Authentically izzy, p.19
Authentically, Izzy, page 19
Oh, Penelope! My parents would have loved him with his dorky humor and tender heart. In a weird way he reminds me of Dad, only without the constant derby and unsightly waders! You know Dad always wanted to be an American version of James Herriot.
Anyway, I just wanted to share in my excitement. And to thank you for letting me share. I think Luke can see how well the match is, but talking to him about things like hand-holding and romance and Brodie’s delicious smell make him start to twitch.
Love you,
Izzy
PS: Open-collared button-down shirts are just as nice as sweater-vests. Maybe even nicer. Whew . . .
PPS: We’re reading Shakespeare’s sonnets tonight by the fire. Thankfully it’s supposed to be cool enough to have a fire in the fireplace, so it will not only be romantic but functional. I didn’t need it to be functional, but it makes for a much better excuse.
* * *
“‘Even so my sun one early morn did shine with all triumphant splendour on my brow.’”
Brodie Sutherland was in her apartment! Sitting not two feet away from her. Brodie Sutherland was reading Shakespeare’s sonnets to her in her apartment! They’d created this little evening routine of reading to each other since the second day of his trip, mostly after dinner and before board games or movies. But something about Shakespeare’s love sonnets upped the romantic currency of the moment.
Izzy had never met a man who enjoyed reading with as much passion as her, and though she’d stumbled through reading aloud to him at first, his encouraging smile and ready engagement eased her into the habit without another hitch.
Listening to him talk brought all sorts of lovely feelings, but hearing him read? Heaven and earth, the sound brewed over the air and offered an internal hug that lingered long enough to bring a sigh. Deep, warm, with just the right amount of curling vowels and dipping intonation. Audiobooks may never satisfy again.
His hands cradled the old collection of sonnets they’d found at a secondhand bookshop during a lazy day of exploring. She’d felt those hands against hers, even once when he’d brushed a smudge of caramel icing off her cheek, somehow turning a super embarrassing moment into a Hallmark-worthy scene she wanted to recount to the beautiful-yet-short children they were bound to have someday.
Oh, she liked him. A lot.
She tried not to think about what would happen in four days . . . or afterward. Thousands of miles apart was one thing when you’d never met in person, but now? After she’d smelled his cologne and heard his laughter in real time? She couldn’t imagine going back to life without him. They fit so well together. Frighteningly well. It all seemed too good. Too beautiful. Like someone dipped their finger into her dreams and painted them into reality.
Her grin almost spread into a giddy laugh. She squeezed her eyes closed in a moment of thanksgiving. What had she ever done to deserve something like this?
“‘Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth; Suns of the world may stain when heaven’s sun staineth.’”
Would she have appreciated such open and honest affection, such transparency five years ago, or had the broken relationships of her past tuned her heart more toward appreciation of Brodie’s personality than she would have without them?
“You pronounced all those ‘th’ words like a pro.” Izzy wiggled her brows as he turned his aqua gaze on her. “Is that part of the Caedric language?”
His smile quirked and he released a low sentence of Caedric, without breaking eye contact. She didn’t understand Caedric, but from the look on his face whatever he spoke translated into something her pulse seemed to understand.
“That . . . that sounded nice.”
He wrangled with his grin. “I said that I didn’t understand one word I just read from this sonnet.”
“You did not!” Izzy’s laugh burst out.
“Aye, ’tis true.” His gaze fixed on hers, sparkling and welcoming.
Her breath caught just a little. She would gladly listen to him talk every day of her life, nonsensically or not. “If an unimportant sentence in Caedric sounds that beautiful, I can’t imagine what one with meaning sounds like.”
He studied her for a second, almost as if he planned to say something else, and then his lips crooked. “It’s your turn.” He offered her the book. “I challenge you to find one with more comprehension, Karre.”
“Karre?” The unfamiliar word pooled and rippled warmth through her chest. “Does that mean something like sassy pants?”
“Sassy pants?” His grin spread into a laugh. “Um . . . not quite.” He gestured toward the book. “Your turn and I expect you to choose well, since you love these sonnets so much.”
She raised a brow at his reticence to explain the term but didn’t press the issue. Could it be an endearment? A romantic endearment? Just for her?
“Very well then.” She snatched the book and he leaned his head back against the couch, closing his eyes, his body stretched out in a lean line with his feet propped on the ottoman.
Izzy’s attention lingered on his profile, his lips eased into a gentle smile she’d come to expect over the past week. She’d read about soul mates and always categorized the notion with glass slippers and talking frogs, but something inextricably linked her to him. She’d felt hints of it during their online communication, but now, in the flesh, the awareness strengthened into an almost tangible connection. Oh, how she wanted this to be true. Authentic. Hers.
He’d pretty easily slipped right into life with her crazy cousins, joining Luke on a few hiking excursions while Izzy had worked, even helping him with a construction job or two. He’d spent an entire two hours on a video call listening to Penelope talk movies and musicals followed by a thorough and dramatic interrogation about Skymar. And then three evenings ago, they’d joined Josie and Patrick for dinner, incurring Josie’s not-so-subtle dislike. Josephine had never been one to guard her feelings. She basically cross-examined Brodie—even asking him of a possible criminal background—to such a degree Patrick intervened. But by the end of the meal, Izzy could tell Josie was softening. All Brodie had had to do was help with the dishes, ask about the twins, and compliment Josie’s snow globe collection. He’d been positively perfect.
