THE HEIRESS
EPISODE 27
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Isabelle missed dinner that evening, too
shaken by Leopold’s abrupt arrival and
departure to bear the tedium. She had her
ladies-in-waiting attend in her stead,
too weary
to argue when they insisted it would be best
for appearances’ sake. She knew that Laura
and Marjorie had shared what they’d overheard
with Alicia,
who was all too eager to further
spread the gossip. Isabelle didn’t have enough
fight left in her to attempt to stop them. What
did it matter, anyway? Word would get out that
the Germanian prince had left Highcastle
without his bride-to-be,
so what harm would a
few more details be?
Lissa answered the door when a gentle knock
came later in the evening, Isabelle’s dinner tray
untou-ched before her as she stared into the
fire. She’d penned a letter to her father, hoping
the courier she paid thrice as much as she
should have would reach him before Leopold
did.
“Are you all right?”
The voice had her jumping, spilling her tea all
over the saucer in her haste to set it down.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded,
shaking her head as Lissa started to close the
door. If the prince of Pretania dared call on her
after the dinner hour, she’d leave her suite door
wide open and ensure that she had Lissa there
as a chaperone.
“I heard you had quite the afternoon,” Graham
said, coming around to seat himself next to
her. He set a plate of gooey, baked chocolate
squares before her, still warm from the oven,
and took one for himself.
“I did, which is why I am in no fit state to sit
here and discuss it with you,” she said, inching
farther from him. He leaned over, snatching up
another square to offer it to her.
“But I brou-ght the kitchen’s most tempting
sweet,” he said, his tone just as neutral as his
face. For once,
he wasn’t teasing her when she
was upset. Grudgingly, she accepted the
chocolate square, nibbling at it halfheartedly.
“You can’t bribe me to talk, you know,” Isabelle
muttered.
“Then don’t talk,” Graham shrugged, taking
another square. “We can sit here in
companionable silence for all I care.”
He folded his hands behind his head, leaning
back on the love seat with a contented sigh.
Isabelle glanced sidelong at him,
his golden
circlet still atop his sandy blond curls as he
stretched out in his formalwear.
“You came to check on me,” she said finally.
He opened an eye to sm-irk at her before
closing it again.
“Perhaps,” he said. That familiar, dangerous
thrill ran throu-ghher at the word.
“Which means you were worried for me,” she
continued, trying to keep the smile from her
face even as she chastised herself. Her
betrothed had just stormed out of the city and
here she was, fli-rting with another man, a man
she knew better than to allow any closer than
an arm’s length. Graham opened both his eyes
this time, leaning his head over to look at her.
“You’d enjoy that, wouldn’t you?” he asked, his
avoidance of her question as much of an
admission as an outright answer would have
been.
“You were worried about me,” Isabelle affirmed,
her stomach twisting pleasantly as her cheeks
lost the battle against her grin. She knew she
was blus-hing and some part of her was
mortified at her reaction, screaming in protest
about Leopold, but she couldn’t shake the
happy little glow that had ignited inside her as
she reached for another chocolate square.
Graham sighed, despite the hint of a smile on
his own face.
“If you must know, I came to congratulate you,”
he said. Isabelle paused with the chocolate
halfway to her mouth, that little glow dimming.
“Congratulate me?” she repeated, confused.
“Congratulate you for the purported tongue-
lashing you gave to bonny prince Leo,” he said.
“Nothing I’ve ever said has riled him so badly
as to drive him out of the city. Please, I must
know what you said so I can repeat it at our
next meeting.”
Isabelle threw the square at him, folding her
arms. Anything pleasant she’d been feeling had
soured. Guilt washed over her as she realized
how much of a fool she’d been to think that
Graham was capable of any kindness.
Companionable silence and sweets, her right
foot. He’d probably come only to gloat and
taunt her.
“It’s none of your business what I said to my
betrothed,” she said, throwing in the last words
as a poorly veiled barb.
“Your betrothed?” Graham repeated, amused,
“Pray tell, then, what happened to your ring?”
Isabelle made as face as she buried her ba-re
finger into the crook of her crossed elbow,
blus-hing anew with fresh mortification. That
Graham had noticed and commented on her
missing jewelry had only reminded her of the
silent battle she’d waged before her vanity
table earlier that evening.
Normally, she slept with Leopold’s ring safely
around her finger, but now that he’d stormed in
and nearly beaten her, she hadn’t been able to
shake the urge to rid herself of it. As she’d
stared at herself in the vanity mirror, she’d
removed it, tucking it into a tiny drawer of her
jewelry box and telling herself it was the right
thing to do. After all, there was still a dent in
the sitting room wall where Leo had punched
it, her head having been mere inches away.
“Ah, I see,” Graham said, following her gaze to
that very sp-ot on the wall. “It truly is a shame
now, though.”
