Chapter 4
There was a particular quiet that belonged to houses on the wrong side of fortune.
An undertone that only came from too few servants treading too empty rooms. Where clocks sounded, the resonance of their tick suggested a lonely vigil without enough residents to note the passage of time.
Edward heard this before he saw anything else.
The Drummond town house on Portman Square wore a decent face at the door, but once inside the pretense thinned.
Threadbare Axminster. A chill in the hall despite the season, sconces polished yet starved of candles.
The long gallery showed pale oblongs where paintings had once hung, and the walls had the faint, tired bloom of paper long past its life expectancy.
A butler who looked too old for the post took Edward’s hat and gloves with the solemnity of a cathedral verger. He guided Edward to the library where Alistair Drummond, Duke of Strathmore, could be found.
Edward’s gaze noted absences as he walked, more than possessions. No liveried footman at the stair, no maid with flowers, no fresh coal scent. The silver on the side table was handsome but unmatched, the sort of service that had been assembled by inheritance and lately thinned by necessity.
He found Strathmore at a plain oak desk with a neat stack of papers set squarely before him. The man looked younger in daylight than he had the night of the ball, less imperious. Less angry, but with a rime frost about him when he spoke to Edward.
“Wexford,” Strathmore said with a short bow. “Thank you for accepting my invitation.”
“Your message required prompt answer,” Edward said.
Strathmore cleared his throat. “My sister is recovered enough to be obstinate. I interpret this as a sign of approaching health.”
“Good,” Edward said.
The single syllable covered a great deal he had no intention of saying in a stranger’s library.
I came here to discuss a marriage that would spare your sister from dishonor and find you in dire straits financially. Have I been baited and hooked? Do you think to reel in a wealthy brother-in-law?
“Before we sign,” Strathmore continued, opening the first folio, “we should speak plainly of settlements.”
“A refreshing novelty in London,” Edward replied. “Proceed.”
He kept rigid control over his voice, not wanting to show the weakness of anger. But that anger was building, stoked by the increasing belief that he was being duped, manipulated. The terms were conventional as snow on a January lawn and yet each line made heat gather under Edward’s collar.
Isla’s future income, should Edward predecease, her was modest where it could have been rich.
Her income while married to him was negligible.
The dowry, Strathmore’s only contribution, was hedged with contingencies and clauses.
It was generous but Edward could read between the lines.
So many conditions to be fulfilled before it could be paid over.
Meaning, Strathmore didn’t have the money.
It hardly matters to me. I do not need his money. I do not seek it. I just do not like being used.
Edward reached a clause concerning repairs to be made to a country lodge in Hampshire. He scarcely remembered owning the place but Strathmore had wheedled it out and was clearly eying it as a residence for his sister.
And doubtless then a quick sale to realize its value.
Edward’s temper had begun to speak in the back of his teeth. He tossed the papers down, crossing his legs and folding his hands upon them. He stared at Strathmore, who stared back, unabashed.
“They are thorough,” Edward snapped. “Who drafted these?”
“My man of business,” Strathmore answered.
“Your man of business is adept at squeezing blood from a parsnip,” Edward said. “I take it the paintings that once occupied your gallery have been educating creditors.”
Strathmore’s mouth tightened. “You observe much, Wexford.”
“I am trained to.” He tapped the margin. “These are the terms a drowning man makes with a ship. Honest, as far as they go, and designed to keep the head above water.” He lifted his eyes. “You require my name to silence the ton and my purse to silence your ledgers.”
Strathmore took that without a flinch. “I require my sister’s reputation kept from harm.”
“And the estate?”
“If my sister is safe,” Strathmore said, carefully, “the estate will find its way.”
“On my back,” Edward returned, blunt as a belaying pin.
The anger he had kept measured began to climb the rungs.
He thought of Isla’s pale hand at her temple when she had awoken in his guest room.
Of her fierce eyes when his words had tripped her temper in the stables.
He had not asked to be tethered to a family’s rescue. He had not asked for anything, in fact.
He set the paper down. “There is an alternative.”
Strathmore’s gaze sharpened. “Which is?”
