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“Of course I had to defend you,” she scoffed, angling her body toward him. “While this is not a typical arrangement, you are my husband, and I care a great deal about Iris. While there is much I do not know about you and your family, I will not—no, I cannot stand idly by while people speak of her mother as though she were—” She broke off.

“As though she were what?”

“A piece of scandal to be picked over at a party,” she finished. “I will not stand for it.”

Something moved behind his eyes, slow and unguarded. He nodded once and looked out at the passing streets for a long moment. Then he sighed and turned back to her.

“Are you tired?” he asked, his voice husky.

Laura shook her head. She did not think she would feel tired for some time, what with the anger still coursing through her.

He studied her a moment longer, as though weighing something, and then nodded again, more to himself than to her. “Join me in my study when we’re home. There’s something I would like to tell you.”

The study at Duskwell House was smaller than the one at the castle, but no less crowded with books and papers.

Nathaniel closed the door behind them and crossed to the sideboard. He poured two glasses of brandy without asking whether she wanted one.

“Back in the castle, you said that you deserved the truth.” He handed her a glass, his fingers brushing hers, and settled into the chair opposite rather than behind his desk, close enough that their knees nearly touched.

“I did.” She lifted the glass to her lips. “I still do.”

“You were right. I should have told you the truth, long before now. After watching you stand in that ballroom and defend Isabella’s memory to people who had never once bothered to get to know her, I find I no longer have it in me to keep it from you.”

He turned his glass slowly between his hands, and when he spoke again, his voice had gone low and rough, stripped of all its usual control.

“Isabella married Grantham when she was barely nineteen. He was a nice enough fellow, but I was secretly against it from the start. There was just something about him, a weakness, and I always wanted the very best for my sister. But our father was getting older and eager to see her settled, and she believed herself in love.” He exhaled slowly, running one hand through his hair. “Their marriage fared well for the first three years, and they had Iris, of course.”

“And then what happened?” Laura asked, dread coiling in her stomach.

“Cumberlea.”

“Lord Cumberlea?”

“Yes. He… pursued Isabella.” Nathaniel’s jaw tightened, his knuckles white as he gripped the glass. “You heard the rumors; I can see it in your eyes. Cumberlea is the evil sort who collects ruin like men collect art. He wanted her, and at some point even attacked her. While she was ultimately uncompromised, he made it his mission to spread vicious rumors of a clandestine affair. It ate at her and poor Grantham.”

Laura’s hand found his free hand without thinking. “Nathaniel.”

“By the time I began to suspect something was deeply wrong, she had already stopped writing to me as often as she once had. I told myself she was simply occupied with her marriage, with Iris. I did not press the issue the way I should have.” His voice cracked, just slightly. “It was a constable in my employ who first uncovered what Cumberlea was doing to other women in similar circumstances, and through that, what had been done to Isabella. By the time I rode for Grantham House to bring her home, she had already fallen ill. The physicians called it a wasting fever, but I have never believed it. I believe grief and shame killed her as surely as any illness could have.”

“How awful. Nathaniel… I… I cannot tell you how my heart bleeds for you, for your sister,” she whispered, holding his hands tight in her own.

“I arrived just three days before she died, Laura. Three days. After two years of not seeing what was right in front of me.”

“It was not your fault,” she said fiercely, squeezing his hands. “It was Cumberlea’s cruelty and Grantham’s inaction that killed her. You did not put her in that position. She was a strong woman; I can see it in the way you speak of her and Iris. I know she did everything she could to endure the scandal… It is a great tragedy.”

“I have told myself that a thousand times, but it has never once made it easier to believe.” He looked at her, something raw and vulnerable flickering in his eyes. “Grantham died not long after she did. Her loss and the rumors made life… intolerable for him. He no longer wanted to live, and I can say no more than that. Iris was left to a distant cousin who wanted nothing to do with a girl attached to scandal.”

Miss Borden was kind to share this with her, so it was not quite a blow on top of learning just how much Nathaniel had suffered all these years, the burden he carried on his shoulders.

“I have spent three years since hunting Cumberlea,” Nathaniel continued. “Just trying to gather enough proof to see him ruined the way he ruined her. But I have failed again and again, and every failure feels like failing her twice over.”

“What about the tower?” Laura asked softly.

“She used to stay there whenever she visited. Her things are still there. Her letters. A cradle Iris slept in as an infant, when Isabella brought her to stay one summer before everything fell apart.” He swallowed thickly. “I could not bring myself to clear it out, and I could not bear the thought of Iris wandering in and finding her mother’s life still sitting there, frozen, waiting for a woman who is never coming back for it. So I locked it up and told myself it was for her sake, though I suspect it was every bit as much for my own.”

Laura felt her eyes burn. It all made sense now. The prohibition to enter the west tower. The rules he’d set for their marriage. His refusal to speak of Isabella.

None of it had been coldness. All of it had been grief, carried for so long and so carefully hidden that it had calcified into something that looked, from the outside, exactly like a wall.