Chapter Twenty-One
Matthew’s neck had a crick. He grinned as he worked the pinched muscle with his hand and remembered exactly how he’d gotten it—hours with his wife, tangled with her in his bed as she arched beneath him in wild abandon. He’d left her there, soundly sleeping, her naked body spread across his sheets and ready for him when he finished with a few items on his to do list.
Something he raced to do now. Then he’d have to decide how he’d wake her. Tongue? Hands? Cock? So many possibilities.
In the distance, he heard a faint sound. A thud, and he frowned as he looked at the clock above his mantel. It was nearly three. Late for a servant to be up and about, though he wouldn’t put it past Portman to already be seeing to the daily routine. The man never stopped.
It was silent now, though. Matthew bent his head back to his work. He’d ask the butler about it tomorrow. Perhaps Isabel could be part of the discussion. She would likely be able to charm him into taking a new schedule.
How could anyone deny her?
He dipped his quill into the pot of ink and scratched a few words along the vellum before him. He had nearly lost himself in the act when the door to his study clicked shut. He lifted his gaze and found himself looking down the barrel of a gun. A gun being held by Fenton Winter.
He jolted back against his chair, pushing away from the weapon as far as he could go as he forced himself to look up at his attacker. Winter’s hair was wild, his eyes were glassy, his hands shaking as he leveled the pistol at Matthew’s head. He looked unwell and unbalanced, and none of that made this situation any less fraught with peril.
“W-Winter,” Matthew stammered in shock. “What are you doing? How did you get in here?”
“I’ve watched you for so long,” Winter said, his voice shaking like his hands. “I know there’s a side door your butler sometimes accidentally leaves unlocked after deliveries. I’ve even used it once or twice before. Stepped into your house and stood in your pantry, then let myself out again. Just to know I could when I needed to.” He motioned the weapon in Matthew’s face. “Get up.”
Matthew slowly lifted his hands and pushed his chair back from his desk. As he came around the furniture and stood face-to-face with Winter, he shook his head. He had spent so much time trying to convince Isabel that there was nothing to fear from her uncle, that his past actions would dictate all his future ones. It seemed he had been very wrong.
“I should have listened to her,” he said softly.
Winter’s eyes lit up. “Her. Angelica?”
“No, your niece,” Matthew whispered. “Isabel.”
Winter’s gaze dropped a fraction, filled with guilt. “She will understand someday. I hope she’ll understand.”
“No.”
Both men glanced toward the door, and Matthew’s heart dropped. Isabel was standing there, wrapped in his robe, her hair down around her shoulders. Beautiful and his, but perhaps only for a few more moments. She was staring at her uncle, pleading in her eyes. Terror.
“Go upstairs, Isabel,” Matthew said. “Please.”
She shook her head. “I shall not,” she said with firm determination.
“Do as he says,” Winter barked.
She flinched at the angry tone, but didn’t obey either of them. Instead, she stepped into the room and toward them. Step by step, Matthew tracked her, tensing with every step until she wedged herself in front of him, her uncle’s pistol now pressed into her chest instead of Matthew’s.
“What are you doing?” Winter hissed. “Get out of the way.”
“Isabel.” Matthew grabbed her arm and tried to shove her aside, but she set her feet wide and tensed her body against him.
“Stop it, both of you,” she said.
She lifted her chin and looked evenly at Winter. His hand shook even more, and Matthew tensed. If that gun fired, Isabel would die. There was no doubt. But she didn’t stop. She didn’t step away. And she didn’t seem to care because she was determined to protect him.
And he realized, in that awful moment, that he loved her beyond measure. And he might lose her.
“What are you doing, uncle?” Isabel asked, and was proud that her voice sounded remarkably calm, considering what was happening.
“You wouldn’t help me,” Fenton said, his voice pleading as if he could make his case with her. “I can’t wait anymore, I can’t watch anymore, while he gets to go on and my Angelica is in a cold, dark grave all…all alone.”
When his breath caught, she felt Matthew shift behind her. The pain both of them felt in that moment was palpable. Mirror images, though it had torn them apart. She wondered briefly it they could have helped each other, once upon a time. If her uncle hadn’t resorted to anger, would they have been able to hold each other in their grief until they survived it?
Sadly, they would never know. Because here they were. And her uncle was determined to destroy Matthew.
“You will have to shoot me in order to take him,” she said, the words like sandpaper in her throat. She meant them despite the terror they engendered deep within her, in some primal place that screamed at her to live no matter what.
The part that loved Matthew was stronger.
“Isabel!” Matthew hissed, his tone sharp and desperate behind her.
