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“It felt like ages.” She squinted at them both. “You look dreadful. Both of you. Uncle Nathaniel, you haven’t trimmed your beard, and Laura, your hair is all wet.”

“We’ve been rather occupied,” Laura said, sitting carefully on the edge of the bed and taking Iris’s hand. “You gave us a fright, sweetheart.”

“I don’t remember much.” Iris frowned. “I remember the rain and then some bits. I remember being very hot and cross about it.” She looked up at Nathaniel, her face softening. “I remember the night garden.”

Nathaniel went still.

“You told me about the night garden,” she continued. “With the silver fox at the gate who only lets kind children through. And the flowers that hum.” She paused. “Was that real, or did I dream it?”

“It was real,” he said, his voice roughening again. “Your mother used to ask me for that story when she was ill. She invented most of it herself and then insisted I tell it back to her correctly, which I never once managed to her satisfaction.”

“That sounds like my mama.” Iris nodded. “Will you tell it to me again? When I’m not sick? So I can remember it better.”

“As many times as you like.” Nathaniel sat down on the other side of the bed, the mattress dipping beneath his weight. Iris leaned into him, and he wrapped his arms tight around her, relief swelling in his chest. “I’ll write it down, if you want, so you’ll have it even when I’m not there to tell it.”

“No.” Iris shook her head against his chest. “I’d rather you tell it.” Then she patted the empty spot beside her. “Laura. You too. Come here.”

Laura came, and the three of them sat together in the sunlit room, Iris wedged between them like a pin holding them together, and nobody said anything for a long while.

“I’m hungry,” Iris announced eventually.

“Thank God,” Nathaniel said with feeling, and was delighted when he heard Laura’s sweet laughter for the first time in a week.

CHAPTER 31

Alden’s study on Grosvenor Street looked exactly as it always had, the same afternoon light falling at the same angle across the same desk, but Nathaniel found that he felt nothing about it now. He was a different man, and whatever calculation he had brought into this room for months had burned away entirely.

“I’ll be direct,” he began, declining the offered brandy with a small shake of his head. “I want to purchase every interest you hold jointly with Cumberlea. The Bristol contracts, the Kent parcel, the shipping ventures—whatever else the two of you have tangled together over the years—at a price you’ll find more than fair.”

Alden set down the decanter slowly. “That’s a considerable sum, even for a duke.”

“It is, and I have it.”

“Duskwell.” Alden lowered himself into his chair, and for the first time in their acquaintance, a wary glint entered his eyes. “I think you’ll understand my hesitation. After the ball, I decided to distance myself from your affairs, and that decision hasn’t changed. It won’t.”

“Is that so?” Nathaniel said, rubbing his jaw.

“I have a reputation to protect. Being the man who sold Cumberlea’s holdings to the duke who struck him in front of the ton is not a position I’m eager to be in.” Alden shrugged.

“Then let me be clearer.” Nathaniel did not raise his voice. He did not move, or lean forward, or do any of the things a lesser man might have done to intimidate. He simply looked at Alden across the desk and let the silence stretch a moment longer than was comfortable.

“What is it?” Alden asked nervously.

“You have three shell companies moving money to the Continent ahead of a reckoning you know is coming. I have the names, the dates, the correspondence you forwarded through Ashwell Grange, and more besides, because you are a competent man of business and an extraordinarily careless keeper of your own papers.”

Alden’s face paled instantly. Nathaniel thought he saw his lower lip tremble as he lit a cigar.

“I am not threatening you,” Nathaniel added, meaning it. “I have no interest in you, Alden. You are a man who calculates, and you calculated badly in whose company you kept. I find I can live with that.”

“So what, then?” Alden asked, puffing on his cigar.

“So I am offering you the easy way out. You sell me every interest you hold with Cumberlea at fair value, and we conclude our association as gentlemen, and I never mention your name to anyone.”

“And if I refuse?” he said, flicking ash into a tray on the desk.

“Then I’ll dig up everything else you’re hiding,” Nathaniel answered calmly. “And you’ll find out what I am prepared to spend to see this finished. I would rather neither of us learn the answer to that question. I think you would too.”

The clock on the mantel marked the quarter.