He felt his face close before he could help it. The mention of verse dragged that library intimacy into the carriage with them.
“You have had little appetite for reading of late,” he heard himself say, and the chill in his tone surprised even him.
Her gaze snapped to him. “I have had little appetite for anything that is not information,” she said. “If I could read a letter from my brother instead of a column of speculation, I would happily leave Keats in his drawer.”
He should have apologized. “You have many drawers to choose from. You seem adept at finding exactly the right … volume … for the moment.”
The implication hung between them, ugly the moment it left his tongue. Color rose in her cheeks It was not the pleased flush he had seen when they quoted lines at each other, but the hot prick of anger.
“If you are suggesting that I chose poems as a way to catch you,” she said slowly, “then you think rather less of me than I thought you did.”
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Honesty warred with caution; neither won gracefully.
“I am suggesting,” he said at last, “that I have allowed myself to forget what brought me to your family in the first place.”
“An accident,” she said. “A fall. A choice to be decent.”
“And your brother’s need,” he said. “Which I am now riding toward with an open carriage and an open door.”
“And you resent it,” she said.
He did not deny it quickly enough.
She turned her face back to the window, jaw tight. “Next time I will break my head in private. It seems it would have been less trouble to everyone.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“It is what you said.”
The wheels clattered on. The countryside slipped by hedges, fields, the occasional milestone. Inside the carriage, the silence hardened to something brittle. When he glanced at her again, her mouth was pressed flat, her eyes bright with the shine that comes before tears. She blinked them back angrily, refusing to let them fall. He looked away first.
***
London received them in its usual fashion. There was noise, smell, and a film of soot that seemed to settle on the skin as soonas one entered the first ring of streets. By the time the carriage turned into Portman Square, lamps had begun to be lit; a thin mist clung to the air like breath held too long.
Strathmore House stood where it always had, the same sober façade facing the square, but even from the street Edward saw the difference. No glow at the windows, save for a faint flicker in one lower room. No bustle at the door. The knocker had not been polished. The paint around the lintel peeled. He felt Isla tense opposite him.
“If there is no answer,” he said, “we will go first to my house in St James and return with someone more authoritative.”
That earned him a slantwise look that might have been almost amused in a kinder moment. She said nothing. The carriage drew up. A footman jumped down and opened the door. Edward was out first, hand extended. Isla ignored it and stepped down on her own, skirts clearing the step by inches. He rapped the knocker. The sound echoed too loudly in the quiet street. After an uncomfortably long pause, the door opened a grudging handspan.
A maid peered out, hair untidy under her cap, apron stained. Her eyes widened. “Your Graces!”
“Is Lord Strathmore at home?” Edward asked.
The girl bobbed something like a curtsy.
“Aye, sir. That is … yes. He’s in the study. I think.” She looked flustered. “He said he was not at home to nobody, but I did not think he meant …”
“For once he will endure a surprise,” Isla said, slipping past before the girl could finish. “We thank you.”
The hall was poorly lit. The air smelled of cold ash, spilled wine, and something slightly sour. A coat lay abandoned over a chair. No one had set flowers in the hall vases. Edward suppressed a wince. This was not poverty alone but chaos. Isla moved toward the study with certainty. Edward followed, the maid scurrying at their heels as if to protest too late.
They reached the study door just as raised voices spilled out, the rough laughter of a man past sobriety and another voice Edward did not recognize, muttering. Isla did not knock. She pushed the door open. The room was a disordered battlefield. Papers lay scattered across the floor like drifts of snow.
A decanter rolled lazily on the carpet, leaving a dark smear of spilled wine. Two empty bottles lounged on their sides near the desk. A candle burned low in a brass holder on the table, wax dripping unchecked in long, dangerous streams. The air was thick with smoke from a grate that had not been cleared properly.
Alistair Drummond lay half-sprawled in a chair, cravat undone, waistcoat gaping, eyes red-rimmed. His hair, always inclined to unruliness, looked as though it had been used as a handhold in some private wrestling match. He held a glass loosely.
