Morrow tossed her head, feeling the change in her grip. Isla gentled the mare automatically, voice catching. “Easy, lass. We are home.”
Home. The word felt wrong on her tongue. The shell of the place was there, but the heart of it … Her chest ached. For a moment she could not breathe.
Edward’s gloved hand rested briefly on her arm. “Do you want to stop?” he asked quietly.
“No,” she said at once. Stopping would mean sitting and looking. She could not bear that. “We go down.”
As they neared it became clear that the stables to the left of the main house were gutted. Their stone walls still stood, blackened, but the roof had collapsed inward. The yard in front was churned mud, marked with hoof-prints and boot-prints, and here and there the pale flash of broken timber. No horses. No familiar heads over stall doors, no snort of greeting.
The main courtyard was busy. Men and women moved in and out of the east wing’s gaping mouth, faces streaked with soot, arms full of salvaged goods. A wagon stood loaded with furniture and boxes. Piles of singed bedding steamed faintly where someone had doused them with water drawn from the well. Isla saw her brother before he saw her.
Alistair Drummond, Duke of Strathmore, stood near what had once been the entrance to the burned wing, one arm braced against the scorched stone, the other directing two men who carried a scorched chest between them.
His usually immaculate hair was damp and matted with soot; his fine features, so often drawn with bored disdain, were set in lines of exhaustion. His shirt sleeves were rolled up. His hands were filthy. He looked up at the sound of the trap’s wheels.
For an instant he stared as if he could not quite place what he was seeing. Then his shoulders dropped, and something old and boyish flickered across his face.
“Isla.”
She pulled Morrow to a halt in the middle of the yard and jumped down before Edward could offer a hand. Her boots splashed in a shallow puddle, cold soaking instantly through leather.
“Alistair,” she said. Her throat was too tight to say anything else.
He crossed the distance between them in six long strides and caught her in a sudden, fierce embrace. She stiffened in surprise, then melted into it, arms going around him, nose full of soot and damp wool and something that was simply her brother.
“You should not be here,” he muttered into her hair.
“You wrote to me about this and expected me to stay in London?” she demanded, voice muffled against his shoulder. “You idiot.”
He huffed a laugh, pulled back, and swiped a forearm across his brow, leaving a darker streak. “Well. You look a sight better than I do.”
“She always does,” Edward said dryly.
Alistair glanced past her, expression tightening as he registered the other man.
“Ravenscroft.” The word held a tangle of things, reluctance, debt, wariness.
“Strathmore,” Edward returned, inclining his head. He had stripped off his gloves and coat, slung the latter over the trap rail. Already his hands looked more like a working man’s than a duke’s.
“Did your mother send you to see the ruin you’ve shackled yourself to?” Alistair asked.
“No,” Edward said. “My wife did.”
Alistair’s mouth thinned. He nodded once, grudgingly. “Well. Since you are here, I won’t say no to another pair of hands.”
“You might consider saying please,” Isla muttered.
She took a step toward the ruin, then another. Her feet sank in the mud. The closer she came, the more the smell hit, the sweet, sick reek of things burned almost to the point of melting. Memories rose unbidden.
Running through those corridors with a ribbon flying loose from her hair. Moira chasing her with a hairbrush, laughing and scolding. Her father’s voice booming down from the gallery, calling to the dogs. The north wind whining through cracks in the shutters during winter storms.
A movement to her right caught her eye. Mrs. Macrae, the housekeeper who had been there since before Isla was born, stood near a line of salvaged blankets, directing a younger maid who held an armful of crockery.
“Mrs. Macrae.” Isla crossed to her. “Are you well?”
The older woman turned. Her face was lined, soot-streaked, but her eyes were as sharp as ever.
“Your Grace.” She dropped a curtsy that was more a brief dip of the knees; Isla waved it off and caught her hands instead.
