Isabella didn’t turn. A chance ray of afternoon sunlight touched her face, and the sorrow he saw there broke his heart.
Mac touched her shoulder. “Isabella.”
Isabella turned to him, her eyes wet with tears. She opened her mouth as though to excuse her crying, but the words didn’t come. Mac opened his arms, and Isabella walked straight into them.
Memories flooded back to Mac as he gathered her against him. Don’t remember. Don’t let it hurt.
But memories were merciless things.
As clear as yesterday, he saw himself walking into Isabella’s bedroom in the Mount Street house after she’d miscarried their child. Mac had been falling-down drunk, despite Ian’s best efforts to keep him sober.
In the train from Dover to London, Mac had kept a flask of whiskey at his lips in attempt to erase the horrible pain tearing at his insides. He’d never felt anything like it, not even when his mother had died years earlier. He’d never been close to his mother, had barely known her. His father had kept the brothers isolated from the fragile duchess, the old duke’s jealousy extending even to his sons. The duchess had died because of that obsessive jealousy.
Mac’s grief for his mother was nothing to what he’d felt when Ian finally got it through Mac’s head that Isabella had lost their child and was in danger of dying herself. Malt whiskey didn’t dampen Mac’s guilt and grief a fraction, but he kept pouring it down his throat in desperate attempt.
He’d charged into the house and up the stairs to Isabella’s bedroom. He remembered finding Isabella on a chaise drawn up to the fireplace, her red hair hanging loose, her face wan. She’d looked up with red-rimmed eyes as Mac staggered in.
He’d made it to the chaise before collapsing to his knees and burying his face in her lap. “I’m sorry.” His voice had come out a croak. “I am so sorry.”
He’d expected to feel better at any moment. Any moment now, she’d stroke his hair and whisper that it was all right. That she forgave him.
The touch never came.
Mac had realized in the bleak weeks afterward what a heartless, selfish bastard he’d been. He’d been puzzled and hurt when Isabella hadn’t caressed him and relieved his pain. He’d looked up to find her eyes stark and glittering, her face so white it might have been carved from marble. Mac had tried to gather her into his arms, but he’d been so drunk he’d fallen to his hands and knees to be sick on the carpet instead.
Ian, who rarely showed emotion of any kind, had dragged Mac up and out of the room, scowling in fury.
Bellamy had cleaned up Mac while Ian watched in anger. “Isabella cried for you,” he said. “So I looked for you. I don’t know why she wants you. You are drunk all the time.”
Mac had no idea why either. When he felt better, Mac sought out Isabella again, knowing he needed to doubly apologize.
He’d found her in the nursery, her hand on the carved cradle they’d picked out together when they first learned that Isabella was increasing.
Mac came up behind her and slid his arms around her, resting his cheek on her shoulder. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” he said. “That this happened, that I wasn’t here, that I’m a drunken lout. I think I’ll die if you don’t forgive me.”
“I imagine I will forgive you,” Isabella had answered, stroking one finger across the cradle’s polished wood. “I generally do.”
Tension eased from Mac’s shoulders, and he buried his face in her fragrant hair. “We can try again. We can try for another baby.”
“It was a boy.”
“I know. Ian told me.” He kissed the curve of her neck, closing his eyes against a wave of pain. “Maybe the next will be a boy too.”
“Not yet.” Isabella’s answer had been so quiet Mac almost missed it.
Mac thought he understood. She would need time to heal. Mac’s knowledge of women’s ailments came from his models—he knew they could not pose fully unclothed during their courses, and they sometimes couldn’t work for weeks after giving birth or having a miscarriage. They resented the time they couldn’t work, because they needed the money. Some of them brought their babies with them to the studio, because they couldn’t afford to hire someone to take care of them, and the models often didn’t have husbands or even faithful lovers. Mac never minded the little ones, and they seemed to like him.
“When you are ready, tell me,” Mac had said to Isabella, caressing her cheek. “Tell me, and we’ll start again.”
Isabella pulled away from him, her green eyes burning in her white face. “Is it that easy for you? This child didn’t live, but that’s fine, we will simply try for another?”
Mac blinked at her sudden rage. “That is not what I meant.”
“Why did you bother coming back from Paris, Mac? You’d be happier there with your friends, trying to see how much you can drink before you can’t walk anymore.”
Mac stepped back, stung, more so because she was pretty much right. “I’m not drunk now.”
“Not as drunk as when you came home to comfort me and vomited on my carpet.”
“That was an unfortunate accident.”
Isabella clenched her fists. “Damn you, why did you come back at all?”
“Ian said you wanted me.”
“Ian said. Ian said. Is that the reason you came home? Not because you wanted to be with me? Not because of the horrible thing that happened?”
“Damn you, Isabella, stop twisting my words. Do you think I feel nothing? Do you think I haven’t torn at my chest trying to stop the hurting inside? Why do you suppose I drink? I’m trying to ease the pain, and I can’t.”
“You poor, spoiled darling.”
If she had slapped him, it wouldn’t have stung as much. “What is the matter with you?” he asked. “I’ve never seen you like this.”
“The matter is we lost our child,” Isabella nearly shouted. “But you didn’t come home to comfort me, Mac. You came so that I would comfort you.”
Mac stared, open-mouthed. “Of course I want your comfort. We should comfort each other.”
“I have no comfort left. I have nothing left. I am empty, all the way through. And you weren’t here. Damn you, I needed you, and you weren’t here!”
She swung away, her arm across her abdomen, the dying light making a flame of her bright hair.
“I know,” Mac said, his throat raw. “I know. But love, this was so unexpected. You weren’t due for months; neither of us could have known this would happen.”