She ignored him and remained focused on Uncle Fenton. “Is that what you’re willing to do?”
He stared at her. His eyes were glassy, but somewhere deep inside of him she still saw the flicker of his true self. The man he’d been before his child had been torn from him. The man who would never hurt her.
She had to believe that man would win over the one overcome by irrational hate.
“Please don’t make me,” he said, his hands trembling even more. She held her breath, for she knew that gun could fire at any moment.
“No one will make you become a murderer,” she said. “You will have done that yourself. You will be a murderer. And he still won’t be.”
“He will. He is.”
She shook her head. “He isn’t. I loved Angelica, but I see her with a more realistic view, perhaps more than either of you. She was wonderful, and she could be petulant and spoiled and irrational. You remember when I won that scavenger hunt when we were twelve?”
Her uncle blinked, like he hadn’t thought of Angelica as anything but a corpse for so long that a memory of her as a child seemed foreign. “She—she was angry. She threw your prize into the river.”
She nodded. “She would have her way, no matter how ridiculous it was.”
“She was a girl then,” Fenton snapped, his angry gaze focusing on her. “It was different when she was older.”
“Was it?” she asked, trying hard to hold her ground. Happy that Matthew was standing behind her, rigid with rage and terror, but allowing her this opportunity to end this night with no bloodshed. Like he…trusted her. “Is it truly so hard to believe that she would have a fit of pique over not getting her way? That she would take what she wanted regardless and do it without a thought to the consequences?”
Her uncle wavered a little, but she gasped at the sight of it. Her words were sinking in.
“I don’t know,” he whispered.
“You want to blame someone else because the pain is so deep, so powerful. So unyielding that the rage is all you have to keep it at bay. But if you kill Matthew, it will not change a damn thing about what you’ve lost. It will only turn you into a monster that your daughter would have turned away from in horror. Is that what you want? What you truly want? To kill this man Angelica loved? Who…I love.”
Matthew tensed at her back, but she ignored him. If she was going to die protecting him, she needed him to know what she felt. If she lived, they could deal with the result later.
“Isabel,” her uncle whispered, his tone heavy and mournful.
She continued, “Are you truly planning to destroy the last good thing in your daughter’s life just to make yourself feel momentarily better?”
He stared at her, his eyes now full of a desperate plea for help. She saw it there, and she said, “Please, Uncle Fenton, put the gun down. Don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt him. It’s all I ask of you.”
His hand shook, harder than ever, and then he lowered the pistol and sank to his knees. Loud sobs racked him and she dropped down beside him, hugging him as she pushed the gun out of reach and let him cry. She looked up at Matthew, his eyes soft with pity and dark with fear and relief. He touched her shoulder, his fingers pressing into her before he strode to the door and rang the bell for Portman to come.
Matthew stood at the dim light of dawn that sparkled through the windows into his study. He had never been so happy to see another morning, to face another day and know that Isabel was still alive in it.
As if he had conjured her, she entered the room and came to a stop. He stared at her, with the shadows beneath her dark eyes, with the evidence of her tears still lined on her face, with her lower lip trembling. And then she made a soft sound and crossed the room to him. She fell into his arms, her entire body shaking as he held her. And he shuddered too as the gravity of what they’d just endured hit him squarely in the chest.
He had lost one woman he loved. To lose another would have killed him. He knew that. He felt it to the very bones in his body, and he crushed her closer out of pure protective instinct.
They stood there a moment and then he pulled away. “You are exhausted. Come sit by the fire.”
She followed silently and settled onto the settee, resting her head on his shoulder as he smoothed his hands along her side. She let out a long, shuddering sigh. “You were kind not to report my uncle to the authorities,” she said. “Kinder than perhaps he deserves.”
He pressed his lips together hard. “I did it for you,” he said. “And for her.”
“Angelica,” she whispered.
He nodded and pressed a kiss to her temple. “Where will they take him?”
She sat up and turned toward him. “They are distant cousins, but they were eager to help him. He’ll go to the country for a while. It will be good for him to be away from his shrines. Perhaps he’ll be able to sit through his grief at last and come out the other side to the man I once knew.”
“I will ask for reports regularly,” Matthew said, setting his jaw. “To be certain he never threatens you again.”
She touched his face. “He was threatening you, Matthew. Not me.”
“Hard to recall when the barrel of the gun was pressed into your chest,” he said, his tone sharper than he’d meant it to be. It was hard to meter it when the terror flared up again. “I should have listened to you when you warned me of his intentions. When I think of what could have happened. How I could have lost you…”
He trailed off, for he wasn’t ready to voice those words out loud yet. They had too much power in his head.
