“That is enough!” Edward said, the old word of command coming back without effort. He stepped slightly closer to Isla, not touching, but present, in a way his mother could not mistake. “We go to London. You have my itinerary. Giles will consult you on any pressing matters. Wexford will not fall down in three days.”
“You underestimate what can be lost in three days,” Lady Eleanor said. “I have not that luxury.”
He saw, in that moment, not the formidable Dowager but a young woman watching soldiers ride out and coffins come back. For a heartbeat he almost softened. Then she looked at Isla again and the shutters slammed down.
“You are leaving your home vulnerable,” she said. “For strangers.”
“For my wife,” he said deliberately, in Isla’s hearing. “And her family. Which, by law and vows, are now mine.”
Lady Eleanor’s expression did not change, but something in her went rigid. “Very well. Run to them. When they ask for your purse to rebuild the ashes, remember this conversation.”
He inclined his head as if she had blessed them. “Good day, Mother.”
He offered his arm to Isla. She hesitated only a fraction before taking it. Together they crossed the hall to the waiting carriage. Behind them, he did not have to look to know his mother’s gaze followed like a shadow.
***
He had expected the road to knock his thoughts into a dull rhythm. Instead, every turn of the wheels seemed to grind questions deeper. Isla sat opposite him, hands folded tightly in her lap, looking out the window with the fixed attention of someone trying to outrun imagination.
Her profile was all bones and resolve. He wanted to say something that would ease the tension in her shoulders and could not think what would do it without breaking too many of his own rules.
“I overheard. I wasn’t eavesdropping but I could hear,” Isla said.
“What?” Edward asked.
“About your father,” Isla replied.
Edward wanted to be impenetrable. To exist behind high walls that Isla could not breach. He betrayed himself by looking at her. She was looking back at him. For a moment her eyes were the world. She bit her lower lip, drawing his attention there. His mouth was suddenly dry.
How can she not hear my heartbeat. It thunders!
“What about my father?” Edward asked.
“I am not prying,” Isla said, “I merely wish to know you better. To … be friends with you.”
Edward nodded, telling himself that friends would be the smoothest course. He tried to ignore the flash of disappointment that he had felt at the pronunciation of the word, friend. His mother’s last words hung in the confined air.When they ask for your purse …
Is this the overture? A burning house in Perthshire, a distressed sister in Hampshire, a brother in London whose finances already hung by threads.
“Life would certainly be tolerable if we were friends,” Edward admitted, keeping his words short to not betray himself further.
“We are thrust together. And we have much in common. I see no reason we cannot live together in friendship,” Isla said.
What comes next? A request for funds to rebuild? A plea for a house in Hampshire to tide them over?
He knew too well how such things were managed. Marriages were made as currency. Alliances shored up crumbling walls. Men went to rich wives when their own lands failed. Why should the Drummonds be different? And then there was Lord Deverell.
He had told himself then he would not condemn Isla for rumors born of men’s amusement. He had told himself he would seek facts. He had arranged for his solicitor, Latham, to make discrete inquiries. But he could not ignore the pattern which Morlich seemed to suggesting was present.
I will visit Latham. He will tell me what progress has been made.
“You say it with such conviction,” Isla said.
Again, Edward looked at her. Again he found himself pinned by her eyes. Held fast in place. He remembered the kiss.
Are you genuine? Your poetry, your riding. Your lips.
“A book would have helped,” Isla said suddenly, startling him. “I should have thought to bring one. Keats for preference. Or Wordsworth. Anything but another newspaper.”
