novelraw Chapter 219 219: You know, don't you....
Chapter 219 219: You know, don't you....
As she walked, the soft carpet once again muffling her steps, the initial relief began to curdle into a deep, unsettled foreboding. The rose scent in the corridor outside seemed fainter, replaced by the colder, cleaner smell of beeswax and old stone.
She had promised peace. Her actions were no different from promising a solution. But as she made her way through the dimly lit halls toward Victoria's more austere quarters in the west wing, the faces of her two daughters warred in her mind. Esmeralda's, shattered and pleading, and Victoria's, which she knew would be calm, composed, and unreadable. One was an open book of tumultuous feeling; the other a locked volume whose contents she suddenly feared she had never fully understood.
A simple misunderstanding, she had said. But as she raised her hand to knock on Victoria's door, the solid oak feeling more like a barrier than ever before, Isabella knew in her bones that nothing about this was simple. She was not walking to mediate a sisterly squabble.
She was walking into the eye of a storm that threatened not just her daughters' hearts, but the very foundation of the life they had all worked so hard to preserve. The man at the center of it all, their savior and their disruptor, had done more than solve a social problem. He had laid a fuse in the heart of their family, and Esmeralda's tears had just lit the match. Now, Isabella had to discover how far the explosion would reach, and if anything would remain standing once the truth was finally, fully, laid bare.
She hesitated for a breath that shuddered in her chest, and then gave a few gentle knocks. The sound was absurdly polite against the backdrop of the emotional tempest she carried with her.
"Come in." Victoria's voice came from inside.
Isabella pushed the door open and stepped inside. She saw, Victoria, herself, was seated on her bed, her head buried in a book.
Hearing the sound of someone stepping inside, She looked up, and a genuine flicker of surprise crossed her face.
"Mother, what brings you here?" Victoria asked, marking her page with a ribbon and setting the book aside. She did not rise, but her posture straightened into a picture of attentive readiness.
Unlike when she was with her daughter, Esmeralda, here, There was no sign of vulnerability, nor open doors to the heart. Victoria simply gave her the feeling of coming against a fortress.
Isabella merely offered a thin, strained smile, before glancing at the empty space next to her on the bed. "May I?" she asked politely, the formality feeling like a chasm between them.
"Of course, feel free," Victoria replied, her tone careful, yet one couldn't deny that it didn't sound quite familiar as one would expect from a family member. She shifted slightly to make more room. The Viscountess nodded, the simple action requiring effort, and made her way to the bed, settling herself next to her daughter.
For a long moment, silence reigned. The clock on Victoria's mantel, seemed to tick louder with each passing moment.
Isabella's gaze wandered over the titles on the nearest shelf, Principles of Arcane Thermodynamics, Genealogical Records of the Northern Peerage. Her daughter's world, so orderly and proper, like a lady should be, How had it become the epicenter of such chaos?
"Mother…" Victoria finally broke the quiet, her voice softening just a fraction, a hint of real worry seeping through her composed façade. "What's the matter? You usually aren't this quiet." Victoria said, obviously she'd been observing her dear mother up to this point, still curious towards her unexpected visit.
She'd known her mother for being busy with work or at the very least, not free enough to come to her room for a supposed chat on whatever it was she had no idea about yet.
The attempt at lightness felt like lifting a stone with her bare hands, but Isabella tried. "Well, aren't you more chattier than usual?" she deflected, forcing a soft chuckle that sounded brittle even to her own ears. "What are you implying, are you saying that I talk too much, you little girl?"
A ghost of a smile touched Victoria's lips, but it didn't reach her eyes. "Of course not, Mother." Her giggle was a brief, seemingly trivial. "I'm just curious about your arrival." She added, only to pause for a meaningful moment, her gaze sharpening. "It isn't about Father, is it? I'm sure he should be more at ease with what's happened today regarding the issue with the kidnapped commoners."
"That's not why I'm here, my dear," Isabella said, her voice dropping its pretense of ease. She reached out and took Victoria's hands in hers. They were cool, dry, and lay still in her grasp, neither pulling away nor offering warmth.
Victoria's face, which had eased slightly at the touch, suddenly hardened. Her brows furrowed together, a deep line of suspicion and immediate defensiveness etching itself between them. In one swift, decisive motion, she retracted her hands as if burned. The warmth of the fleeting connection vanished, leaving a vacuum of cold air.
"You know…" she said, her voice dropping into a low, dangerous register that Isabella rarely heard. It was the voice Victoria used on incompetent stewards or deceitful merchants. "Esmeralda told you everything, didn't she?"
" Let me guess, she even cried about it and kept on throwing accusations at me." Victoria's voice become more and more colder as she spoke.
"And now you're here to try and get me to stay away from him." The final pronoun was uttered with a unrelenting possessive tone. Her voice turned even more hostile, each word dropping like a chip of ice. "To fall in line for the sake of her hysterics."
"Darling—" Isabella began, the endearment sounding hollow.
"You don't have to say it," Victoria cut her off, her gaze unwavering. "I already know what you're thinking. That I'm being difficult. That I'm upsetting the balance. That I should, as always, be the reasonable one and step aside for her desires." There was a lifetime of resentment packed into that last sentence.