Edward frowned. “Isla is not raven-haired.”
“No,” Henry agreed. “Nor are her eyes like midnight. They are more like the last bit of green on a summer hill. The description did not fit. The name did.”
“Glenmore is a Scot and his family is large” Edward said slowly. “He is dark in coloring.”
“Coincidence?” Henry asked.
“I do not believe in coincidences of that sort,” Edward said. “If Glenmore wished to ruin Strathmore, what better way than to set up some unfortunate woman to pose as Isla, then whisper of it in every ear? Deverell’s shame does the rest.”
“So you mean to go to York,” Henry said. “To look Deverell in the eye and ask him to describe her.”
“Yes,” Edward said. “If he speaks of a raven-haired goddess with whisky in her voice, I will know that whatever traps were laid, Isla was not the one laying them.”
“And if he speaks of a copper-haired woman with a temper?” Henry asked lightly.
“Then I will know I have married a better actress than London has ever seen,” Edward said. “And I shall have to live with that.”
Henry was quiet a moment, then said, “Does she know?”
“Some of it. That there is a man in York who alleges she and her brother attempted to dupe him. She doesn’t know his name.”
“You mean to tell her,” Henry said.
“I mean to give her the chance to face him,” Edward said. “To speak in her own defense, if defense is needed.”
Henry snorted. “You always did have a way with romance.”
Edward smiled grimly. “I am learning. Slowly.”
Henry’s gaze lifted to the upper story of the inn. One of the small windows above stood ajar, a faint flicker of candlelight showed behind the curtain.
“Be careful,” Henry said quietly. “She is not a problem to be solved, Edward. She is a person. If you treat this like an exercise in logic alone, you will lose something you cannot put back.”
Edward glanced up as well, following Henry’s gaze.
“She is also the only person who can answer this question,” Edward said. “I am trying to find a way to ask it that does not break what little trust we have managed to build.”
Henry took one last pull at his cheroot and ground it under his heel. “Then perhaps lead with that,” he said. “With the trust you wish to have. Not with the doubt you cannot shake.”
Edward did not answer. His eyes remained on the strip of lamplight above.
Chapter 23
The towers of York rose first as a faint smudge against the sky. Isla saw them between the ears of Morrow, a grey blur where the flat northern fields lifted and the air seemed to tighten. The citygrew with every mile, a darker line, then suggestions of walls, then the pale finger of a spire. Her hands tightened on the reins.
Behind her, the trap creaked and rattled in time with the mare’s gait. To her left, Edward rode in easy silence, cloak flung back now that the afternoon had warmed a little. On the far side, Henry and Elizabeth rode double on Henry’s gelding, Elizabeth’s arms around his waist, her bonnet pinned fiercely against the wind.
They had made good time. The road north from the last inn had been dry and well kept, the weather mercifully clear. It should have been pleasant, the sort of travel day people wrote lyrical nonsense about in letters. Open country, good company, wheels that did not break. In many ways it had been. Isla had enjoyed the road. She had enjoyed Edward.
They had fallen into a rhythm almost without noticing. Mornings began with mild bickering over where to stop and who knew the route better. Middays passed in story-sharing.
Henry, once the immediate panic of the elopement faded, proved a cheerful companion, full of tales of barracks and battles told with self-mocking flair. Elizabeth, when she lost her initial shyness, possessed a sly humor that left Isla laughing more than she had in months. But it was Edward who surprised her most.
He had always seemed so contained. Even at his most furious, there was a restraint to him, as though he held his temper on ashort chain. On the road, that chain loosened. He told stories of the sea, of storms that flung men across decks like rag dolls and of calm days when the water lay smooth as glass. Of a cook who had once attempted to bake a pudding in a gale and ended up chasing it the length of the ship when it escaped its tin.
He spoke of foreign ports. Of monkeys stealing hats and a French captain who had attempted to surrender with such theatrical flourish that even Rearden had been impressed. He laughed as he spoke, not the tight, polite smiles of London but full, unguarded laughter that creased the corners of his eyes and made his whole face younger. Isla had found herself laughing with him. Truly laughing, not the brittle sound she had perfected for drawing rooms.
She had learned that he hated pears, that he had once fallen out of a tree as a boy trying to impress his cousin and broken his arm, that he still woke sometimes convinced he was on a rolling deck. He, in turn, had learned that she had once tried to ride a river pony bareback and ended up in the Tay, that she cried at tragic ballads even as she mocked them, that she could not abide brandy but would drink whisky without flinching.
