Page 28 of A Bride for the Heartless Duke
Lost, then. Nicholas raked the street once more, end to end, but already he knew his case was futile. The man was gone.
She looks nothing like you.
The words hung in him like a splinter working deeper.
What had he meant?
CHAPTER NINE
“Do you know where Papa goes?” Sophia asked one evening, her fingers smudged with charcoal as she and Isadora sketched. The girl was so engaged in her drawing that Isadora hadn’t known her mind was so preoccupied.
“What do you mean?” she asked, trying to keep her heart from her mouth.
“Imean, ever since I can remember, he would always go away and come home very late. And sometimes, when he does, he looks different. Like he always wears gloves.” Sophia pursed her lips as she thought, leaving an adorable smudge of black on her nose when she rubbed it. “One time, I wasn’t allowed to see his face for an entire week.”
Isadora’s heart ached.
Of late, Nicholas had been leaving more and more frequently, sometimes to York and other times further afield. As always, he told her nothing about where he was going or when he intended to return. And when he did—because there was at least that; he always, inevitably, returned—there was a distant, different look in his eyes. A sense that he had perhaps seen things he ought not, or that he was fighting to keep from seeing those things.
She wondered what plagued him, what demons he battled to bring that look in his eyes.
But it pained her more than ever to think that Sophia, who was everything sweet and lovely, had noticed those things too.
“Sometimes, gentlemen are busy with business,” she said, drawing long, flowing lines on her paper and smearing them with her thumb a little. Sophia was busy drawing the bowl of fruit, but Isadora was sketching Sophia, long blonde hair falling about her in simple waves that evening, and her small face screwed with concentration.
“What business?” Sophia wanted to know.
“Well, he has a lot of estates, and he must meet with his men of business and bankers and investors, and probably with farmers, too. When you are older, you will learn a little more about the things that go into running an estate. There are countless of them.”
Sophia frowned dubiously. “He used to leave me alone at Winchester much more before you married, and sometimes hewould come back hurt and he would try to hide it, but I would always notice. Why did he stop?”
Injured? “I don’t know,” Isadora admitted.
“And now he goes out again like he used to.”
“Maybe something important has come up?” she tried.
“And why does it make him look so unhappy?”
“I—” Isadora wished someone had given her an instruction manual about how to answer these sorts of questions. No one had prepared her for motherhood in advance; she had read countless booklets about how to comport herself in social settings, and which spoon to use during the many courses at dinner, but she had never once been given this instruction.
Sophia finally tore her gaze away from her drawing. “Do you know?” she asked.
“What makes him unhappy?” Isadora swallowed. Not certain, but she rather thought she herself might have been the cause. Ever since she had followed him, he had started to leave the house increasingly frequently, and every time they saw each other, she felt the heavy tension ofsomethingbearing down on her.
He regretted marrying her. She was sure of it.
“I thought when he married you, he would be happier,” Sophia said, looking back down at the charcoal in her hand, her tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth as she concentrated. “That is why I asked for a Mama. But he seems even sadder than before.”
“Well, perhaps marriage alone can’t simply make people happier,” Isadora said. Her stomach churned, and she felt sick. “Perhaps sometimes it’s something that people need to do.”
“Is it whatyouneeded to do?”
Isadora tried to swallow the lump in her throat. “Yes.”
“Because your family weren’t nice to you?” At Isadora’s surprised glance, the little girl shrugged. “Aunt Marie told me. She says your family weren’t very nice and Papa rescued you. I think he likes rescuing things.”
Burning tears lit Isadora’s eyes, and she did her best to blink them back. “Yes, I think so too,” she managed, and turned the paper around, revealing Sophia’s likeness on the back. “What do you think?”
