first reaction, not my lasting one.”
“That is very kind of you, Isabella, but I do not seek to test you. I shall not turn and stand before you and search your face for any sign of revulsion. You are human, and you will feel what you will feel. There is nothing that I can do to change that, and I would not seek to change you in any way. And you need not take it upon yourself to have all the responsibility for the events of our first meeting. There were more people than you involved in it and, of all of them, you were the only one who did not have a say. It is a source of great shame to me, even if I was so selfish as to deny my shame at the time.”
“You do not need to feel ashamed, Elliot.”
“Do I not?” he said and, for a moment, she thought he was going to turn to look at her. But he did not. “I could tell what sort of a man your father was the moment I met him, and I knew that your opinion on the subject of marrying me was of little matter to him. It was obvious when he saw no reason for the two of us to meet beforehand.”
“But it is done,” Isabella interjected.
“No, it is not really done,” he said sadly. “Because you have confirmed for me all of my worst fears about your father. And I know that you have not told me everything about your treatment at his hands. But I know enough now to know that you have suffered in your life. I do not wish to embarrass you, Isabella because none of that is your fault. But for you to tell me that I am blameless, that I should be without shame, is not right.” He paused for a moment and cleared his throat loudly. “The truth of the matter is, you have lived your entire life with a man who threatened and bullied and has continued to threaten and bully even though you are now a married woman. You lived your entire life with a monster, only to be married away to another monster. There are many nights when I lay awake knowing that I shall never be able to forgive myself for what I have done to you.”
“But I do not want that. I do not want you to lay awake at night feeling that way. And you are not a monster, Elliot. You are a man. A man who has suffered more than I could ever have understood before meeting you.”
“But that does not change what I did. Just because I suffered in my own life did not give me a right to cause suffering in yours. I do not blame you for collapsing to the floor on the day of our wedding. I would not have blamed you for it even if there was not a mark upon my face. You were meeting your husband for the first time on your wedding day, and it was truly unforgivable. I should never have agreed to your father’s proposal at all. I should never have sought to put my own selfish needs above those of a young woman I had never met.”
“My father came to you?” Isabella did not know why it really mattered.
Of course, it should have come as no surprise to her that her father had approached the Duke with the offer of a daughter for sale. After all, it made sense. Elliot kept himself so much away from the world, so how else was he supposed to have met her father in the first place?
“Yes, I thought you knew.”
“No, I did not know,” she said quietly.
“Then I am sorry again, Isabella. All of this must be extraordinarily painful to you.”
“You do not need to be sorry, Elliot. I had just not thought about it, and that is all. It had not occurred to me that my father had gone from door to door trying to sell me off.”
“I do not think he went door-to-door, Isabella,” he said quietly. “I think he came directly to me, assuming that a man in my pitiable position could do no other than agree. And, in the end, that is exactly what happened, is it not? I was offered the chance of a different life. I was offered company for the first time in a long time, and I seized that opportunity with both hands.”
“If you are expecting me to be angry with you for it, then you are gravely mistaken, Elliot Covington,” Isabella said in a bossy tone. “Because my father is very good at spotting such vulnerability in people. My vulnerability was that I had no power to resist. Yours was that you were lonely and isolated. The fact that my father had played upon both vulnerabilities is an issue that he will have to answer for himself one day to a higher power than either you or me. But, just because this was all born of my father’s greed does not mean that we must live miserably, does it? Can we not take this situation away from my father’s hands, turn it into something new and different? Turn it into something that my father had never assumed it would be, or even cared to think about.”
“It will not be such a simple thing for me to forgive myself.”
“I already know that you do not forgive yourself easily, Elliot. You blame yourself for things that have been out of your control, and I know that you do. That is why you are here at this moment, that is why I find you in this tower again today.”
“Yes,” he said so quietly she could hardly hear him.
“I do not seek to upset you with my words, Elliot. I cannot begin to imagine what you suffered all those years ago and what you still suffer to this day. But I recognize a good human being who blames himself for nothing more than the crime of surviving. And now you are choosing to add to it the crime of loneliness. And yet you cannot see that neither one of these things are crimes. I do not see them as such, and it would be my dearest wish that you would not either.”
“I cannot tell you what it means to me that you have been so kind,” he began, and she could hear the emotion in his voice. “And please believe me when I tell you that it is enough for me that you do not hate me. There is surely many a woman in your position who would hate me without ceasing for the rest of her life, and yet you keep trying to help me.”
“And I shan’t give up trying to help you, Elliot. In helping you, I shall be helping myself.”
“How so?” Again, she had the strangest feeling that he had been about to turn to face her. Again, he did not.
“I do not wish to spend my days in solitude waiting for the evening to come. And as much as I am keen to see my dear Esme as many times a week as she can be free to come, I would wish for your company also.”
“But it is so difficult in the daytime. It is so hard for me when I am talking to you to remember that I am scarred at all, and I am afraid of turning suddenly and then seeing the look on your face.”
“Elliot, we cannot spend forevermore standing sideways onto one another.”
“Are you telling me that you are not afraid?”
“No, I am not telling you that. I am afraid. I am afraid that I will let myself down, I suppose, and in so doing, I would let you down also. And I would not wish to do that to you for the world.”
“Well, you must understand that I have lived a certain way for a very long time now, and it will not be a simple thing for me to break it.”
“I know that. I would not wish to push you into it.”
“So, you must allow me to think for awhile upon everything that you have said.”
“Yes, of course.” Isabella felt her mouth go dry but knew that she must continue. “But will you not turn to me now? Here in this tower, will you not turn to look at me?” Her heart was beating hard and fast.
“No,” he said simply.
“But, Elliot…”
“Since you are afraid of letting me down, I am afraid to see revulsion on your face. When you fainted away in the chapel, it was not as painful for me as you might have thought. But I did not know you then, and I had not expected anything different. But now, now that we have come to know each other as we have, I do not think that I could stand to see your revulsion. I could not bear it.”
“I understand.” Isabella could feel tears in her eyes but blinked at them hard until they dissipated. “But we will both keep trying, will we not?”
“Yes, we will keep trying,” he said, and she could see his handsome smile spreading.