Edward nearly choked.
“We were discussing breeding,” he called down. Then realized, too late, how that sounded.
Lady Eleanor’s eyes widened. Godwin coughed into his fist hard enough to shake his whiskers.
“Horse breeding,” Edward amended hastily. “Mother, really.”
“The Duke of Wexford and his duchess,” Lady Eleanor said, her voice climbing thin and sharp. “Perched together in a hayloft like … like … servants in a melodrama. What if someone should see?”
“I do see,” Godwin muttered. “And I’ll take it to my grave, Your Grace.”
Lady Eleanor shot him a look that would have shriveled a younger man. Godwin’s face settled into lines of innocent blankness.
“Come down at once,” she snapped. “Both of you.”
Isla leaned close enough for her shoulder to brush Edward’s. “If I fall,” she murmured, “you must catch me. I refuse to crack my head twice in one marriage.”
“Consider it my duty,” he replied, the corners of his mouth twitching.
They descended one after the other, Edward first, then turning to offer his hand. She set her fingers in his and stepped down with more grace than the narrow ladder deserved. For a moment, as she came off the last rung, she stumbled. Edward’s hands closed around her waist to steady her. Lady Eleanor gasped, one hand flying to her throat.
“Honestly, Mother,” Edward said, setting Isla carefully on her feet. “We are married. You were present at the ceremony.”
“Marriage does not excuse impropriety in barns,” the Dowager retorted. “If you must … talk, do it in a drawing room like Christians.”
“We attempted that,” Isla said sweetly. “The drawing rooms were full of Christians who did not like what we had to say.”
Godwin made a strangled sound that might have been a cough. Lady Eleanor looked from one to the other, straw on their shoulders, dust on their shoes, a warmth between them she did not understand or approve.
“There is a matter requiring your signature,” she told Edward icily. “The charity committee cannot proceed without your approval. And perhaps, if you can spare a moment from … stallions … you might remember you are a duke, not a stable boy.”
“I will attend you directly,” he said.
She turned on her heel and swept out, leaving a faint trail of indignation in her wake. Silence, stunned and then not, settled over the stable. Isla looked at Edward. He looked back. Then both of them started to laugh. Not loudly, or with cruelty, just the helpless, breathless sort of mirth that comes when tension finally finds a crack. Godwin, catching it, allowed himself a cautious grin.
“Begging your pardons, Your Graces,” he said, “but if that’s the worst scandal we see this year, I’ll sleep easy.”
Edward shook his head, still smiling. “You see what devotion to horses has brought us,” he said to Isla. “Grave danger to our reputations.”
“Our reputations were in tatters already,” she replied. “We may as well have sound horses.”
He sobered a fraction, looking at her. The gulf between them dug by rumor and fear and his own mistrust felt, for the first time in days, less like a chasm and more like a ditch that might, with effort, be crossed.
“I should go and rescue the charity committee from my mother,” he said.
“Do,” she replied. “I shall stay and rescue your stallions from poor breeding choices.”
He inclined his head. “Isla …”
She met his gaze evenly. “Edward.”
Whatever he had been about to say, apology, explanation, some foolish admission, it stuck. He let it rest, for now, in the warm, hay-scented air between them. As he left the stable, the laughter they had shared lingered at his back like the memory of sunlight.
He allowed himself to hope that whatever lay between himself and Isla might one day be something other than suspicion and duty. It might, with careful tending, be as sound and enduring as the bloodlines she dreamed into his stables.
Chapter 19
The letter did not come on Monday. Alistair’s word on the condition of Strathmore. Of the fate of the staff and the stables. By Tuesday Isla had convinced herself that it was merely delayed. Roads washed out. Postboys lazy. Some minor, sensible cause that made mock of fear.
