“Then I should sit,” she said, and did. “If you mean to discuss such things with me. Go on.”
He watched her closely, as if noting how she took each word. “Do you mean my friend harm, Miss Wilkinson? Him or his family?”
The question wound her more than any other accusation could have done. “No. Of course not.”
“Promise me that,” he said, and the easy Lord Duskwood was gone. This was a soldier, or a man who’d watched one fall.
“I promise,” she said at once. “On anything you like. On my mother’s memory if you wish.”
“That will do,” he said quietly. “Next, are you truly who you say you are?”
There it was. The thing that had been circling the house since they left London finally spoke in simple words.
“I’m not,” she said. “Not as I said at first, I mean. I’ve told Winston. I am Lord Harston’s daughter.”
He took that without visible surprise. “Lady Adeline Warren.”
“Yes.”
Silence. He moved to the window, looked out, then back at her. When he spoke again, there was no flirtation left in him at all.
“Your father is ruined,” he said. “Drowning in debt. He’s been creative in trying to right himself. Did you know that?”
“I knew he liked the gaming tables more than he liked his family,” she said. “I didn’t know the sums.”
“Did you know he has been approaching gentlemen,” Lord Duskwood went on, “with talk of a pure and private daughter in the country? That he has requested money up front, always with some reason why the daughter can’t yet be seen?”
She stared at him. “No.”
“Viscount Ashby showed me his letter,” Oswald said. “There are others. The pattern’s clear enough. The daughter is bait. The money, the catch. Now your father is near the end of his rope. Debtors’ prison is close enough he can smell it. And suddenly his daughter is under a Duke’s roof, using another name.”
She felt the blood leave her face. “You think I knew of this. That I’m his accomplice.”
“I think,” Lord Duskwood said carefully, “that desperate men use whatever lies nearest to hand. I think it’d be a neat trick to pretend you’d fled him, throw yourself on Winston’s protection, and then turn his honor into a purse. I think you are clever enough to do it, but that doesn’t mean you have.”
“Clever enough…” Her throat closed. “Are you asking whether I’m trying to trap Winston into marriage to pay my father’s debts?”
“Yes,” he said.
She hadn’t expected the bluntness. It shook her more than a shout would have.
“No,” she said, and the word tore at her. “No! How can you think…? Is that what Winston believes?”
Oswald’s gaze didn’t soften. “He’d be a fool not to consider it. I’m trying to keep him from being a fool.”
She pressed her hands together until her knuckles hurt. “He knows who I am now. He knows what my father did to my mother. I told him everything.”
“Did you tell him that you walked into his house with a false name at your father’s time of greatest need?” Oswald asked. “That you’ve been living under his roof while your father circulates letters about a daughter in retreat?”
“Yes,” she said, “though not in those exact words. He knows I lied. He knows why.”
“Do you?” Oswald asked.
She flinched. It was too near the bone. Too like her own doubts given a voice.
“I came here to escape my father,” she said. “Not to milk anyone for his sake. I have never sent a letter to him. I have never taken a penny connected to his schemes. If he’s using my name, he does it against my will.”
“Perhaps,” Lord Duskwood said, and the word stung more than a denial.
