The Secret Pearl(132)

She smiled at her work.

“I have been guilty of a terrible pride,” he said. “It was as if I believed a woman had to be worthy of me. And yet I am the weakest of mortals, Isabella. I can only look at you and marvel that you have not been embittered or coarsened by your experience. You are far stronger and more independent than you were before, aren’t you?”

“I like to think so,” she said. “I think I realize more than I did before that my life is in my own hands, that I cannot blame other people for anything that might go wrong with it.”

“Will you do me the honor of marrying me?” he asked.

For all the words that had led up to the proposal, she was taken by surprise. She looked up at him, her needle suspended above her embroidery.

“Oh, Daniel,” she said. “No. I am so sorry, but no.”

“Even though I know of your past?” he said. “Even though I can tell you that it makes no difference to my feelings for you?”

She closed her eyes.

“Daniel,” she said. “I can’t. Oh, I can’t.”

“It is as I thought, then,” he said, getting to his feet and touching her shoulder. “But you have severed all relations with him, have you not? I would expect no less of you. He is a married man. I am sorry, Isabella. I am truly sorry. I would wish for your happiness. I will pray for you.”

He left the house quietly while she stared down at her work.

He did not come alone again for several weeks, though he called sometimes with his sister. And he frequently came to the school.

When he did come alone once more, it was during the afternoon of a day when there was no school. He brought a letter with him.

“I would send it back unopened if I were you,” he said to her gravely as he handed it to her. “As your minister, I would advise it, Isabella. You have put up such a strong fight against your weaker self and have come so close to winning the battle. Let me send it back for you. Or destroy it without reading it.”

She took the letter from his hands and looked down at the seal of the Duke of Ridgeway and the handwriting that was not Mr. Houghton’s. It had been longer than four months—or perhaps four years or four decades or four centuries.

“Thank you, Daniel,” she said.

“Be strong,” he said. “Don’t give in to temptation.”

She said nothing, but continued to stare down at the letter. He turned and left without another word.

She hated him. She had not expected ever to feel hatred for him again. But she hated him. He had said that he would never see her again, never write to her. And she had believed him.

She had pined for him, thought she could not live on without one more sight of him or word from him.

And he had written. To open the still-almost-raw wound once again. To force her to begin all over again. And in the future she would never again be able to trust him to keep temptation out of her life.

Daniel was right. She should send the letter back unopened so that he would know that she was stronger than he. Or she should destroy it unread. She should give it to Daniel to send back or destroy.

She went into the parlor and stood it, unopened, against a vase on the pianoforte. And she sat quietly in her favorite chair, her hands in her lap, looking at it.





WELCOME HOME, YOUR GRACE,” JARVIS SAID with his characteristic stiff bow.

The Duke of Ridgeway acknowledged his butler’s greeting with a nod and handed him his hat and gloves.

“The house seems very quiet,” he said. “Where is everyone?”

“All of the guests have left, your grace,” the butler said. “Most of them departed two days ago.”

“And Lord Thomas?” the duke asked.

“Left yesterday, your grace.”

“And where is the duchess?”

“In her apartments, your grace.”

The duke moved away from him. “Have Sidney sent to me,” he said, “and hot water for a bath.”

It was an enormous relief, he thought as he strode along the marbled corridors to his private rooms, to be out of his carriage finally. It had seemed so very empty and so very quiet without her. And there had been little to do all through the journey except think. And remember.

He did not want to do either. He was going to have a brisk bath, change into clean clothes, go up to see Pamela, and then call on Sybil. Thomas had left, then, without her. And he supposed that he would be the villain again, as he had been the last time.

Poor Sybil. He felt genuinely distressed for her, and he knew well how she was feeling—sore, empty, quite unable to convince herself that life could ever again bring any happiness. It was hard sometimes to know with one’s heart as one knew with one’s head that there would ever be reason to laugh again.