“I am trained to.” He tapped the margin. “These are the terms a drowning man makes with a ship. Honest, as far as they go, and designed to keep the head above water.” He lifted his eyes. “You require my name to silence the ton and my purse to silence your ledgers.”
Strathmore took that without a flinch. “I require my sister’s reputation kept from harm.”
“And the estate?”
“If my sister is safe,” Strathmore said, carefully, “the estate will find its way.”
“On my back,” Edward returned, blunt as a belaying pin.
The anger he had kept measured began to climb the rungs. He thought of Isla’s pale hand at her temple when she had awoken in his guest room. Of her fierce eyes when his words had tripped her temper in the stables. He had not asked to be tethered to a family’s rescue. He had not asked for anything, in fact.
He set the paper down. “There is an alternative.”
Strathmore’s gaze sharpened. “Which is?”
“I do nothing,” Edward said. “I ride out the scandal, offer no explanations, and leave London to chew its cud. The story will sour and pass. I am a Duke. The ton forgets that what it cannot best. Your sister bears the weight.”
Silence pulled tight between them. In it came the remembered deck-beat of his old ship, the Argus. Four bells and a wet wind, the smell of tar and salt, a captain’s voice in his ear.
Hold your heading, Mr. Ravenscroft, when the easy turn would put you dead on the shoal. The sea tests character by offering exits in a storm.
Captain Rearden always had the gift of stating morality as seamanship. Easy to obey when orders were wind and rope. Harder here, where the rope was a woman’s life and the wind was talk.
“Your alternative is neat,” Strathmore said at last, “and cowardly.”
Edward did not rise to it. He considered whether the honest path and the easy one could be the same. They rarely were. He saw Isla in the stable, chin up and eyes bright with a dare she had not meant to give. He saw her in the guest room, furious through the ache of her head. He had not liked the thought of her as a trap. He breathed once, deep and steady, and let the anger settle.
“Very well,” he said. “We will make a clean contract. An honorable one. I will always do what honor demands and it demands I marry Lady Isla. That is the beginning and the end of it.”
Strathmore’s shoulders lowered a fraction. “I am relieved to hear you say it.”
“But we will make my kind of contract,” Edward added. “I will have my solicitor draw them up and present them to you by tomorrow.”
Strathmore blinked. “Which terms do you find offensive?”
Edward raised a hand. “Do not worry that I mean to pauper you. I will be fair. Your need is clearly greater than mine.”
Strathmore’s face tightened. Edward noticed his fingertips, white against the edge of the desk as though the other man clung to it. Edward wondered if he had given offence. If Strathmore fought to keep his hands from Edward’s throat.
It is not my concern. We do what we must. You may have thought to trap me but I will be in control. Not you. And not your sister.
“Agree, or argue,” Edward said, rising.
Strathmore remained seated, then rose and offered his hand.
“Agree.”
***
Outside, Portman Square glittered with sunshine and noise. Carriages rolled, vendors called, children chased each other around the iron railings that enclosed the small park which the houses overlooked. Edward descended the steps into London’s familiar churn and found a figure waiting in the shade of a plane tree.
She had chosen a sober walking dress and a bonnet that partially concealed her face. She would have blended into the crowd thatwere abroad on this sunny, June day but Edward doubted she would blend into any surrounding for him.
“Your Grace,” she said, and the burr in the two words had lost none of its music.
“Lady Isla.”
“My brother will be displeased,” she said without preamble, “if I speak with you. He has barred me from any conversation concerningmymarriage.”
