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Angelo felt something loosen in his chest at that note of wry amusement. This was the real Isolde emerging. Not the frightened woman hiding from judgment, but someone with depth and complexity and a capacity for finding dark humor in difficult circumstances. Amused by her own selfishness, while impressive in her selflessness.

“I am certain the yarrow will recover,” Angelo said gently. “And Lady Trenwith would gladly replace every plant in your garden if she knew what you sacrificed to help her.”

“She must never know,” Isolde said quickly, tension returning to her voice. “No one can know. I cannot⁠—”

“Cannot what?”

“Cannot be known.” The words emerged as barely more than a whisper. “Cannot step into the light where everyone can see me, judge me, recoil from me. You believe I am brave, but I am not. I am a coward who hides in walls and only ventures out under cover of darkness.”

“That is not cowardice,” Angelo said firmly. “That is self-preservation after years of being wounded by people who ought to have known better.” He paused, gathering his thoughts. “But Isolde … you cannot live your entire life in hiding. You deserve more than that. You deserve friendship and conversation and the opportunity to share your considerable gifts with people who will value them.”

“People like you?” Her voice held something raw, something almost like anger. “People who kiss marked women in darkness and make them believe, just for a moment, that they might be worthy of affection?”

The accusation struck Angelo hard. “Is that what you think? That I kissed you as some sort of charitable gesture?”

“What else am I to think?” Isolde demanded, and now there were definitely tears streaming down her cheeks, glittering like scattered diamonds in the moonlight. “You are handsome and accomplished and could have any woman you wished. Why would you choose someone like me unless it was pity dressed up as attraction?”

Angelo felt his own frustration rise to meet hers, the careful patience he had maintained beginning, at last, to give way beneath the weight of her disbelief.

“Because I cannot breathe properly when you are not near! Because the sound of your music haunts me through every waking hour, and I lie awake at night straining to hear it again. Because when you trusted me enough to let me hold you, I understood for the first time what it means to want something so fiercely it terrifies me.” His voice had grown rough, stripped of all pretense, and he did not try to soften it. “Not because I pity you, Isolde. But because I⁠—”

He stopped himself barely in time, the word he had almost spoken hanging unspoken between them.

Too much, too soon, too heavy to place upon shoulders already burdened with so much doubt and fear.

“Because you what?” Isolde asked, her voice barely audible.

Love you …

“Because you have become necessary to me,” Angelo finished, the truth of it raw in his throat. “In ways I do not fully understand. In ways that frighten me as much as they exhilarate me. I did not come to Cornwall seeking this. I did not expect to find a woman who makes me question everything I thought I knew about myself. And yet here I am, sitting in the cold, desperate for you to believe me.”

Isolde regarded him for a long moment, moonlight catching in the tears on her cheeks. When she finally spoke, her voice was small and wounded.

“I do not know if I can believe that. I wish to. God help me, I wish to so desperately. But I have learned that longing is dangerous. That the sweetest hopes leave the bitterest wounds.”

Angelo understood what she was telling him. She was retreating, pulling back from the connection they had begun to forge, protecting herself against the possibility of being wounded again.

And he had no notion of how to stop her.

“What if I prove it to you?” Angelo asked desperately. “What if I demonstrate, through actions rather than words, that what I feel is genuine? Would you grant me that chance?”

“How?” Isolde’s question was barely audible. “How does one prove something like that?”

“I do not know,” Angelo admitted. “But I shall find a way. I swear to you, Isolde, I swear on everything I hold sacred, I shall find a way to show you that you are valued not for pity, but for yourself. That the mark you carry does not define you in my estimation. That I see you, truly see you, and what I see is beautiful.”

Silence stretched between them, heavy with unspoken fears and fragile hopes. The ocean continued its eternal movement below, indifferent to human struggles. The moon traced its path across the sky, marking time’s passage regardless of whether hearts were breaking or mending.

Neither of them moved to leave.

Angelo became acutely aware of the space between them, mere inches of cold stone that felt like an insurmountable chasm. And the night was unnaturally still, as if the world itself were holding its breath.

CHAPTER 13

"I was compelled to remain in uncertainty on a point where suspense is almost intolerable."

Ann Radcliffe

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