“Legally,” Isla said. “My heart does not seem able to keep up with the paperwork.”
She pressed her forehead briefly against the cool pane. She had left Strathmore to save her brother from ruin. To be a bridge between their failing estate and the security of Wexford. Now Strathmore was ash, their creditors bayed louder than before, Glenmore whispered in London, and Edward, whose friendship she had begun to value as much as any bond, might be planning a future in which she did not figure beyond a name on a register.
It was intolerable. Not because her pride could not bear being set aside but because the thought of staying under a roof whereshe was not wanted in more than name felt suddenly like a slow suffocation.
“You’re thinking too loud,” Edith said quietly. “I can hear it from here.”
Isla turned. “What?”
“When you get that look …” Edith mimed it, eyes fixed, jaw set. “…it means you’ve made up your mind about something and the rest of us had better make room for it.”
Isla huffed a laugh that was almost a sob. “Do I truly look like that?”
“Like a child who’s decided to climb the tallest tree in the village,” Edith said. “Yes.”
Isla crossed to the trunk and laid her hand on its edge. “If Strathmore is half destroyed, Alistair will need help. Real help. Not just letters. Not just money he does not yet have.”
Edith’s brows drew together. “You mean to go.”
“Yes.” The word settled into place like a stone finding its riverbed. “I mean to go to Perthshire. To see with my own eyes what remains. To make certain no one is hungry or homelesswho need not be. To stand on my own hearthstone, even if it is cracked.”
“And His Grace?” Edith asked carefully.
Isla hesitated. Edward’s face rose before her, earnest over a ledger, amused over a mare’s stubbornness, quiet in the flickering light of a kitchen candle, lines of worry drawn around his eyes.
“He has his mother to advise him,” she said. “And Lady Charlotte, apparently. He does not need me to tell him how to arrange his rooms or his heart.”
Edith opened her mouth, closed it again, then said only, “He will notice you are gone.”
“Perhaps,” Isla said. “Perhaps not.”
She closed the trunk lid gently, as if to test its hinges.
“I will write to Alistair,” she went on. “Tell him I am coming north. He may try to dissuade me, but he will not succeed.”
“And His Grace?” Edith persisted.
“I will … inform him,” Isla said. “As courtesy demands.”
The ache in her chest pulsed. She pushed it down.
“Better a ruined house I love,” she murmured, half to herself, “than a whole one in which I feel like a trespasser.”
She squared her shoulders, reached for paper and pen, and began to write.
Chapter 20
Edward had barely finished breakfast when Giles brought the letter.
“From Lincoln’s Inn, Your Grace,” the butler said, silver salver steady, expression as neutral as ever. Only the faintest tightening around his eyes betrayed any awareness of how the name might land.
Edward wiped his fingers, took the envelope, and broke the seal. Latham’s hand, precise and compact, marched across the page.
Your Grace,
Further to our previous correspondence on the matter of Lord Deverell, I write to inform you that his lordship has removed from his former lodgings and taken up residence in York. The forwarding address is enclosed. He expressly declines to return to Town at present, but indicates willingness to receive you privately should you find yourself in that region. Kindly advise if you wish me to press him further or leave the matter to your own discretion…
The words blurred, then sharpened, as if the paper breathed.