Her gaze dropped to his smile.
His kiss would probably be perfect too.
“Anytime, Miss Edgewood.”
The comment, tinged with humor, brewed in the air between them and sent heat stinging her cheeks. Her breath squeezed in her chest, holding to emotions so big she barely knew what to call them . . . or perhaps she was afraid to give them a name because she did know what to call them. One was gratitude. The other?
Even saying it in her mind seemed too much.
She pinched the book between her hands and drew in a quivering breath. Her gaze dropped to a page and an idea pearled into action. She opened the book to her favorite sonnet, the one she’d listened to Richard Armitage read about three hundred times. There would be no going back if she read this one to him. It was one of the most famous, and not confusing at all. Brodie would understand and she’d lay bare her heart in the most vulnerable of ways. “It is my spirit that addresses your spirit,” as Jane Eyre declared to Rochester.
Izzy swallowed through her dry throat and began. “‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment. Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove.’” Heat invaded her vision, but she didn’t really need to see the words. Brodie’s eyes were still closed. His lips at a fascinating tilt, almost . . . almost beckoning her forward. “‘O no! it is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken.’”
The paper bouquet on the shelf near them caught her attention and reality clicked into place. Brodie had sent her the bouquet. He’d known her, even then.
How?
Her nose tingled as she shifted a few inches closer to him, the words shivering from her. “‘It is the star to every wand’ring bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.’”
Her breath pulsed shallow. He was now so close she could almost touch him, continuing the next few lines. “‘Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.’”
Could this be love? Did she even know how to trust her heart anymore?
“‘If this be error and upon me prov’d, I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.’”
His eyes opened then, and he stared back at her, unmoving. She laid down the book, moving nearer still, and with a timid hand she cupped his cheek, inching closer, and then she did something she never thought her wounded heart would have the courage to do.
She initiated a first kiss.
* * *
Isabelle’s voice had grown closer, her words softer. Brodie soaked in the sound, the feeling within each syllable. Her storybook reading to the children oozed with emotion and animation, but now a vibrato of tenderness swelled over each passage, almost as if she said them . . . to him.
He attempted to control his breaths. The couch shifted next to him, but her recitation continued. Should he move? Open his eyes? He’d never been a confident lover, not that he’d experienced a great many romantic relationships, but his past had been more fumbling and reluctant than bold and debonair. Traveling across the world to meet her had been the most courageous romantic gesture he’d ever initiated. And now? He’d called her the one endearment that meant more than love—acceptance and admiration and tenderness—and to which he’d not been able to find an accurate English translation.
Then she shifted again. Something brushed against his arm. The soft scent of her fragrance swept as close as the sound of her voice.
“‘I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.’”
He raised his head and opened his eyes at the sudden silence and found she’d closed the small distance between them. Those large, fathomless eyes of hers stared into his. Uncertainty and something much sweeter softened those brown hues to amber. Her hair spilled around her face, brushing against his shoulder. With the slightest hitch of a breath, she placed her palm against his cheek and in achingly slow motion brought her lips to his. Her mouth barely grazed his, the ridges of her lips sliding over his to fit into place. Her fingers caressed his cheek and his breath trembled release.
He knew the cost of her initiation. Felt it to his core, but even more than that he recognized what she was admitting in this kiss. What she was offering.
When she pulled back enough to open her eyes, he sat up, bringing her with him, and in a gentle motion he cradled her cheeks with his palms and continued, with much . . . much less trepidation. In fact, uncertainty became the very last thing on his mind. Her lips softened beneath his, her fingers fisting into his shirt. The last hint of a question about her feelings disappeared, and he promised himself he’d do whatever it took to create a future with Isabelle Edgewood.
* * *
Text from Izzy to Penelope: The right kiss with the right man is worth it all, Penelope. Oh my, is it worth it!
Penelope: SQUEE!!!!!! Oh, Izzy! How wonderful! Though I do wish I hadn’t been in the middle of the movie theater when I read your text. I disrupted my entire section with my response. Oh well, it was a silly man-movie anyway. I don’t understand why men like to watch movies that have very little talking in them. And NO singing. Where is their imagination?! Anyway, I’m so tickled for you. I should be home tomorrow evening for a quick visit so I can approve of your dashing islander and his sweater-vests . . . or open-collared shirts, as the case may be. In person!
Penelope: I do like open-collared shirts as long as they’re not open down to a man's navel. There’s something about that look that either makes me think “drunk pirate” or “loose Spaniard.” I blame operas.
Izzy: Sorry for the interruption but not the remarks. I can’t wait to introduce you to him. As far as operas? I have no comment.
Penelope: What did Brodie’s kiss say to you?
Izzy: Just one kiss wouldn’t do.
