“Alistair,” Isla said. “What in God’s name …”
“Isla!” He lurched to his feet, swaying. “Sister. Dearest. Thought you’d come when you heard.” His words slurred around the edges. “House caught like tinder. Whole bloody wing gone.”
“Why did you not write?” she demanded, striding into the room. “I had to learn from a newspaper in a village inn.”
“Letter’s there somewhere,” he said vaguely, waving at the sea of paper. “Never got as far as ink. Other things to think of. You’re well, though? Married? Saving us all with your pretty vows?”
Edward felt the words like a slap delivered to both of them.
“Alistair,” he said, stepping inside. “You are drunk.”
“Brilliant observation,” Strathmore drawled, listing against the desk. He peered at Edward. “And you are … heroic. Turning up in my ruin like St George after the dragon’s already done his work.”
As he spoke he gestured carelessly and his sleeve brushed the candle. It tipped, teetered, toppled. The flame fell onto the nearest drift of paper. For a heartbeat nothing happened. Then the dry edges curled black, caught, flared.
Isla moved on instinct, but Edward was closer. He crossed the space in three strides, stamped the burning paper under his boot, ground it hard until the flame died, then seized the fallen candle in its holder and upended it onto the hearthstone.
“Are you entirely without sense?” he demanded, straightening. “You lose one house to fire and you set about burning the next yourself?”
Alistair blinked at the charred edges on the carpet. “It was only a bit of paper.”
“Paper on a floor soaked with spirits,” Edward snapped. “Near old wainscoting. Near curtains. Do you mean to leave nothing but rubble wherever you live?”
“Do not speak to him like that,” Isla said sharply.
He turned to her, anger still hot. “He is set on proving Morlich right about divine retribution. If he dies in his cups, at least he will do it with enthusiasm.”
“Do not bring that man’s name into this room,” she said. “And do not compare my brother to him.”
“Why not?” Edward said, years of discipline loosening in the face of wine and ruin. “Morlich drowns himself in arrogance, your brother in brandy. Both leave others to clean up the mess.”
Alistair laughed. It was the cracked, brittle sound of a man who had run out of better responses. “He’s right, Isla. Your gallant husband has us measured.”
“Be silent,” she snapped at her brother, then rounded on Edward. “You have no idea what he has been managing. The house burned under him. Our people were scattered. He has had to find shelter for staff, write to creditors, fend off vultures who would carve our lands. And he has done it without a wife to steady the household or a mother to bully everyone into order. If he has drunk too much, perhaps it is because he has had no one to share the weight with.”
“Then he should have written,” Edward shot back. “Asked. Instead he wallows while London prints his disasters and your family’s name slides further into the mud.”
“He did not want to drag you into it,” Isla said. “You were dragged in by accident. We know that. We have never denied it.”
“And yet here I am,” Edward said. “In a house that reeks of neglect, stamping out your brother’s stupidity before it burns this house too. And you would have me believe none of this is deliberate?”
Her eyes flashed. “You think we plan our calamities?”
“I think,” he said, voice low now, “that your brother is not above using disaster to secure advantage. He did it with me. He may well do it again.”
“That is enough,” she whispered. “You insult him. You insult me.”
“You make it very difficult not to,” he said.
There it was the thing both of them had been circling. He saw hurt flare in her eyes, bright and raw.
“You think I participated,” Isla said slowly, as if fitting the pieces together in real time. “That I went into those stables knowing you would be there. That I fell and struck my head on purpose. That the shame of being carried through a ballroom was what? A small price to pay?”
He held his ground. “I think I would be a fool not to consider the possibility.”
Her breath left her in a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. “You are a greater fool than I took you for,” she said. “If I had wanted to entrap you, I would have chosen a method that did not involve concussion.”
Alistair swayed, watching them as if he were at the theatre. “Careful,” he murmured. “You’ll frighten away the last friend we have with money.”
