The footman bowed and hurried off.
Isla inhaled the clear, cool air of the street and stepped onto the front step, spine straight, the faintest tremor hidden beneath layers of resolve. Edward Ravenscroft would have his doubts answered. And she would finally learn whether his mistrust was armor or accusation. Either way, the storm between them would break today.
Chapter 18
By late morning, Edward was beginning to suspect his mother had hired Fate as a footman and set him to bring difficulties in regular intervals on a tray. He had barely finished signing a letter to the land agent, a simple matter of boundary hedges and a tenant’s miscounted sheep, when his mother swept into his study like a storm in well-cut black silk.
“Cook is threatening to leave,” she announced without preamble. “You must speak to her.”
Edward set down his pen. “On what grounds?”
“On the grounds that the new footman has insulted her pies,” the Dowager said, as if discussing a diplomatic crisis. “If she goes, half the village will take it as a sign that Wexford Hall is failing. You must calm her.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Very well. After luncheon.”
“Before,” she said. “She is already stuffing things into trunks.”
He bit back a groan, rose, and spent a quarter of an hour persuading Mrs. Pike that an ill-chosen comment from a seventeen-year-old was not worth the inconvenience of moving an entire kitchen. When he returned to his study, his inkwellhad dried. By the time he refilled it and bent once more over the column of figures awaiting his decision, the door creaked again.
“The vicar’s wife,” his mother said from the threshold, “has written to say she is offended that the new hymnals have been purchased without her consultation. She implies you have insulted the parish.”
“I left the choice to the vicar,” Edward said. “If she wishes to be consulted on theology, let her go to Oxford and sit the examinations.”
Stand fast Lieutenant Ravenscroft. This is but a squall. You can weather it.
His mother’s lips thinned. “You cannot speak to Mrs. Pritchard like that.”
“I do not propose to,” he said. “I propose not to speak to her at all.”
“You must write,” the Dowager insisted. “Something tactful. She has influence among the tenants’ wives.”
“Give me the letter,” he said tightly. “I shall compose a paragraph to soothe her and preserve the vicar’s dignity.”
The paragraph took ten minutes, because every civil phrase had to be weighted against the likelihood of encouraging further interference. No sooner had he sealed it than his mother returned with yet another problem: a dispute between two tenants over a fallen tree, a request from the charity school for slates, a note from the steward about repairs to the west wall of the dovecote.
By noon, Edward felt less like a duke and more like a clerk in some particularly vindictive office. He stood at last, joints protesting, and crossed to the window in search of air.
The view looked out over the stable yard. Cobbles, troughs, the half-door of the stable block thrown open to the mild day. A figure in a plain dark habit moved in the space between stalls, skirts kilted a fraction to avoid the straw, hair pinned up neatly under a small bonnet. Isla.
He had sent word to her that he was returning to Wexford and did she wish a carriage sent to collect her from Portman Square. The messenger had not found her. She had already left.
I have not be able to speak to her since I got back. Is that what my mother’s unending list of petty tasks was about? To stop me spending time with my wife?
Isla stood with Harold Godwin near the paddock gate, one hand on a gelding’s bridle, the other gesturing to something in thedistance. Godwin was nodding, listening as intently as if she were a general explaining a new maneuver. The horse had its head bent toward her shoulder as if eavesdropping.
Even at this distance Edward could see the ease in her posture. The haunted strain she had worn in London, reading and rereading the notice of Strathmore’s ruin as though the ink might change if stared at hard enough, was less visible now. Here, in his stable yard, among horses and straw, she looked almost herself. The sight twisted something uncomfortably in his chest.
Almost herself. Wild and beautiful. Well, she is both of those things but there is still a tension there. I can see it in the set of her shoulders.
He wondered at the insight. How well did he know her? How well could he possibly know her? Logic said barely. His heart said that he knew her better than his head would ever agree. Edward refused to listen to his heart.
In the teeth of a storm or French privateer it is dangerous to listen too much to one’s heart.
She laughed at something Godwin said, that quick, bright sound that seemed to leave the air cleaner behind it. Then she led the horse away, toward the paddock. His mother appeared at his elbow, following his line of sight.
“There,” she said, with brittle satisfaction. “your wife, amusing herself while her brother wallows in brandy and her ancestral home lies in ruins.”
Edward did not answer. He kept his gaze on Isla until she vanished from view behind the stable block.
