Page 46 of One Night of Surrender
“You know why I didn’t marry,” she said quietly.
Yes, he did.“Why are you here?”
“I came to tell you that Isabelle is leaving in the morning for Oxford.She has an opportunity at a school there.”
Val’s muscles bunched as his heart began to pound.He worked to keep his equilibrium.“Good for her.”
“That’s it?That’s all you have to say?”Viola groaned and rolled her eyes.“You are the most idiotic…” she muttered.
“What am I supposed to say?”
Viola threw her hands up.“Oh, I don’t know.That you love her?That you can’t live without her?But maybe I’ve read this entire situation wrong.First, she won’t admit she loves you and insists she can’t be a duchess, and now you’re behaving as if she’s just another person instead of the woman who stole your heart ten years ago.”
Val gaped at her.“The what?”
“She told me all about Oxford.Maybe notallabout it, but I’m not stupid likesomepeople.”She looked at him from the side of her eye.“So are you going to pretend you don’t love her either?”
Pretend.Yes, that’s precisely what he’d done for a decade now.He’d pretended their night together was something he could keep locked away, that the love he’d felt for her could be ignored.The love he still felt for her.
“No.”
Viola stared at him, her eyes widening to an impossible diameter and her jaw dropping.“You aren’t going to argue with me?”
“Apparently not.”
She snapped her mouth closed and finally blinked.“I honestly don’t know how to react.I may need a vinaigrette.”
“I would douse you in the contents if you’d just be quiet.”He said that because she expected him to.Right now, he actually wanted to kiss her with gratitude.“She doesn’t want to be a duchess?”
“Do you want to make her one?”
“I think I do.”He’d already asked her at the Wicked Duke, but that had been a reaction he hadn’t entirely thought through.Now he had.He wanted to marry her.
His insides somersaulted.He’d cocked it up so badly the last time.It wasn’t that he’d chosen Louisa.None of it had been her fault.
“You think?”Viola stepped toward him, her forehead creasing.“I know you’re afraid, but Isabelle isn’t Louisa.”
“Louisa deserved far better,” he said softly, keeping his voice low.“All she ever wanted was for me to love her.I tried, truly I did.But my heart already belonged to someone else.”
“Isabelle.”
He nodded.“Louisa did what anyone would in the face of rejection.”
“I would argue that not everyone would do what she did, but that doesn’t matter anymore.Louisa is gone, and you can’t change the past.You can, however, control the present.”She brushed a speck of something off his lapel.“Grandmama has taken Isabelle to Almack’s.”
“What?”The word exploded from Val.
Viola giggled, her eyes alight with mirth.“Shocking, isn’t it?Once I explained to Grandmama that you would find your duchesstonightif she only took Isabelle with her, she completely understood.She had to work quickly to obtain a voucher, but you know how the patronesses adore her.If the patronesses had a patroness, it would be Grandmama.”
A truer statement had never been made.
“Honestly, the hardest part was convincing Isabelle to go.Indeed, I fear she may change her mind.I had to leave to come here before they departed.”
Val could imagine Isabelle not wanting to go to Almack’s, particularly since he never wanted to go.Until now.Suddenly, Almack’s was the only place he wanted to be—so long as she was there.“Do you think she went?”
Viola shrugged.“There is only one way to find out.You go, and I’ll go home.If she’s not at Almack’s, you’ll know where to come.”
He leaned down and kissed his sister’s cheek.“Thank you.I shall owe you for this.”