“What’s a shame?” Isabelle asked, her insides
a roiling mess of guilt and unease. Graham’s
li-ps quirked up into that arrogant smile she
hated.
“That I’ll have to stop pursuing you now. After
all, that was our deal. I’ll stop when you stop
wearing your shackle,” he said. He smiled in
earnest when she looked over at him, his green
eyes glittering in anticipation for her reaction.
She stared at him for a few moments, all the
fight and fire that usually fuelled her in the
presence of the meddlesome prince suddenly
gone, replaced by a bone-de-eper fatigue.
She was tired. She was tired of all these
games, of constantly having her guard up and
attempting to anticipate what the royal family’s
had planned for her next. She’d gotten the one
thing she’d wanted that day, to see Leopold
again, but rather than the heartfelt reunion she’d
been picturing since he’d ridden off into the
Kentshire sunrise, her betrothed had yelled and
raged and punched a wall, scaring her rather
than rea-ssuring her. She had no desire to play
along with Graham’s games that evening, not
when her heart was so exhausted.
“Just because I took my ring off in preparation
for bed doesn’t mean that I’m no longer
betrothed,” she said, rising wearily to her feet.
“Now if you would, I’m quite tired and I’d like
to be alone.”
“Dismissing two princes in one day,” Graham
said, letting out a low whistle without moving
from the love seat, “You’d best be careful
before you earn yourself a reputation, Isabelle.”
As it always did, her name on his li-ps sent a
thrill throu-ghher, but her exhaustion choked it
out. He wanted to spar with her, to trade barbs
and insults as was their custom, but she was
thorou-ghly finished. She had nothing left to
give that day and she was beginning to doubt
whether anything would change in the morning.
For all she knew, her father’s carriage would be
waiting for her the next day, ready to deliver
her home to Kentshire and into the arms of her
betrothed. The thought opened a pit in
Isabelle’s stomach that had never been there
before. For the first time in her life, the idea of
marrying Leopold didn’t bring a smile to her
face.
It terrified her.
And it wasn’t helped by Graham’s green-eyed
gaze, still fastened intently on her face.
“Please get out,” she said quietly. A frown
quivered on Graham’s brow.
“If you kick me out, I’m taking the sweets,” he
said, sitting up to face her. “But if you allow
me to stay and defeat you several times at
backgammon, perhaps I’ll let you eat the rest.”
She sque-ezed her eyes closed, sighing.
“I’m tired,” she said. “Good night, your
Highness.”
She left him in her sitting room, his puzzled
stare following her until she closed the
bedroom door between them.
Graham had anticipated that she’d be upset,
but not so upset that she’d shut him out. The
sight of the fist-sized dent in the wall had
nearly broken his practiced calm, especially
with the haunted way Isabelle’s eyes had
stared at it.
He would have given anything to have been
alerted just five minutes sooner to the foreign
prince’s presence in his palace.
His little birds hadn’t been as quick as the
king’s, which had given his father the
opportunity to still Graham’s hand. Had
Graham learned of Leopold’s presence earlier,
he’d have ridden from the castle with the
entirety of the royal guard at his back to hunt
the bastard throu-ghPretania. That the king had
stopped him had sent Graham into a fit of rage
at his powerlessness in the face of such a
transgression by the prince of Germania.
He’d spent the afternoon pacing his room,
planning all manner of revenge against
Leopold, up to and including drawing and
quartering the bastard if he ever dared return to
Pretania. When his cousins, Laura and
Marjorie, had called on him to report what
they’d witnessed and overheard in Isabelle’s
suite, it was all Graham could do to maintain
the fragile veneer of calm he’d so painstakingly
pieced back together.
But he’d succeeded, impatiently sitting throu-gh
dinner as Henrietta Barclay and Anna
Hindersley shared his table. The pair of idiot
debutantes had chattered away, grating on his
very last nerve until he’s silenced them both
with a few choice words.
He couldn’t stop his eyes from straying to the
empty seat at Alicia, Laura, and Marjorie’s
table.
After dinner, he’d fled back to his suite,
avoiding all the debutantes who’d clearly hoped
to corner him before the evening ended. He
had to check on her, he had to make sure she
was all right. But she couldn’t know that he
was checking on her, so he’d hatched a plan
the moment he’d noticed Isabelle’s vacant
seat. The kitchen had obligingly baked a batch
of his favourite chocolate squares, which he’d
used as an excuse to call on Kentshire’s
heiress and ensure that she was all right.
The relief he’d felt when she’d snapped at him
as he entered, no sign of a bruise like her
maid’s anywhere on her delicate skin, had
lifted a weight he hadn’t even realized he’d
been carrying. But now that she’d closed the
door between them, that relief vanished,
replaced instead by his ever-growing fury for
what Leopold had done to her, in Graham’s
palace, no less.
Staring at the hole in the wall, Graham’s mind
turned to plotting.
To be continued….