“Tin kept what were in it from burning,” the footman said. “Funny, that.”
“Help me get it out,” Isla murmured.
Together they eased the tin from its blackened cradle. It was hot only in memory now, the metal cooled under her fingers. The lid, misshapen, popped loose with a twist. Inside lay letters. Dozens of them, folded and tied in bundles with ribbons gone brown and brittle. The edges were singed, some bore small holes where the fire had bitten through. But the ink, where the paper had been protected, was still visible. The hand was unfamiliar but her mother’s name was clear on some of the outer folds.
Isla’s breath caught.
“Letters,” she whispered. “From …”
The top bundle was addressed in a hand she knew well. Strong, confident strokes.Lady Catriona Macleod, in a slightly younger version of the script that had written padding lists and birthday notes and shopping instructions all through Isla’s childhood.
My dear Catriona,
I find myself writing to you again when I had sworn I would not. Your last letter was …
The words blurred. Isla blinked, refocused. The tone was intimate, but not familiar in the way of her parents’ exchanges. She turned to the bottom. The signature had escaped the worst of the fire, protected by the way the paper had been folded. It sat there, almost smug in its clarity.
Nigel.
Isla stared.
Nigel.
There were many Nigels in England. Only one had ever mattered in her family.
She checked the top of the page again.
Glenmore
A crest, half-charred, stamped faintly at the top. She knew that crest. She had seen it on the corner of pamphlets, on the lid of a carriage once at a distance, on invitations her father had torn in half. Blackwood.
Her mouth went dry.
“Nigel Blackwood,” she whispered. “Duke of Glenmore.”
The name tasted of old anger. She could see him in memory. Tall, silvering hair, a smile like a knife. Arch-enemy. The man her father had called a vulture. And here, in her hands, a letter from him to her mother. Addressed intimately. Folded and preserved.
By who? Not my father certainly. It can only have been kept by mother. Why? Did she love him? Did they … did they have an affair?
The ground seemed to tilt.
“Your Grace?”
The footman’s voice came from far away.
Isla drew in a breath of smoky air and tasted only ash.
“Find Alistair,” she said, her voice very calm. “Tell him I have found something he will want to see.”
She folded the letter with extreme care, as if rough handling might shake its meaning loose, and held it in both hands, as if it might burn her all over again.
Nigel Blackwood, arch-enemy of Strathmore, wrote love letters to my mother.
The fire had not been the first secret to come out of Strathmore’s walls. It would not, she thought, be the last.
Chapter 25
Edward discovered the truth by smell before he saw it. The ruined east wing had its own stench, wet ash, charred plaster, that sour tang of soaked tapestries. He had been breathing it all afternoon, shoulders burning from heaving beams with Alistair and the men.
