A Lady's Guide to Courtship

XXIV. Lemonade

Dearest Lady Weis,

I went to Standbury to visit Levi Everard.

I must admit that I do envy the man. He is an inventor and he has a wonderful family.

While I am still here in Wickhurst living the old life he and other friends had already left.

Sad, really, how we do not find contentment on things we once thought would make us utterly happy. The mere sight of a different sort of happiness and we want something the same.

Yours,

William

*****

Wakefield was contemplating whether or not he ought to go back to Wickhurst.

He was doing the same thing while he sat with Ysabella and his mother as the two had decided to have another picnic while waiting for Thomas to be done with work. His brother had once more hidden himself in his study to answer missives.

In Wakefield's experience Thomas would not come out until it was time for supper.

His mother was taking a nap in a chair, the white cat on her lap doing the same thing. Merely a few days with Ysabella, the feline and the woman had gone quite inseparable.

Ysabella was reading a book she picked from Thomas' library.

"Do you like geography?" he found himself asking out loud. The cat stirred and stared at him as if it too, found the question odd.

Ysabella did not lift her gaze from the book. "Yes, of course," she murmured.

Wakefield nodded, relieved.

"But I am merely jesting," she said with a chuckle, eyes still on her book. "No one likes geography."

He did not comment. Finally her eyes lifted and met his only to divert away to somewhere else.

The days that followed that night in the parlour had been awkward for him. He could tell she was trying to act as nonchalant as she could, but they both knew better, although he knew she was doing better than he.

Something had changed, he knew it.

And he did not bloody know how to deal with it.

For nearly three bloody years now, he had thought of her as naught but his friends' sister. In his eyes, the sight of Ysabella coming to a ball he was in attendance to meant trouble. Her very presence would push his instinct to walk away.

And now, everything was not as they were. He could blame the bloody Theobald party where he had allowed himself the lack of restraint.

He could blame Lady Weis for disappearing and leaving him with naught but the time to see other things, for leaving him the dark without an explanation and letting him find his way back into the light without her. If she had merely stayed in correspondence, he'd be thinking of what he'd write to her next instead of spending his time looking at Ysabella reading a bloody book.

Sensing his gaze, Ysabella closed her book and stood up, suddenly restless. She was not used to this as well.

She came here to be with his mother, not be courted by Thomas. And most definitely not be the subject of Wakefield's ambiguous attentions.

He was not being fair to her. He claimed to be in love with another, yet what he did that night in the parlour would have probably confused her.

For someone who had always been open of her feelings toward him, she had every right to feel restless.