Why did the Duke interfere? His servants could have taken me to a quiet room somewhere to recover.
“I have talked the matter over with the Duke and the Dowager Duchess. I see only one solution. The Duke agrees,” Alistair said.
There was something in his voice. Underneath the anger and the concern. Something that said he had scored a victory.
“Oh no!” Isla cried out. “Do not say what I think you’re about to say, Alistair!”
“There is only one remedy. He must marry you.” Alistair said.
“Away and boil yer heid!” Isla snapped in a tone of unadulterated common Scots. “Have ye lost yer marbles?”
“Stop that!” Alistair barked, sounding like an Eton schoolmaster. “There is no social capital in being an impoverished noble house from north of the border. Not in London.”
“It is our heritage,” Isla said.
“There is no money in it. Do you comprehend the fortune tied to the Wexford name? His offer will save us from bankruptcy, from humiliation. You will accept it, and thank him.”
“I will do nae such thing!” she said, her accent thickening with fury. “Ye will nae barter me like a broodmare!”
He drew a harsh breath. “You have no sense of duty. I carry the weight of Strathmore alone, and you repay me with folly. I sometimes think you delight in watching me struggle.”
His words struck deeper than he knew. She turned her face away lest he see it. To her shame she felt tears pricking at her eyes.
I do not ask for wealth or influence. Only the freedom to choose my road. Whether that road is Pall Mall or a country lane through the hills of Perthshire.
The door opened. Both turned as a man entered without ceremony. He filled the doorway just as he had filled the stables, broad-shouldered, steady-eyed. Every inch of him was composed and controlled. He stood with hands clasped behind his back. In the lamplight, his dark hair gleamed. Nothing could be gleaned from his expression. Not emotion or intent.
“Wexford,” Alistair said stiffly, bowing.
“I come to ask after Lady Isla’s condition,” Edward said.
His voice carried the calm of a man accustomed to command.
“Dr Hargreaves assures me the injury is minor.”
“I am glad he was willing to impart such information to you, a stranger, than to her own brother.”
“I paid his fee,” Edward pointed out.
Isla’s heart thudded but not from pain.
It is him! The stableman! A Duke?!
The same voice that had teased her in the dark, now stripped of the rough edges she had taken for insolence. Replacing them was glacial calm, mirrored by a stony face. Stony in the same way that Michelangelo’s David was stony. It had the hardness of marble worked by a master. Beautiful but cold.
“You,” she said, unable to mask her disbelief.
Edward inclined his head. “I fear introductions were wanting earlier. Edward Ravenscroft, Duke of Wexford.”
Isla’s mouth parted. “You …”
“… were the man in the stables, yes?”
A flicker crossed his face. Humor? Mockery?
“I might say we met under unusual circumstances.”
“You let me believe you were a stable hand!”
