Chapter 3 #2
The speaker’s voice was light, carrying the lilting curve of the north, though quickly flattened into London propriety. A girl of perhaps nineteen bent over her, brown hair pinned neatly under a cap.
“Where am I?” Isla whispered.
“In a guest chamber at Ravenscroft House,” the maid said, dipping the cloth again. “You took a fall in the stables, they tell me. His Grace, the Duke of Wexford, brought you in himself.”
“The Duke of Wexford?” Isla tried to sit up, but the room reeled, “there must be some mistake. The gentleman I met was, he was a groom. Tall. Dark haired, broad shouldered.”
The maid’s brows lifted. “A groom, my lady? There are none in the household matching that description. Only His Grace himself. He’s tall and dark-haired and with shoulders like brick. If you’ll pardon my frankness, my lady.”
Isla stared. The memory of the man’s rolled sleeves, his strong hands moving over the horse’s gleaming flank, the dry amusement in his voice.
No, not amusement. Outright rudeness. Mockery. Not at all a Duke. I’ll wager on it.
“That cannot be,” she murmured. “He … he mocked me.”
The maid smiled uncertainly. “Mockery or not, my lady, he carried you in with great care. And quite the commotion it caused.”
Commotion. The word landed a drop of ice on her spine.
Oh Lord! Alistair will be furious!
“What is your name?” Isla asked, grasping at something ordinary.
“Lucy, my lady. Lucy Martin.”
The faint cadence of her r confirmed what Isla had heard before. Beneath the London polish was the soft edge of Lothian.
“You’re Scottish,” Isla said, relieved to hear her own tongue echoed. “From where?”
Lucy’s hands faltered in the basin as she squeezed the linen cloth out prior to reapplying it to Isla’s forehead.
“From nowhere near, my lady. Bedfordshire born and bred.”
Isla frowned. “You have a lilt no Bedfordshire lass ever owned.”
Unless I am losing my mind, having left some of it on the stable floor. My head does ache so.
The maid’s face colored. “Begging your pardon, I’m as English as tea and toast. Please try and rest now.”
Isla frowned, putting a hand to her forehead. Why would someone deny such a thing? The accent she thought she had heard was nowhere to be found now. Lucy Martin did indeed sound as English as they come. Before Isla could press further, the door burst open.
Alistair filled the doorway, color high, eyes blazing.
“Out,” he snapped.
Lucy dropped into a curtsy and fled. The slam of the door echoed through the chamber as Alistair hurled it into its frame with a backward swipe of his arm.
“What possessed you?” Alistair demanded, advancing to the bedside. “You vanish from a ballroom packed with half of London’s nobility, wander into the stables, and let yourself be found half-conscious by the Duke of Wexford! Do you have any notion of what you’ve done?”
“I struck my head on a beam,” she said, touching the bandage gingerly. “That is all.”
“That is not all!” He raked a hand through his hair. “He carried you through his own ballroom, Isla! Mud on your gown, straw in your hair, a tear clear to your thigh. Every gossip in Mayfair saw it. They will dine on it for weeks. We are ruined!”
“Then perhaps they will choke on the feast,” she shot back, the pain in her temple sharpening her temper.
“Mock if you please, but you have disgraced us.”
Isla surged up in her bed. Or tried to. The pain in her head would not allow her to confront her brother the way she wanted to. She saw the look of regret passing over his face at the sight of her pain.
“Will you sit, please?” she said, falling back. “So that I do not have to try and stand up.”
Alistair seized a chair by its back and dragged it across the floor to her bedside.
“All I did was trip in a stable and knock my head …” Isla said.
“You were in a stable in the first place,” Alistair retorted, “alone with an unmarried gentleman!”
“A groom. A stable hand.”
“A Duke!”
“Do not be absurd, Alistair. I think I would know an English Duke when I was confronted with one. This was a man adept at currying the coat of a horse and …”
She faltered, remembering the calm, educated voice. The rich tone of confident, expectant command. She almost shook her head but the throbbing dissuade her.
I am not thinking straight. All this talk of Dukes has addled me. That and the bump.
“I did not ask the Duke to bring me here,” Isla protested.
“Did you not? But that is what he did. And all those jackanapes out there saw was you covered in straw and dirt with a torn dress.”
Isla bit her lip furiously. It did sound scandalous.
Why did the Duke interfere? His servants could have taken me to a quiet room somewhere to recover.
“I have talked the matter over with the Duke and the Dowager Duchess. I see only one solution. The Duke agrees,” Alistair said.
There was something in his voice. Underneath the anger and the concern. Something that said he had scored a victory.
“Oh no!” Isla cried out. “Do not say what I think you’re about to say, Alistair!”
“There is only one remedy. He must marry you.” Alistair said.
“Away and boil yer heid!” Isla snapped in a tone of unadulterated common Scots. “Have ye lost yer marbles?”
“Stop that!” Alistair barked, sounding like an Eton schoolmaster. “There is no social capital in being an impoverished noble house from north of the border. Not in London.”
“It is our heritage,” Isla said.
“There is no money in it. Do you comprehend the fortune tied to the Wexford name? His offer will save us from bankruptcy, from humiliation. You will accept it, and thank him.”
“I will do nae such thing!” she said, her accent thickening with fury. “Ye will nae barter me like a broodmare!”
He drew a harsh breath. “You have no sense of duty. I carry the weight of Strathmore alone, and you repay me with folly. I sometimes think you delight in watching me struggle.”
His words struck deeper than he knew. She turned her face away lest he see it. To her shame she felt tears pricking at her eyes.
I do not ask for wealth or influence. Only the freedom to choose my road. Whether that road is Pall Mall or a country lane through the hills of Perthshire.
