Mary stopped. The memory rushed forward, vivid and unwelcome. His hand in her hair. The taste of brandy. The sound he made against her mouth. She picked up her embroidery and stabbed the needle through the linen.
“Yes… He… kissed me.”
“And?” Isabella leaned forward. “Was it terrible?”
“It was the furthest thing from terrible.” Mary pulled the thread through and realized she had stitched the petal to the back of the fabric. She set the hoop down. “It was extraordinary, Isabella. And then he apologized and walked away and has barely looked at me since.”
“He apologized?” Isabella’s brow furrowed.
“As though he had stepped on my foot at a ball.”
Isabella pressed her lips together. “Mary. Listen to me carefully. A man does not kiss a woman the way you have just described and then apologize because he felt nothing. He apologizes because he felt too much, and it frightened him.”
“You sound very certain for someone who was not there.”
“I am certain because I have eyes, and I used them at your wedding. The way he looked at you during the vows, Mary….” Isabella picked up her tea and took a sip. “The Duke of Blackholm is not indifferent to you.”
Mary traced the edge of the embroidery hoop with her finger.
“I wish Charlotte were here,” she said.
The words arrived without warning, rising from a place beneath the conversations about kisses and husbands and needlework. Isabella’s expression changed.
“I know,” Isabella said.
“She would know what to do. She always knew what to do. When I had my first season and that awful Lord Chelworth kept asking me to dance, Charlotte pulled me behind a pillar and told me exactly how to handle him. What to say, what to overlook, when to smile and when to walk away.” Mary’s throat tightened. “She was braver than anyone gave her credit for. Everyone saw the pretty face and the good manners, and they assumed she was simple, but Charlotteunderstoodpeople. She could read a room better than any diplomat.”
“And she could read you best of all.”
“She could.” Mary smoothed the fabric in her lap. “And I failed to read her. She was planning to leave for heaven knows how long, and I saw nothing. I noticed she smiled less and that she was quiet. But I told myself it was bridal nerves, because that was easier than asking the questions I should have asked.” She looked at Isabella. “If I had asked, she might have told me. She might have stayed. Tommy might have a mother who holds him instead of an aunt who is learning as she goes.”
Isabella set aside her tea and her embroidery and moved to the settee beside Mary. She took Mary’s hand and held it between both of hers.
“You are not an aunt learning as she goes. You are the woman raising that child. And Charlotte’s leaving was her choice. You could not have stopped her any more than the Duke could have stopped his brother.”
“I could have tried.”
“Oh, darling, please don’t drown yourself in past possibilities.” Isabella squeezed her hand. “You are doing everything right, Mary. The baby. The house. Even the impossible husband. You are holding all of it together.”
“The stitching is appalling, though.”
Isabella laughed, and the sound broke the tension open. “The stitching is genuinely dreadful. And yet you tell me you bandaged a knife wound on this man without flinching.”
“Embroidery and wound dressing are entirely different skills. One involves roses. The other involves a man bleeding on a kitchen chair at three in the morning. I find I perform better under duress.”
“Then we should find you a different hobby. Watercolors, perhaps.”
“I am worse at watercolors.”
“Then we will find something you cannot stab yourself doing.” Isabella kept hold of her hand. “Write to me more than three lines next time. I need proper details. The kiss alone deserved at least a full page.”
Mary managed a smile. The drawing room was warm, and Isabella’s hand was solid in hers, and for a few minutes the house felt less vast and the silence less heavy.
This was not Charlotte. No one would ever be Charlotte.
But Isabella was here, and she was real, and she did not flinch from the mess of Mary’s life, and that was its own kind of grace.
They picked up their embroidery and returned to their respective disasters, and Mary stitched another petal while Isabella corrected her angle, and the afternoon settled around them, and for the first time in days, Mary did not feel so terribly alone.