Charles Wentworth was troubled, but he’d been troubled for weeks, ever since his sister left unannounced to head to the east in a stupid attempt at valor, unaccompanied, poorly provisioned, and utterly unready for what lay before her.
Despite all of the things stacked against her, he knew she would be successful.
She always was.
He admired her—despite her penchant for doing dangerous things.
Their swordmaster, Benedict, had a saying for this: “Falling in shit and coming out smelling like roses.” There was, perhaps, not a better explanation for his sister.
He loved her for it.
But he was worried about her this time. Especially since that asshole, Lance Ashcroft, had come inquiring about her suggesting that he had proposed to her and was simply waiting for her reply.
The baron’s statement, “I’ll not have it said that a Wentworth woman came to harm while Lance Ashcroft stood idle,” had come off performative, as almost everything did with Ashcroft.
Charles couldn’t believe for a moment that Scarlet would give that idea any serious consideration. She’d probably dismiss it out of hand.
But, women could be tricky.
He had been learning that recently.
As if on cue, Isabelle knocked and entered his bedchamber without waiting for an invitation.
They had built an intimacy over the weeks since the masquerade ball—a proper intimacy—familiar and candid. There was never a question of impropriety, but she had made herself at home in ways that Charles had found quite endearing and charming. Isabelle had a way of putting him at ease. A comfort that he had never known before her.
She was the daughter of a minor noble, but she put on no airs. She was just simply Isabelle—beautiful, kind, and tender.
Until she wasn’t.
This time, the intrusion into his private space made him cringe.
“Your mother says dinner is nearly ready and she expects you in ten minutes,” she said, sweetly. She came over to the desk where he was sitting and placed her hand on his shoulder. It was a gesture he had loved until a couple of weeks ago.
Now it felt hollow, as if it was something expected of her, rather than something that felt like comfort.
Charles found it increasingly uncomfortable to describe it or name it. Like it was his favorite meal ever, but had become bland and tasteless.
He blamed it on himself.
Could it be possible that he was a typical seventeen-year-old male with feelings as fickle as the wind? Was he starting to fall out of love with her already?
The idea surprised him. He had never thought of himself that way—as the kind of man who could possess feelings of devotion one week and exchange them for feelings of unease the next.
What was wrong with him?
She turned to leave, but he stopped her.
“Would you mind sitting with me for a few minutes?”
“Of course, Charles,” she said, smiling. A smile that seemed painted on, rather than genuine.
“I wonder, if I have done something to upset you?” he asked, and then rushed to finish before she could interrupt him. “I have heard father ask that of mother before. I am led to understand that men sometimes do things that upset their women, but they don’t know what they’ve done and they need gentle reminders of how this was harmful. So I would ask if you could just simply say, gently, what it is that I might have done?”
“Oh, heavens no,” Isabelle said. “You’ve done nothing worth mentioning.”
“Worth mentioning? So something, but you don’t want to mention it?”
“Well,” she said shyly, “There is one small, tiny thing.”
“Tell me, my love. I would correct it immediately!”
“It’s just the matter of our closeness,” she said. “I would have thought that after weeks of courting me that you would have decided whether or not I might be the girl for you.”
This landed as a gut punch.
Two weeks ago, there was never any doubt in his mind. In fact, a ring sat in the top drawer of his desk even now, and he’d been prepared to beg for her hand. But now, he wasn’t sure, and this caused him great heartache.
Maybe that was the problem after all. Maybe they had both reached the point that it was time to declare intentions and ask for her hand, but he had become frightened at the most inopportune time, and this had changed her outlook. This had shifted her somehow.
She had become less tender. The words were still the same. The motions were still the same, but there was no life in them anymore.
There were times when he looked at her that she seemed to be in a totally different world. She always snapped back to attention when he mentioned her name and re-engaged him, but there were times she was elsewhere.
Had he killed their love so early?
Perhaps he wasn’t meant for this. Perhaps he would always hurt people unintentionally and quietly.
The knowledge that he had done that had become quietly devastating.
What more was there to do but try again?
He took her hands, gently.
“Isabelle. You are the girl for me, and I think I am the man for you. I’ve thought that, honestly, since the first night we met. I would just ask for you to be patient with me as I struggle through my emotions as we approach a momentous decision for both of us.
“Oh, Charles,” she said, embracing him. “I was hoping that you still felt that way. There has been some strangeness of late, I know. It is me, perhaps, being frightened by how quickly I have fallen. I too, have had anxiety about that moment.”
He smiled at her and stood, offering his arm.
“That’s good to hear,” he said. “I’m glad we talked.”
“Me too,” she said. “But I think the sooner the better.”
They joined his parents for dinner. Isabelle, as she had been doing for weeks now, sat in Scarlet’s chair.
This didn’t used to bother Charles, but it had been causing him heartburn of late. He wasn’t sure why, but it had felt as if she was intentionally replacing Scarlet.
Thankfully, their talk had settled the matter and he pushed it from his mind, digging into the roast beef, gravy, potatoes, and carrots.
“Mama?”
“What is it?” Elise called from her chambers.
“Can we talk?”
“Give me a moment,” she said.