The door opened. Both turned as a man entered without ceremony.
He filled the doorway just as he had filled the stables, broad-shouldered, steady-eyed.
Every inch of him was composed and controlled.
He stood with hands clasped behind his back.
In the lamplight, his dark hair gleamed.
Nothing could be gleaned from his expression. Not emotion or intent.
“Wexford,” Alistair said stiffly, bowing.
“I come to ask after Lady Isla’s condition,” Edward said.
His voice carried the calm of a man accustomed to command.
“Dr Hargreaves assures me the injury is minor.”
“I am glad he was willing to impart such information to you, a stranger, than to her own brother.”
“I paid his fee,” Edward pointed out.
Isla’s heart thudded but not from pain.
It is him! The stableman! A Duke?!
The same voice that had teased her in the dark, now stripped of the rough edges she had taken for insolence. Replacing them was glacial calm, mirrored by a stony face. Stony in the same way that Michelangelo’s David was stony. It had the hardness of marble worked by a master. Beautiful but cold.
“You,” she said, unable to mask her disbelief.
Edward inclined his head. “I fear introductions were wanting earlier. Edward Ravenscroft, Duke of Wexford.”
Isla’s mouth parted. “You …”
“… were the man in the stables, yes?”
A flicker crossed his face. Humor? Mockery?
“I might say we met under unusual circumstances.”
“You let me believe you were a stable hand!”
“I did no such thing. You judged me based on my skill at grooming. I would have told you the truth had you asked,” he said evenly.
Alistair intervened, voice tight. “We need not revisit the scene, Wexford. I assume you understand the position in which your actions have placed my sister.”
Edward’s gaze shifted to him, cool and unwavering. “I carried an unconscious woman to safety. If that constitutes scandal the fault lies with the eyes that watched, not the hands that acted.”
“Nonetheless, the eyes were many,” Alistair snapped. “Her reputation, our good name, is at stake. I trust your honor compels you to make it right.”
“Indeed,” Edward said, “it is that very sense of honor which brings me here. The incident has been observed, misinterpreted, and will soon be immortalized in print. There is, unfortunately, only one course left to preserve Lady Isla’s standing.”
Isla felt the chill settle before the words formed. Alistair nodded, face tight. But Isla had caught the glint in his eyes.
He seeks to exploit the situation. To use it to make money.
“Marriage,” Edward said simply.
Her breath caught. Alistair exhaled in relief.
“Then we are agreed.”
“No,” Isla said sharply. “We are not agreed. This is absurd. You owe me nothing.”
Edward turned to her, and for the first time some trace of irritation colored his composure. “You think I welcome this?”
“I think you presume I engineered it!” she shot back. “Perhaps you imagine I flung myself at a rope in hope of catching a Duke.”
He stiffened. “My mother believes you were sent to entrap me.”
“And you?”
“I keep my own counsel and owe you no part of it. I do not appreciate being trapped, yet this feels like it.”
Isla was sitting up. She did not remember doing so.
The bedsheets fell away from her underclothes.
Lucy had helped her out of her dress earlier and sent it to be laundered.
Alistair’s eyes bulged and he moved to cover her but Isla swatted his hands away.
Edward’s eyes remain fixed on her. Not on her barely concealed bosom, the shape of her breasts clear beneath the thin cotton chemise.
Not at her bare neck or shoulders. Only her eyes.
Despite that she felt her face redden. Felt the heat swelling there. She licked her lips.
“It is magnanimous,” she said, scathing, “to clear me of crimes I never conceived.”
“Enough!” Alistair barked. “You will mind your tone, Isla.”
“No, let her speak,” Edward said quietly.
There was something in his eyes, wounded pride perhaps.
“I would rather hear truth than politeness.”
“Then hear it,” she said. “I will not marry a man who thinks duty a chain and women its links. Hear it both of you. I will not live my life apologizing for a fall that was an accident.”
“You have no choice,” Alistair said.
Her brother’s words landed like blows.
Edward’s jaw clenched. “Believe me, Lady Isla, I would spare us both this conversation if I could. But gossip spreads faster than wind across the Channel. By morning half of London will have you branded my mistress. The only honorable remedy is to make you my wife.”
“Honorable,” she echoed bitterly. “A word men wield like a sword when they mean convenience.”
The thought of being Edward’s wife rose unbidden.
The notion of a kiss at the altar after their vows were sealed.
The evening, when the last guests had gone and thought turned to what thought turns to on wedding nights.
She tried to dispel it but Edward’s sheer physicality would not let her.
His smoldering eyes stripped her. She glowed scarlet and knew it.
She glared back at him, daring him to show any sign that he knew it.
For a moment silence reigned. Edward’s gaze held hers, not cruel, not even cold, merely certain.
“You mistake me,” he said at last. “Convenience would be silence. I choose responsibility. I will not see your name dragged through the mire for my sake.”
Her defiance faltered, caught between anger and reluctant understanding. He turned to her brother.
“Arrange the particulars,” Edward said. “I will speak with my solicitor at dawn. Lady Isla will have my word, and my name, before the week is out.”
He bowed slightly to Isla, then to Alistair, and left the room. The door shut behind him with military precision. Isla felt like she had been ordered into place as though she were a soldier on the battlefield. Alistair exhaled as if escaping drowning.
“You see, it is done.”
Isla stared at the closed door, heart hammering.
The man she had mocked as a stable hand had become her gaoler.
He was courteous, honorable, and utterly inescapable.
She pressed a hand to the bandage at her brow and felt its steady pulse beneath her fingertips.
It seemed the sound of her own life being rewritten, beat by relentless beat.