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Her voice came from everywhere and nowhere, echoing through the hall in a way that made it impossible to determine her location. The acoustics of Grimsfell seemed designed specifically for this. For conversations conducted across distances, for secrets shared between speaker and listener who could never quite find each other.

The question pierced Angelo like a blade between his ribs.

“Because I wished to,” he said, putting all his sincerity into the words. “Because I have thought of nothing else since the moment I first heard you play. Because you are the most extraordinary person I have ever encountered, and the privilege of kissing you felt like the greatest gift I could receive.”

His own words echoed back as he delivered his declaration. Wished to … thought of nothing else … extraordinary … greatest gift …

“Not because you pity me?” The reflection wavered slightly, as if Isolde had shifted her position in the darkness. “Not because you are kind and I am pathetic? A creature to be rescued rather than desired?”

The pain in those words made Angelo’s throat constrict. This was what she truly believed, then. That his interest was merely charity dressed in romantic clothing. That no man could possibly want her for herself.

“Pity you?” His carefully maintained composure cracked beneath the weight of his desperation. “I yearn for you, Isolde. I spent all day attempting to find a way to reach you, searching for mechanisms and passages, hoping for any glimpse of your presence. Do you understand? I have spent these past days in a state of such distraction that Nicholas has accused me of having my wits addled. Lorenzo believes I have been struck by some mysterious illness.”

He paused, drawing a breath that seemed to scrape against something raw in his chest.

“Nay, I do not pity you. I pity myself … for being so utterly helpless. For being unable to find you when you hide, unable to prove that what I feel is genuine.”

The reflection disappeared.

Angelo stared at the now-empty window, seeing only his own image reflected back. A man standing alone in darkness with a single lantern, looking lost and afraid in a way he had never been before.

Santo cielo!

He looked desperate. Hair disheveled from running his hands through it in frustration, eyes shadowed with sleeplessness, expression naked with longing and fear. This was not the cheerful, optimistic Angelo his family knew. This was someone stripped of his usual defences, vulnerable in ways that ought to have frightened him but somehow felt inevitable.

Perhaps this is what love does. Perhaps it tears away all the masks we wear until there is nothing left but raw, trembling truth.

He had watched Marco fall in love with Molly, had witnessed his brother’s transformation from careful, controlled scholar to a man willing to risk everything for the woman who had captured his heart. He had observed Henri and Gabriel, newlywed and so attuned to each other that they seemed to communicate in glances and touches. He had thought he understood what they were experiencing, had believed himself capable of sympathy for their predicament.

He had understood nothing.

The optimism he had always possessed, that faith in others he had practiced as naturally as breathing, was not present now. For the first time in his five-and-twenty years, Angelo faced the possibility that hope might not be enough. That believing in good outcomes could not make them manifest. That sometimes, despite wanting something with every fiber of your being, you simply could not have it.

The bleakness of that realization was staggering.

Then, cutting through his despair like a blade of light through shadow, he heard it … a soft footfall on stone.

Angelo turned toward the sound and beheld Isolde descending the main staircase. Her graceful movements were careful, no longer attempting to hide. She wore the same ivory dress he had seen before, the black cape wrapped about her shoulders, and her face was angled so he could see only the unmarked left side.

But she was here. Present. Real rather than merely reflected.

Relief flooded through Angelo with such intensity that his knees felt weak. She had not abandoned him after all. Had not retreated so completely into the shadows that he could never reach her again.

“Come,” Isolde said softly when she reached the bottom of the stairs.

She did not wait for his response. She simply turned and walked toward the back of the house, her cape trailing behind her like the train of some midnight gown. Angelo followed without hesitation, his heart pounding so fiercely he could feel it in his throat, not daring to speak lest he shatter whatever fragile truce had brought her back to him.

Isolde led him through corridors he was beginning to know, past the library with its hidden doors, through the servants’ passage, and down to the kitchen, where banked coals still glowed in the massive hearth. The embers provided just enough light to navigate without his lantern, casting everything in shades of amber.

She moved to the door that led to the kitchen yard and pushed it open, stepping out into the cold night air without looking back to see if he followed.

The temperature had dropped significantly since sunset. Angelo’s breath misted in the air, and he was grateful for the heavy coat he had thrown on before leaving his chamber. He noticed Isolde shiver beneath her cape and wished he could offer her additional warmth, but knew such a gesture might send her fleeing once more.

Patience. You must exercise patience.

He followed her into the darkness, watching as she crossed the small yard and passed through the arch that led into the walled kitchen garden. The moon was bright tonight, nearly full, and it painted everything in silver and shadow.

Angelo caught up to her, thinking how he had ventured here on his first night at Grimsfell, drawn by curiosity and the pharmacist’s instinct that had been trained into him since boyhood. He had collected rosemary sprigs, dug yarrow root, cut thyme from beneath the protective cloches placed by the very woman who now walked beside him.