“I am not returning,” he repeated. “I have business in York.”
“Business.” She poured contempt into the word. “Of course. Not content with one scandal, you go in search of another.”
He did not rise to the bait. “I have a man to speak to,” he said. “A man who claims to have been wronged by Strathmore and his sister. I would rather meet him with you at my side than behind my back.”
“A man? I have wronged no-one!” Isla said, “Is that why you came? Not to protect. To interrogate.”
“No,” he said, with a sharpness that cut. “I could have gone to York alone and drawn my own conclusions. I am giving you the chance to face him to see if he speaks truth or shame. I do not relish the idea, but I prefer it to judging you in your absence.”
It was, horribly, almost reasonable.
She swallowed. “You still doubt me.”
“I doubt myself,” he said. “My own judgment. I have been wrong often enough. I am trying, clumsily perhaps, to be less so where you are concerned.”
The rawness in his voice stole some of her prepared retort.
“I do not want you with me,” she said, because she had to say something. “You make everything more complicated.”
“Likewise,” he said, surprising her into a small, unwilling huff of breath.
For a moment, in the damp lane with rotting branches at their feet and Morrow flicking her tail impatiently, they simply looked at one another. Isla broke first.
“Very well,” she said. “You may come as far as York. After that, you may do as you please.”
“And you?” he asked.
“I shall go on to Strathmore,” she said. “With or without you.”
He nodded slowly. “That, at least, is honest.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Do not sound so pleased about it.”
He stepped back to his horse, gathering the reins. She moved to the trap, but paused, fingers on the side rail, as another thought, sharp and unwelcome, surfaced.
“Why was she allowed into that wing?” she asked.
He looked over. “Who?”
“Lady Charlotte.” Her throat tightened on the name. “You said you had invited no one into that room. Yet she came out of it, and your mother speaks as if she knows every object inside. Why them? Why not me?”
The question escaped before she could tether it. His expression shifted, something like shame, something like anger.
“I trusted no one with that room,” he said. “Least of all Charlotte.”
“But your mother …”
“My mother has keys to every door in Wexford Hall,” he said. “I was a fool to forget it. I should have taken that set when I inherited. I did not.”
“So she let Charlotte in,” Isla said.
“Yes,” he said. “Without my knowledge. Whatever Charlotte found, whatever story she chose to tell, she did so with my mother’s complicity.”
Pieces shifted in Isla’s mind. The Dowager’s pointed remarks. The way she had spoken of the wing as if it were a test Isla had already failed. The timing of Charlotte’s arrival. Isla’s fingers tightened on the wood.
“She wanted me to see Charlotte coming out,” Isla said slowly. “She wanted me to question her. To lose my temper. To look jealous and grasping in your eyes.”
“She succeeded,” he said grimly. “For a time.”