* * *
From: Brodie Sutherland
To: Ellen Sutherland
Date: May 11
Subject: An answer to the visit
Dear Mum,
This evening I met Penelope, Isabelle’s youngest cousin, who has auburn hair a little lighter than Fiona’s. I believe Isabelle referred to it as strawberry blonde. She appears to be the most different in appearance of the cousins, not in her hair color alone but also with her gray-green eyes. She stared at me so long at one point, it became a bit uncomfortable. Isabelle remarked on her “slack-jawed expression like Uncle Herman every Christmas dinner,” to which Penelope quickly corrected her expression with a delightful laugh. She doesn’t appear to be hindered by one emotion for too long before it complies to another.
It is evident how much the cousins love one another. Very much as siblings. Their affability is more demonstrative than our family’s, but the camaraderie is just as obvious and sincere. I had the sudden awareness of what Isabelle would have to give up to join me in Skymar, should our relationship continue its present course. How could I ask her to do that? I certainly wouldn’t wish to leave the life I’ve built in Skymar, but I can’t imagine, now that I’ve spent this time with her, planning a future where she isn’t a part.
I’m sure that sounds premature, but I recall you mentioning how you knew Father was “the one” for you within the first week of your acquaintance. I feel the same about Isabelle, and with such certainty it’s shocking. Whether she returns my affections with the same intensity, I do not know, but I feel as though I would be willing to redirect many pieces of my life to keep her nearby.
In response to your question from last night’s phone conversation, today Isabelle and I spoke about our previous relationships. At first she was reluctant to discuss them, but after a little prodding, she opened up to me. She’s borne the brunt of some scoundrels, Mum. It explained why, even after we’d agreed to officially begin dating, she seems cautious. My situation with Skye was nothing compared to Isabelle’s heartbreak and humiliation. She apologized for her suspicion, for her disbelief that my intentions were true, and gently asked me to be patient with her as she took careful steps toward truly believing that “someone like me” could care for “someone like her.” I hate the way her past has misconstrued her view of herself, but it helped me understand more about what you’d mentioned in trusting that Father truly loved you. How your heart must have been wounded for you to live in such self-doubt. I am determined to show her the truth. Not all men are scoundrels.
I am grateful beyond words for the example you and Father displayed of what love truly looks like.
Affectionately,
Brodie
PS: Please let Fiona know that Samwise likes to sing to the sound of emergency-vehicle sirens. He’s quite good at it. The first time I heard him, it shocked me to such an extent I shot up from the table where Isabelle and I had been playing chess. Needless to say, my fast movements sent the chessboard and all its pieces vaulting through the air, and, to my utter humiliation, the black knight hit Isabelle directly in the eye. However, everything turned out fine. I took your long-held motherly advice and kissed her wound. She seemed to heal rather quickly after that.
From: Anders Sutherland
To: Brodie Sutherland
Date: May 12
Subject: Preposterous!
How on earth have you managed to convince yourself of this attachment to a practical stranger! And one who lives across the globe in some rural township in America! I have always thought you to be sensible, but I see you’ve taken leave of your senses in this account. Her hesitation provokes all sorts of warning signs, if one would take the time to push aside the hazy bloom of “love” and see clearly. I would wonder if her heart isn’t distant or even attached elsewhere. How do you know someone who lives thousands of miles away isn’t carrying on some dalliances while you wait all dreamy-eyed and forlorn?
I feel as though I’ve entered a Dickens novel and there is no way of escape!
Wake up, Brodie. If the money is not your objective, then detach your heart. It shouldn’t be difficult. You only truly met her two weeks ago. How entrenched can one’s heart become over such a short space of time?
I only say these things because I am concerned for you. You cannot know someone so quickly. It takes years to truly understand how two people will sort out a happy life together, so imagine the added difficulty of two different cultures. If you need an example of a southern American woman, I performed a quick Google search and the top listing was Scarlett O’Hara. Now think of that, I tell you.
Anders
Chapter 16
Brodie took the now-familiar trek down the sidewalk of Main Street toward the library, enjoying the wide variety of scents, from cherry blossoms to fried apple pies and the faintest hint of freshly brewed coffee. The town held an element of charm different from those at home, but he couldn't quite put his finger on the exact quality of difference. He’d observed that small towns across the world seemed to have a certain connectedness to them, but sprinkled in with their own uniqueness. Mt. Airy reminisced to bygone days of Andy Griffith, if Brodie guessed rightly. A barber’s pole swirled in red, white, and blue colors, a colorful invitation to step inside for a trim. The ice-cream parlor welcomed patrons onto their parquet floor, the servers donning white caps and matching bow ties as if from a classic movie. And the pace fit into what he enjoyed most about Skern. Pleasantly relaxed.
The library came into view, its simple white-columned entrance setting it apart from the brick buildings framing each side of the street. Brodie increased his step, the call of books and his favorite book-loving lady drawing him forward. He’d seen her read to the children via Luke’s video chat during the Book Parade, and she’d completely and utterly enchanted him with her faux accents and expressive dialogue, but the idea of watching her in real life ushered up a grin. She fit him in an oddly perfect sort of way.
