Page 37 of The Duke's Improper Bride
Isaac had promised she could decorate it as she wished and make it a haven for herself. She couldn’t bring herself to tell him that it was already perfect—dripping in blue silk and appointed with a gorgeous canopy bed fit for a queen. Then there was the sapphire settee perched just below the large bay window overlooking out into the back garden, now in full bloom.
What a gorgeous bedroom in a gorgeous house. In a city that thrummed with life—the good and bad.
Nora tugged at her dress’s collar as she raced down the front stairs, her eyes trained on the floor.
She turned, pausing in the doorway to look back upon the life she could have had with Isaac. If he loved her, why hadn’t he told her the truth? Better yet, why had he been so quick to shape her into who she wasn’t?
Nora could never be a duchess. She could never host dinner parties and head charities and attend grand balls. She could never be the wife Isaac truly needed.
But oh, how she wished she could be.
“I love you,” she whispered into the empty house.
The words fell into the air around her, wasted. But they were still true.
* * *
It had been nearly a week.Isaac thought the worst of it had been when Nora asked for an annulment.
It wasn’t.
It was when he returned home early the next morning. A little too drunk after spending time at his club, he discovered his wife had left during the night.
Isaac had sat on the edge of her bed for some time. He could still smell the heather that wrapped around her on the sheets. He had grown used to waking up to her in the morning, to kissing her before he fell asleep every night.
Now she was gone.
Almost as quickly as she had swept into his life—the windblown woman with the scarlet ribbons, in the middle of the highlands looking perfectly in place—sure of who she was.
“The last time I came upon you here, lying just as you are now, I was soaked to the bone and a parrot nearly flew into my head.”
Isaac inwardly groaned.
He returned to Burton Hall only yesterday, unsure of where else to go. London no longer felt like home with Nora gone. Let the gossip spread. He didn’t care a lick. But he wasn’t in the mood for a lecture from Clara either.
“I said I would feed the children to the tiger,” he told her. Isaac’s head ached, his body feeling as if it had been thrown off that cliff in Corsica all over again. He opened his eyes but remained still on the sofa. “And you arrived soaked from the rain, after walking from the train station with that ridiculous trunk of yours, telling this wild lot that you were here to fill the governess post.”
Clara chuckled, pushing off from the doorway to enter. “Yes, that’s right.”
“And the gardens were full of brambles, the house was falling in upon itself, and Bly was hellbent on saving us all.”
“What’s wrong now?” she asked soberly.
Isaac clutched his tumbler of whiskey tighter, sighing, upset the former sofa had been replaced. Nothing in this house was broken anymore, not with Clara and Bly together.
It might be romantic if it wasn’t such a fitting reminder that he had failed his wife.
“I’ve went and done it this time, darling. And I’m afraid I won’t be able to fix it.”
Clara raised an eyebrow and sat on the sofa’s arm. “It can’t be all bad. I’ve found nothing is over when you believe it to be.”
“Well, for one,” Isaac said, propping himself up on an elbow, “Bly is the world’s worst cad for leaving you as he did. And two, I have a wife who refuses to be my duchess.”
“So I’ve heard. I wanted to extend my congratulations personally.”
“On not being as much of a cad as Bly?”
“Oh no, if you have a wife who doesn’t wish to be so, I’m most certain you have been a cad. All men are at one point or another.”
