All Isabeau could do was stare at Aileana.

Had she misheard that?

She must have done.

"What?" she said at last.

Aileana crouched and picked up the plaid that Isabeau had laid down for them, same as she had been doing since they'd met a year ago. She wrapped it around her shoulders, arranging it to hide her nakedness, and that more than anything else was a sign that something was very wrong. Aileana was never self-conscious, and she never felt that she had to cover up in front of Isabeau.

"I didn't want to tell you like this," Aileana said, half-turning from Isabeau so she could look out over the lake. "Do you remember me tellin' you about the Duggans havin' family to stay over Christmas?"

"Yes."

"One of their distant cousins, Brodie, took somethin' of a shine to me."

"You didn't tell me that," Isabeau said.

Aileana shrugged. "Didn't seem important at the time. He's not the first lad to take a shine, and he won't be the last. But he came for another visit a few days ago."

"And?" Isabeau said. She knew where this was going and she didn't want to hear it, but she had to.

Aileana turned to look at her fully. "And yesterday he asked me to marry him."

"You said yes," Isabeau realised.

"I did."

"Why?"

The world felt like it was sliding out from beneath Isabeau's feet. While she'd known that Aileana might not be ready for their relationship to progress, she had never dreamed that it would be because of something like this.

"Because he's a good match. He'll treat me well, and while he's not as rich as the rest of the Duggans, he will able to provide for me and my family," Aileana said.

"But you don't love him."

A long pause.

"No, I don't," Aileana admitted. "But I have to think about what's best for my future, and that's Brodie."

"What about us?" Isabeau said.

Her chest was starting to hurt.

Aileana smiled sadly and shook her head again. "What were you expectin'? You had to know this wouldn't last forever."

"I didn't know that." Isabeau clutched her skirt to give herself something to hold onto. "Aileana, I love you. I'm in love with you."

She'd been waiting for the right time to say it, and this wasn't what she'd had in mind, but she had to make Aileana understand how she felt. Surely that would change Aileana's mind.

But Aileana physically recoiled. "What are you talkin' about?"

Isabeau's heart felt like it was climbing into her throat; she had to swallow it back down. "I love you," she said again.

"Don't say that."

"But it's true. Look at me and tell me you don't feel the same way."

Aileana looked at her, her face remote. "I don't. I'm sorry, Isabeau, but I don't love you."

The bottom fell out of the world. Isabeau pressed her lips tightly together, holding back a soft cry of pain and disbelief.

"I do care about you, and I've really enjoyed the time we've had, but it was never goin' to last. You had to know that," Aileana said.

"Clearly I didn't," Isabeau snapped.

Aileana looked away.

"So that's it? You're just going to marry this man, even though you don't love him, even though you barely know him."

"Aye, that's what I'm goin' to do. He can give me a future," Aileana said.

So can I, Isabeau wanted to cry, but she held the words back.

Aileana was frowning now, looking at Isabeau like she was a stranger. "You'll be needing a husband of your own soon enough, won't you?"

Angry tears burned Isabeau's eyes, but they didn't fall. "Have you never listened to anything that I've said? I left home so I wouldn't be married off to a man I could never love. I will never take a husband because I am not attracted to men. I never have been and I never will be."

"It's not about attraction. It's about reality. I can either work for the Duggans for the rest of my life, or I can marry Brodie and ensure myself a comfortable financial future, as well as bein' able to provide for my family for as long as they need it."

The worst part was, Isabeau did understand. 

Aileana wasn't a vampire and she didn't have the luxury of forging her own path in the world the way that someone like Isabeau did. She couldn't abandon her family to travel the world. She couldn't punch through social restrictions by refusing to take a viable husband and run off to be with a woman instead.

But hearing that Aileana didn't love her, that everything they had shared this past year had only ever been something she considered temporary, absolutely broke her heart.

"When are you marrying him?" she asked.

"In a month."

"You weren't going to tell me today, were you? If I hadn't told you about wanting to get a job with the Duggans, you wouldn't have said a thing."

Aileana avoided her stare. "I wanted to enjoy the time we had left."

"I knew something was wrong as soon as you got here this morning. Would you just have pretended?" Isabeau asked.

Aileana didn't answer - which was answer enough.

Her engagement had obviously been playing on her mind but if Isabeau hadn't told Aileana her intentions with Duggan House, then Aileana would have kept quiet about what was happening. She would have put on a sunny smile, taken off Isabeau's clothes, and made love with her as if nothing at all was wrong.

"You would have lied to me. You would have betrayed your fiancé merely hours after accepting his proposal," Isabeau said.

Anger flared in Aileana's face and she jutted out her chin. "I would have stolen a few more days with you, aye. I won't feel ashamed for that."

Cutting words flooded Isabeau's mouth, but she bit her tongue. As far as she was concerned, Aileana should feel ashamed. She would have been lying to Isabeau and she would have been lying to her fiancée, and that wasn't alright.

But was the point in saying that?

It wouldn't change anything.

Aileana had always made it clear that her family were the most important people in her life, and Brodie's proposal had guaranteed that she could always take care of them. Regardless of how she felt about Brodie himself, she would have accepted any engagement that would have given her family a better life. Even if she had loved Isabeau, she would have given her up.

Would it have hurt more if Aileana had loved her, or less?

Did it really matter now?

"I'm sorry, Isabeau. I didn't mean to hurt you," Aileana said, and she sounded sincere, but that wouldn't fix Isabeau's broken heart.

It felt like she had swallowed glass.

"This is goodbye, isn't it?" she said.

"I rather get the feelin' that you won't want to have sex with me now I'm engaged," Aileana said, making a wry expression.

"Your feeling is correct," Isabeau snapped.

Something like vulnerability glimmered in Aileana's eyes and she pulled the plaid tighter around her shoulders. Isabeau doubted she could ever wear it again.

"I didn't want things to end this way," Aileana said.

"But they have."

Aileana nodded.

She stretched up to kiss Isabeau, just once, and Isabeau let her, because no matter how badly she was hurting, she had to take one more kiss from the woman that she had fallen in love with.

The woman who had broken her heart.

Then Aileana took the plaid from her shoulders and handed it back to Isabeau.

"You know I won't be coming back to the lake," Isabeau said.

"I had guessed, aye."

There still wasn't much space between them, but it felt like miles.

"Thank you for everythin', Isabeau," Aileana said.

Isabeau didn't say anything; she couldn't. The words were all tangled up in her throat, their jagged edges threatening to burst through her skin.

She watched as Aileana dove back into the lake, watched the lithe movement of her body cutting through the water one last time, watched her climb out on the other side and retrieve her clothes from their usual hideout. When she was dressed, Aileana looked back over the lake, her eyes locking with Isabeau's, but she didn't smile and she didn't wave, and the moment only lasted a few heartbeats before Aileana turned and started walking back up to Duggan House.

The plaid suddenly felt very heavy in Isabeau's hands. She draped it over a nearby tree branch, where it would flutter in the wind until someone found it, or until it the weather wore it to pieces. The lake stared back at her, the ripples from Aileana's body now faded.

Isabeau had loved this place. Now she would never see it again.

She pressed her palm to her chest, as if that would keep the broken pieces of her heart in one place, and then she turned her back on the lake and walked away.

Once again, it was time to move on.

3/3

On Friday, we're going to visit a part of Gideon's life that we've never seen before :)