“No,” Isadora blurted out.
She looked at him, her eyes watery. Then she turned to look at Mortimer, her back rigid. The room went very still.
“No,” she said again, firmly. “No one is taking that child anywhere.”
“Your Grace—” Mortimer tried.
“She is still a baby,” she cut him off. “She has lost both her parents. She has spent the last several weeks learning that this house is safe and that the people in it will not leave her, and you are proposing to remove her from it based on letters obtained from a woman who cannot confirm their contents, about a woman who cannot refute them.” She glared at him. “I will not allow that.”
“The child may not belong to the late Duke at all,” Mortimer said, with the patience of a man who had anticipated this and prepared for it. “If that is true?—”
“It changes nothing,” Isadora gritted out.
He blinked.
“The child’s parentage,” she continued, “does not change the fact that she is a child. It does not change the fact that she is innocent of every circumstance surrounding her birth. It does not change the fact that she has done nothing—nothing—to deserve being removed from a home where she is loved and placed in an institution.” She held his gaze. “Whatever those letters contain, she remains a child who deserves protection. I will not allow you to use her as a financial instrument and dress it as concern for her welfare.”
Mortimer eyed her carefully.
“Your concern for the child does you credit,” he said. “It is precisely that concern I would expect you to exercise by ensuring the matter is properly resolved.”
That was when James lost his temper.
“Do not speak to my wife again in that tone,” he snapped.
CHAPTER 23
Everyone looked at James.
“My apologies, Your Grace,” Mortimer said with a bow of his head. “I understand the attachment. But you must see that the legal position?—”
“Let me be very clear,” James said coldly. “You have come into my house with letters of unknown provenance, obtained from a dead woman’s aunt under circumstances you have not disclosed, to tell me that my cousin’s child may not be his, and that therefore the inheritance he left her… the inheritance he spent nine years securing, deliberately and with full knowledge of what he intended, should be challenged.” He scowled at Mortimer. “Is that an accurate summary of your purpose this morning?”
Mortimer maintained his expression with admirable discipline. “I understand it is difficult to hear.”
“You have not answered my question.”
A pause. “Yes, that is an accurate summary.”
“Good.” James did not look away from him. “Then I want you to hear mine with equal accuracy. That child is upstairs at this moment, in the care of her nurse, and she is my ward and my responsibility and my family, and I will not have her discussed in this room as a financial variable by a man who has spent the past two months calculating how to acquire what my cousin left her.” He paused. “That is what this is. We are past the point of pretending otherwise.”
“Your Grace?—”
“I am not finished.” His voice did not rise, which Isadora thought impressive. “Whatever those letters contain, whatever they claim, Clara Bennett is dead and cannot speak for herself. My cousin is dead and cannot speak for himself. And you have come here with words filtered through her family to make a claim about a child who cannot speak for herself either.” He looked at Mortimer with a clarity that had no performance in it. “You will understand why I find your concern for her welfare unconvincing.”
Mortimer’s composure remained intact. This, Isadora thought, was the most dangerous thing about him—the discipline of a man who had anticipated resistance and prepared for it.
“I expected your reaction,” he said. “Naturally. But the legal question remains regardless of your feelings about it. Which is why I have taken the step of making sure the formal petition holds water and is irrevocable.”
“I do not care what those letters say,” James scoffed. “I do not care what they claim, or who produced them, or what argument your solicitor has constructed around them. I do not care what society believes or what questions are raised or what the financial implications are for anyone at this table.”
Isadora almost nodded. She looked at him instead.
He looked at Mortimer, his gaze sharp. “She will remain here. No petition, no investigation, no amount of letters from any source will change that. She isnotleaving Ashbourne.”
Mortimer opened his mouth.
“I have not finished,” James cut him off.
