James set his glass on the nearest surface without looking at it. An unfathomable emotion flashed behind his eyes.
“Is it the solicitor?” Isadora asked because he had gone very quiet, and she could not help herself.
He turned to her with an expression that said he had half-forgotten she was there.
“I could not say.” His voice was even, measured. Nothing like it had been three minutes ago.
“Your gambling debts,” she said lightly. “Has one of your creditors finally grown impatient and come to collect in person? I always wondered how that worked.”
It was the kind of line that would have ordinarily elicited at least a pained smile.
“Stay here,” he said, already turning away. Then he followed the footman through the crowd and out of the room.
Isadora stood where he had left her.
“Stay here.”
CHAPTER 2
Isadora stayed exactly where she was for four full minutes, and then she moved. Not toward the dancing, not toward William and Cecily, but toward the far end of the room, where the terrace doors stood open to the night.
The crowd was thinner there. The air was better. And if she happened to step outside for a breath of it, that was entirely unremarkable.
She heard voices, low and deliberate, coming from the far end of the terrace. She turned.
Three figures stood together in the shadows beyond the last lamp. One she recognized immediately—James, his broad back half-turned toward her, very still in a way that had nothing to do with ease.
Beside him stood an older gentleman with white at his temples and a coat that spoke of money but not frivolity. And to his other side was a smaller man with a leather satchel over one shoulder and a sheaf of documents under his arm. He had the quiet, careful bearing of a man who dealt in other people’s difficult circumstances for a living.
A solicitor. Without question.
She had grown up watching solicitors appear at Blackmoor at the worst of times. She knew how they looked.
The conversation had clearly already happened. The older gentleman was looking at the ground. The solicitor held his documents with the slightly too careful grip of a man waiting to be needed again.
And James…
James stood perfectly still.
The older gentleman said something quietly, turned, and walked back through the terrace doors with his hat in his hands. The solicitor followed with a small, formal inclination of his head, clasping his satchel against his side.
They passed within ten feet of Isadora. The older man glanced at her briefly and then away.
She waited until the doors had closed behind them before crossing the terrace.
James did not turn when she approached. She wondered if he had seen her already and said nothing, or if he had simply ceased to register the room entirely.
“James.” She kept her voice low.
He turned then.
The light from the nearest lamp reached him, and she saw his face properly.
It took everything she had not to ask immediately, not to reach out and touch his arm. She had always been good at composure, but tonight it cost her more than usual.
“What happened?” she asked.
He looked at her for a moment. Then he looked back out at the dark garden, as though he needed somewhere else to put his attention while the words arranged themselves.