“It must have brought back terrible memories,” she said gently. “Of losing her.”
He shook his head. “It wasn’t memories that troubled me, Isabel. It was thinking about my future without you that drove me mad. It had nothing to do with Angelica.”
Her lips parted and she stared at him, her face bright with disbelief. He hated to see it there, but why wouldn’t it be? He hadn’t let her in over the weeks they’d been thrown together. He hadn’t trusted her or allowed the growing connection he felt toward her to flourish.
The love that he had realized almost too late.
He took her hand, smoothing his thumb over it as he tried to find the words to explain. He had to say those first, before he spent the rest of his life performing actions to prove himself to her. “You said something to me on our wedding night. Something that has weighed on my mind ever since.”
She tilted her head. “What did I say?”
“You asked me what the chances were that we would find each other at the Donville Masquerade.”
She shrugged. “It was an offhand comment, though.”
“What were the odds, Isabel?”
She jolted at his insistence and shook her head. “One in a hundred, perhaps?”
“Perhaps one in a thousand,” he offered. “There were dozens of steps that had to be taken by each of us so that we would both be taken to that place that night. The path was almost impossible.”
“I don’t understand, so it was chance, what about it?”
“It wasn’t chance,” he whispered.
She drew back, and her utter confusion was adorable and heartbreaking all at once. “What else would it have been, Matthew? You said you believed I didn’t plan the encounter, I know you didn’t. So how could it be anything but chance?”
“Angelica,” he said.
She tensed and tugged at her hand, but he held fast. She couldn’t run now, he couldn’t let her. Not until she understood that he wasn’t comparing her to the woman he’d lost.
“She loved me,” he said. “And she loved you. Is it so hard to believe that she might look at us from the beyond and want us to find each other?”
Her bottom lip had begun to tremble again. “Why? For what purpose?”
“Because she knew we could love each other,” he suggested.
Her eyes went wide. There it was, sinking in, a better understanding of what he was implying. Of what he wanted and needed from her. But she still didn’t quite have faith. Doubt still ruled.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
He touched her chin. “Look at me.”
She faced him, her lips pressed together, her hands clenched against his.
“I love you, Isabel.”
Matthew’s words were like the shot to her heart her uncle hadn’t taken, and she recoiled from their power. But he wouldn’t let her run. He held her gently, watching her, waiting for her to steady herself.
Waiting for her to believe what was entirely impossible. A dream that she had accepted would never be reality.
But he offered it to her now. Why? She didn’t know, but she feared it was not because those feelings were true.
“You are overwrought,” she said past a thick tongue. “You are grateful you didn’t die and feel obligated because I stepped between you and my uncle.”
He smiled. “I am not overwrought.”
“You are—”
“Very well, if you believe that then I shall simply take you upstairs and make love to you in my heightened emotional state, and tomorrow I will start this conversation over. If it doesn’t work then, I will try the next morning and the next and the next.” He cupped her cheeks. “Until you believe me.”
Her heart swelled as he brushed his nose against hers, gentle. Intimate. Sweet and so loving. Almost enough that she could have faith in what he said.
“I don’t understand,” she said at last. “How could you love me?”
He drew back a fraction. “The better question is, how could I not? You are…everything, Isabel. Intelligent and kind, strong beyond measure, even to a fault, as you proved today. You are beautiful and alluring. You have awakened all the best parts of me, even the ones I thought no longer existed. You make me want to live. To wake up every day and see you across my breakfast table, to dance with you at balls, to bring you home…or even sometimes to the Donville Masquerade if you’d like to be very naughty, and make love to you.”
She blushed hot even as his words seared into her soul. Could she believe them? Believe him?
He shook his head. “I realize I have given you no reason to return my feelings. I recognize your declaring yourself earlier was a ploy to stop your uncle.”
She couldn’t hold back the bark of laughter at the very idea. “A ploy? No, not at all. From the first moment a stranger stepped between me and a man bent on harm and destruction, I have been falling in love with him. With you.” She stared at him. What he was suggesting was the greatest risk, the greatest leap she would ever take. But with the biggest payoff of all. “I-I love you,” she said.
“You do?” he repeated, and sounded just as confused as she had felt just a few moments before.
“Yes!” she burst out, and began to laugh. Because there was so much joy to be had and happiness, so much light in the future they’d share. “Must I prove it?”
His eyes lit up and he dragged her closer. Into his lap and his arms and fully into his life. He smiled. “I think so.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her forehead to his as all the joy in the world filled her. “With pleasure,” she murmured before she claimed his lips.