All speech was impossible at so painful a revelation. There can be no proper answer to such anguish — and anguish Isobel clearly felt, had felt during the brief tenure of her marriage, and could not silence even at her husband's untimely end. I could well imagine that the Earl's death had increased, rather than absolved, her sorrow, by heightening her sense of having done him a terrible wrong — a wrong now past all repair.

“The Earl had no notion?” I settled myself on a chair opposite her chaise and took comfort in the heat of the flames. The parkland beyond the Countess's windows was now utterly dark, and the sharp December cold pressed against the house.

Isobel shook her head. “I pray God he did not. Such a betrayal of his best impulses he could not have borne. For his sake, I adopted the strictest propriety; and Fitzroy did the same. No dishonour should come to the man he revered almost as a father while his actions could prevent it.

“That we may have betrayed our sensibility in countless small ways, I do not doubt, when I read that despicable letter,” she continued, gesturing towards Marguerite's note. “Not least among the emotions it causes is fear for my husband's sake. If she saw, who is but a servant, what may he not have seen, and kept to himself in silence?”

I hastened to reassure my friend. “A lady's maid may be even more in her mistress's company than her husband, Isobel. You know it to be true. Marguerite may conjecture only, and her stab in the dark has gone home. From your husband's easy good humour two nights past, I must believe he thought himself the happy man who had won all of your affection.”

“You speak with conviction, Jane.” Isobel's accent was eager. “Did you yourself believe it?”

“I did, until the very moment when Lord Payne dismissed the devil Trowbridge. The Viscount then betrayed a concern for your welfare beyond what is usual in a nephew towards a newly-met aunt. Oh, Isobel, how could two such people as yourselves, possessed of probity and good sense, forget what is due to propriety?”

A log burst of a sudden upon the hearth, scattering glowing embers at our feet, and Isobel started, her eyes on her husband's portrait. I bent for the poker and busied myself at the grate.

My friend touched a trembling hand to her lips. “It does seem mad, I will own,” she replied, “as only such love can be.” She drew breath, and with it perhaps, courage to go on.

“Fitzroy is the true companion of my soul, Jane; we think as with one thought, and when deprived of the chance to speak, may find converse in a look enough to sustain us.”

Her words had a particular power to strike at my heart, being virtually the same as those I had uttered once to myself, about another young man forever out of reach [17]. Clumsily, I dropped the poker, and covered my confusion in retrieving it.

Isobel perceived my dismay, and misinterpreted its cause. Her next words were accordingly sharp. “But I cannot possibly make you know this with all the force of sensibility I feel; not for our practical Jane an indulgence in emotion. It will be enough to make you understand how it came about.”

I was wounded, I will own, for there was a time when such feeling was all I lived for; but that time is past. I resolved not to reproach Isobel for words spoken in the midst of trouble, and endeavoured to put aside self-interest. “Indeed, my dear, I would hear it,” I told her, retrieving my chair, “if it be that you wish to speak.”

Isobel had the grace to look abashed at my kindness, and turned without further preamble to her unfortunate history.

“I first met Fitzroy during the height of the London season, when my engagement to the Earl was already fixed, and my aunt and cousin Fanny had joined me at rooms in Town,” she began.

“I recall your letters of that period. They betrayed no unhappiness, but rather excited expectation of the months ahead.”

“How could they do otherwise?” my friend cried. “We were to embark upon that most frivolous and light-hearted of ladies’ enterprises — the purchase of my wedding clothes. My aunt is well-acquainted with the best warehouses, as you may imagine from having heard her discourse on mourning; and she was invaluable to me in the acquisition of a Countess's wardrobe. I should not have denied her the pleasure in any case; such a venture was to be but the rehearsal for her daughter's wedding, her dearest concern.”

“I may be thankful my own mother's inclinations are in a less material direction,” I said dryly, “for I should assuredly be the ruin of her hopes.”

Having met with my mother frequently while in Bath, Isobel could not repress a smile; but her sad tale reclaimed her attention. “Lord Payne was newly resident in his uncle's Town home, having left his estate in Derbyshire for the season. Fitzroy immediately became the object of my aunt Delahoussaye's excited speculation; for where one union is effected in a family, and the respective members thrown much together, another may well be formed; and to see her daughter as heir apparent to the title I was to assume, by marrying my husband's heir, became my aunt's primary object.”

“It reigns unabated among her schemes,” I could not refrain from saying; “I was nearly pulled from die dance die other evening in Madame Delahoussaye's eagerness to secure Lord Payne as her daughter's partner.”

“And that, after I had already asked Fitzroy to lead Fanny in the first dance, behind his uncle and myself. He detests nothing so much as dancing, however he excels at it; and he regards standing up with Fanny as a punishment. He should rather have partnered you, my dear Jane — he told me so himself.”

“I am flattered. But we digress.”

“In London, my husband-to-be was frequently attended by his men of business, and prevented from escorting me to the season's gaieties as often as he might like. Frederick found it no difficulty, however to send Fitzroy in his place, and my aunt was ready enough to have Fanny make a third.” Isobel stopped short, overcome by memory.

“How many hours the three of us strolled Bond Street, Jane, a lady on Fitzroy's either side; or took the air of the Park in our carriage, Fitzroy seated opposite with Fanny at his right hand. It gradually became a torment; his mind and mine were too much alike not to leap at the chance to converse; we found much in common that thrilled and moved; and yet behind the growing felicity in one another's company, there was a burgeoning despair. The inevitability of my fate approached — and to dishonour the man who had done so much for each of us was impossible. That we thought severally in this vein, without speaking of it to the other — that we had never spoken of the feeling that overcame us in one another's presence — I need not assure you. Such a speech could not but harm.” She fell silent, lost in despondency.

“Until?” I prompted.

The Countess hesitated, as if unwilling to repeat in speech the indiscretions of the past. “Until the day Fanny suffered a slight indisposition, due to her greediness for cold stuffing at dinner the previous evening.”

“It prevented her from accompanying you the next day?”

“It did. We had formed the design of a visit to Hampton Court, by barge up the Thames, and visit we did — though the party was formed of but two.” My dear friend's face was suddenly transformed. “The delight in those few hours, Jane! The carefree happiness of our day! What laughter, what meaning in silence, what trembling in my hand as I took his arm to promenade! We moved through stately rooms and terraced gardens as though they were ours and we had come into our kingdom. A marvelous charade. For a time, we might play at what we never could be.”

A little of Isobel's emotion affected my senses, and I strove for calm. “And you spoke, then, of the future?”