Lily’s finely arched brows drew together and she tilted her head to the side. One gleaming curl rested prettily on the shoulder of her red dress. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Isabelle shook her head again. “No.”
“Why not?” Lily took Isabelle’s cup and set it aside, then scooped both of Isabelle’s hands in her own. “You must stop thinking of yourself as some kind of pariah. You’re divorced, not diseased. No one else is going to … catch it.” Her full lips turned up in a sympathetic smile. “You’ve been in exile long enough,” Lily continued. “I assure you, no one is talking about you at all anymore.”
Isabelle regarded her warily. “Really?”
Lily nodded. “You’re not nearly as interesting as you think you are.”
Isabelle laughed, then drew a nervous breath. “Oh, I just don’t know. I would feel so conspicuous.”
“It’s just a family affair,” Lily assured her. “You wouldn’t know anyone there, and they don’t know you, either — except for my parents, of course, and they adore you. It will be a perfect first step.”
Isabelle sighed. “It does sound like an ideal reintroduction to respectable company. But, something has happened that may delay my plans.” She went into her bedchamber to retrieve Alexander’s letter and handed it to her friend.
Lily scanned the page, then clicked her tongue. “The absolute gall of the man.” Her fist closed around an edge of the page. She shook it in front of her. “How dare he? Punishing you yet again? What does he hope to accomplish by cutting you off?”
“I don’t know.” Isabelle pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. “But you see, now is not the time for me to try to go back into society. I’ll have to work first, save a little money — ”
“Work?” The word fell from Lily’s mouth like a bite of rotten egg. “What do you mean?”
“I have to earn money,” Isabelle explained calmly. “I’ve given it a great deal of thought. I’ll do something small to start, perhaps take in mending. I can’t rely upon unexpected visitors to keep me in tea.”
Lily blushed.
Isabelle stood and paced the length of the small room. “I should like to open a shop, eventually. Perhaps a millinery.”
“You don’t make hats,” Lily pointed out.
“There is that,” Isabelle agreed. “Perhaps I could import them. From Paris.”
Lily’s eyes widened. “Smuggled bonnets? I really can’t imagine you mingling with the criminal element. Not at all a respectable endeavor.”
“I suppose not.” Isabelle tapped her chin. “There must be something!”
“We’ll think about it this week, all right?” Lily reassured her. “I wonder, though, if you won’t be in your dotage by the time you have enough money to launch yourself again.”
Isabelle sighed and plopped back onto the couch in a rather unladylike fashion. “I just want a family, Lily. Is that really too much to ask? A respectable husband and a few children of my own?”
The familiar emptiness in her heart ached. Childbirth had taken both Isabelle’s mother and the infant girl who would have been her little sister. Her father then fell into a melancholy from which he’d never recovered. Fairfax Hall went without the attention of its master for a decade. Isabelle had likewise gone neglected. Left to the care of doting servants and a tutor, she’d been permitted to do as she pleased.
Her treasured friendship with Justin Miller should never have gone on as long as it did, she now knew. It was not at all the thing for a young lady to be on such close terms with a young man, but no one bothered to put a stop to it. Justin was the one constant source of affection and amusement in her life.
Lily’s family came from their home in Brighton only a couple times a year to visit Mrs. Bachman’s parents, who were neighbors to Fairfax Hall.
Alexander had gone to Oxford, and Isabelle’s Papa spent his time in solitude — in the library, in his study, or wandering the estate. Several times, she and Justin had found him lying on the ground, sleeping beside the white marble tomb he’d built for his wife and child. There was room inside for him, too. It seemed to Isabelle as though he wanted to crawl inside and join her.
Isabelle sometimes wondered how her life would have been different if he had been dead in truth, rather than absent only in mind and spirit. She would have been properly provided for, she supposed, not allowed to develop such hoydenish tendencies. It had been painful, too. As a child, she tried and tried to cheer her father. She danced and sang silly songs. He smiled wanly with eyes devoid of humor and patted her head. Isabelle wondered why she and Alexander weren’t good enough. She missed Mama, too, but there were still people she loved around her. Didn’t Papa love her? She was certain there was something — some one thing — that would make him better. Isabelle spent countless hours trying to find it.