Charles heard rustling as she donned a housecoat. She opened the door after a short pause.
“Come in,” she said. Then she took his face in her hands. “What’s got you down?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I’ve been thinking about Scarlet a lot.”
“She’s okay,” Elise said. “I just know she is.”
“I worry that Ashcroft went after her. I don’t trust him.”
“Nor should you. He’s as much a snake as his father and his father before him.”
“I’ve a mind that he offed his father,” Charles said. “To become a baron.”
“Hush,” Elise said. “Don’t spread rumors.”
“Not saying he did,” Charles said. “I just wouldn’t put it past him. And then he goes after Scarlet, talking all high and mighty about how great he is for doing it.”
“What’s brought this on?”
“I don’t know. I’m feeling out of sorts. Missing my sister. Things just aren’t right.”
“Everything okay with Isabelle?”
He said nothing.
“Is there a problem?” Elise insisted.
“I think I’m the problem,” he said.
“Nonsense,” Elise said. “There’s nothing at all wrong with you.”
“I just don’t know if she’s the one, Mama.”
“What brought this on? You took some of your inheritance to buy her a ring. You were absolutely positive two weeks ago.”
“I think maybe I’m just a failure at love.”
“Come now,” she said, hugging him. “You’re not a failure. Tell me what’s going on.”
“It’s hard to explain.”
“Try.”
“How do I put into words what made me want her to begin with? She was so full of life! I mean when she walked into the room, she made it brighter for everyone. I felt like the sunrises paled in comparison to her—the sunsets too.”
“And—?”
“It’s like she died inside,” he said. “I can’t put my finger on it, but something happened and not in a good way.”
“Have you talked to her about this?”
“I have. She reassures me that she loves me and she hints that she wants me to make a proposal.”
“There probably isn’t anything to worry about,” Elise said. “People don’t just change overnight. It could be that she has some fears about becoming a wife.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe it’s just me.”
Elise hugged her sun tighter. Then she patted his back. “It’ll be alright. You just wait and see. Love is a beautiful thing.”
“I’m sure you right, Mama.”
“I encourage you to just keep talking to her. Being open and honest about how you are feeling is the best thing you can do for each other.”
“Thanks, Mama,” he said, standing. “I’ll talk with her again tomorrow, I’m sure.”
“What time do you expect her?”
“She’s an early riser. I expect she’ll be here by eight, perhaps nine.”
“We’ll keep breakfast warm then.”
“Thank you, Mama.”
On the third floor of Toffin Place, last room on the left, Isabelle Marlow lay in her bed, staring at the canopy.
She still existed, but was so buried under the layers of the invader in her mind, that she had become only an observer to her own life.
The presence was male. Of that she was certain. She could hear his thoughts. Dark and dangerous. Death was ever on his mind. The death of thousands.
Everyone in Stomrest and beyond.
She felt a prisoner, as if she had been convicted of the worst crimes and locked in a small square stone cell, except she had a window to the life she should have had.
Whatever it was only let little bits of her sneak out. Just tidbits. Enough to inform the conversation without giving herself away. Enough to seem like Isabelle.
Except she was not Isabelle anymore. Not the Isabelle she knew. She was a passenger behind her own eyes, watching herself move through rooms she loved, touch the hand of a boy she loved, and feel nothing reach him. The warmth that used to travel from her chest to her fingertips when Charles took her hands was gone. She could remember it,but she could not find it.
He knew something was wrong. She had seen it in him for weeks now, the careful way he watched her, the slight crease between his brows when she said something that landed wrong.
Charles was very unlike his sister Scarlet who was always about taking action. He was more calm, more patient, more observant. He paid attention to her. And he was doing it now. He was noticing.
But the things he said made her feel that he was falling away from her—that she was losing the only thing that mattered. She hoped he would figure it out and she screamed inside to tell him. But she could not.
She had tried. In the early days she had screamed and fought and thrown herself against the walls of herself until the darkness came — swift and total, like a hand closing over a candle flame. After that she had learned to be still. Stillness preserved what little she had left.
But lately, at night, when the presence retreated into whatever passed for sleep, she could lie in the dark and simply be herself. She could not move. She could not speak. She could blink, and she could cry, and she had done both, quietly, in the small hours when no one was watching.
Patiently, she had mapped the boundaries of her cage, ever feeling at the edges, lookingi for gaps—cracks in the prison.
And then, three nights ago, she had felt it.
Her toes, first. A faint tingling, like a foot falling asleep — except the opposite of that. Like a foot waking up. She had not moved them. She had not dared. She had simply lain still and let the sensation exist and memorized it, so she would know it was real the next time.
Her fingers, last night. Just the tips.
She did not know what it meant. She did not know if it would amount to anything at all. But she thought about Charles’s face — the careful, unhappy way he had looked at her tonight at dinner.
Tears fell from her eyes.
He had called it love, in those early weeks. She had not corrected him, because she had not had the words for it either. She still didn’t. But she knew that whatever it was, it belonged to her, and she intended to have it back.
She blinked, once, in the dark.
She waited.
Stephen B. Anthony is the author of Transmigrant, an epic science fiction thriller, available on both Amazon and Audible.