“I do nothing,” Edward said. “I ride out the scandal, offer no explanations, and leave London to chew its cud. The story will sour and pass. I am a Duke. The ton forgets that what it cannot best. Your sister bears the weight.”
Silence pulled tight between them. In it came the remembered deck-beat of his old ship, the Argus. Four bells and a wet wind, the smell of tar and salt, a captain’s voice in his ear.
Hold your heading, Mr. Ravenscroft, when the easy turn would put you dead on the shoal. The sea tests character by offering exits in a storm.
Captain Rearden always had the gift of stating morality as seamanship. Easy to obey when orders were wind and rope. Harder here, where the rope was a woman’s life and the wind was talk.
“Your alternative is neat,” Strathmore said at last, “and cowardly.”
Edward did not rise to it. He considered whether the honest path and the easy one could be the same.
They rarely were. He saw Isla in the stable, chin up and eyes bright with a dare she had not meant to give.
He saw her in the guest room, furious through the ache of her head.
He had not liked the thought of her as a trap.
He breathed once, deep and steady, and let the anger settle.
“Very well,” he said. “We will make a clean contract. An honorable one. I will always do what honor demands and it demands I marry Lady Isla. That is the beginning and the end of it.”
Strathmore’s shoulders lowered a fraction. “I am relieved to hear you say it.”
“But we will make my kind of contract,” Edward added. “I will have my solicitor draw them up and present them to you by tomorrow.”
Strathmore blinked. “Which terms do you find offensive?”
Edward raised a hand. “Do not worry that I mean to pauper you. I will be fair. Your need is clearly greater than mine.”
Strathmore’s face tightened. Edward noticed his fingertips, white against the edge of the desk as though the other man clung to it. Edward wondered if he had given offence. If Strathmore fought to keep his hands from Edward’s throat.
It is not my concern. We do what we must. You may have thought to trap me but I will be in control. Not you. And not your sister.
“Agree, or argue,” Edward said, rising.
Strathmore remained seated, then rose and offered his hand.
“Agree.”
***
Outside, Portman Square glittered with sunshine and noise.
Carriages rolled, vendors called, children chased each other around the iron railings that enclosed the small park which the houses overlooked.
Edward descended the steps into London’s familiar churn and found a figure waiting in the shade of a plane tree.
She had chosen a sober walking dress and a bonnet that partially concealed her face. She would have blended into the crowd that were abroad on this sunny, June day but Edward doubted she would blend into any surrounding for him.
“Your Grace,” she said, and the burr in the two words had lost none of its music.
“Lady Isla.”
“My brother will be displeased,” she said without preamble, “if I speak with you. He has barred me from any conversation concerning my marriage.”
“Custom often prefers women ignorant,” Edward’s mouth twitched. “What did you wish to say?”
“Not here.” She glanced toward the house, the upper story visible through the branches “Will you walk with me? Hyde Park is near.”
“It is inadvisable,” Edward said. “You have no chaperone.”
“There are so many people abroad today that we would blend in like hay in a haystack,” Isla said. “I will not meekly go to my fate without having my say.”
She allowed her voice to rise and Edward glanced around at the governesses, promenading lords and ladies and gamboling children. None seemed to notice them.
This is madness. It invites scandal and is unnecessary. She will have no say in the terms. It is between her brother and myself.
But as he looked at Isla he realized how different she appeared under the sunshine compared to the half-light of the stable and the firelight of the bedroom.
She looked radiant, as though absorbing energy from the sun.
Her face seemed to glow. He found that he did not want to dismiss her, to turn his back and walk away. He could not.
“Very well. But we must be discrete,” he said and chided himself for the ludicrous surge of excitement that his decision brought him.
“I can be the sole of discretion when I choose,” Isla said with a smile that made Edward’s heart quicken.
Enough of this nonsense. A pretty woman is no reason to lose your head.
She tugged her bonnet down and led the way, heading towards the northern fringe of Hyde Park.
Edward fell into step alongside her. They crossed into the green, the clamor of Oxford Street falling back behind them.
Hyde Park lay in easy summer, the broad track along the Row flashed with riders and the water glittered in the Serpentine.
The scent shifted to cut grass and horses.