Chapter 14 #2
Strathmore House stood where it always had, the same sober facade facing the square, but even from the street Edward saw the difference.
No glow at the windows, save for a faint flicker in one lower room.
No bustle at the door. The knocker had not been polished.
The paint around the lintel peeled. He felt Isla tense opposite him.
“If there is no answer,” he said, “we will go first to my house in St James and return with someone more authoritative.”
That earned him a slantwise look that might have been almost amused in a kinder moment.
She said nothing. The carriage drew up. A footman jumped down and opened the door.
Edward was out first, hand extended. Isla ignored it and stepped down on her own, skirts clearing the step by inches.
He rapped the knocker. The sound echoed too loudly in the quiet street.
After an uncomfortably long pause, the door opened a grudging handspan.
A maid peered out, hair untidy under her cap, apron stained. Her eyes widened. “Your Graces!”
“Is Lord Strathmore at home?” Edward asked.
The girl bobbed something like a curtsy.
“Aye, sir. That is … yes. He’s in the study. I think.” She looked flustered. “He said he was not at home to nobody, but I did not think he meant …”
“For once he will endure a surprise,” Isla said, slipping past before the girl could finish. “We thank you.”
The hall was poorly lit. The air smelled of cold ash, spilled wine, and something slightly sour.
A coat lay abandoned over a chair. No one had set flowers in the hall vases.
Edward suppressed a wince. This was not poverty alone but chaos.
Isla moved toward the study with certainty.
Edward followed, the maid scurrying at their heels as if to protest too late.
They reached the study door just as raised voices spilled out, the rough laughter of a man past sobriety and another voice Edward did not recognize, muttering.
Isla did not knock. She pushed the door open.
The room was a disordered battlefield. Papers lay scattered across the floor like drifts of snow.
A decanter rolled lazily on the carpet, leaving a dark smear of spilled wine.
Two empty bottles lounged on their sides near the desk.
A candle burned low in a brass holder on the table, wax dripping unchecked in long, dangerous streams. The air was thick with smoke from a grate that had not been cleared properly.
Alistair Drummond lay half-sprawled in a chair, cravat undone, waistcoat gaping, eyes red-rimmed. His hair, always inclined to unruliness, looked as though it had been used as a handhold in some private wrestling match. He held a glass loosely.
“Alistair,” Isla said. “What in God’s name …”
“Isla!” He lurched to his feet, swaying. “Sister. Dearest. Thought you’d come when you heard.” His words slurred around the edges. “House caught like tinder. Whole bloody wing gone.”
“Why did you not write?” she demanded, striding into the room. “I had to learn from a newspaper in a village inn.”
“Letter’s there somewhere,” he said vaguely, waving at the sea of paper. “Never got as far as ink. Other things to think of. You’re well, though? Married? Saving us all with your pretty vows?”
Edward felt the words like a slap delivered to both of them.
“Alistair,” he said, stepping inside. “You are drunk.”
“Brilliant observation,” Strathmore drawled, listing against the desk. He peered at Edward. “And you are … heroic. Turning up in my ruin like St George after the dragon’s already done his work.”
As he spoke he gestured carelessly and his sleeve brushed the candle. It tipped, teetered, toppled. The flame fell onto the nearest drift of paper. For a heartbeat nothing happened. Then the dry edges curled black, caught, flared.
Isla moved on instinct, but Edward was closer. He crossed the space in three strides, stamped the burning paper under his boot, ground it hard until the flame died, then seized the fallen candle in its holder and upended it onto the hearthstone.
“Are you entirely without sense?” he demanded, straightening. “You lose one house to fire and you set about burning the next yourself?”
Alistair blinked at the charred edges on the carpet. “It was only a bit of paper.”
“Paper on a floor soaked with spirits,” Edward snapped. “Near old wainscoting. Near curtains. Do you mean to leave nothing but rubble wherever you live?”
“Do not speak to him like that,” Isla said sharply.
He turned to her, anger still hot. “He is set on proving Morlich right about divine retribution. If he dies in his cups, at least he will do it with enthusiasm.”
“Do not bring that man’s name into this room,” she said. “And do not compare my brother to him.”
“Why not?” Edward said, years of discipline loosening in the face of wine and ruin. “Morlich drowns himself in arrogance, your brother in brandy. Both leave others to clean up the mess.”
Alistair laughed. It was the cracked, brittle sound of a man who had run out of better responses. “He’s right, Isla. Your gallant husband has us measured.”
“Be silent,” she snapped at her brother, then rounded on Edward.
“You have no idea what he has been managing. The house burned under him. Our people were scattered. He has had to find shelter for staff, write to creditors, fend off vultures who would carve our lands. And he has done it without a wife to steady the household or a mother to bully everyone into order. If he has drunk too much, perhaps it is because he has had no one to share the weight with.”
“Then he should have written,” Edward shot back. “Asked. Instead he wallows while London prints his disasters and your family’s name slides further into the mud.”
“He did not want to drag you into it,” Isla said. “You were dragged in by accident. We know that. We have never denied it.”
“And yet here I am,” Edward said. “In a house that reeks of neglect, stamping out your brother’s stupidity before it burns this house too. And you would have me believe none of this is deliberate?”
Her eyes flashed. “You think we plan our calamities?”
“I think,” he said, voice low now, “that your brother is not above using disaster to secure advantage. He did it with me. He may well do it again.”
“That is enough,” she whispered. “You insult him. You insult me.”
“You make it very difficult not to,” he said.
There it was the thing both of them had been circling. He saw hurt flare in her eyes, bright and raw.
“You think I participated,” Isla said slowly, as if fitting the pieces together in real time. “That I went into those stables knowing you would be there. That I fell and struck my head on purpose. That the shame of being carried through a ballroom was what? A small price to pay?”
He held his ground. “I think I would be a fool not to consider the possibility.”
Her breath left her in a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. “You are a greater fool than I took you for,” she said. “If I had wanted to entrap you, I would have chosen a method that did not involve concussion.”
Alistair swayed, watching them as if he were at the theatre. “Careful,” he murmured. “You’ll frighten away the last friend we have with money.”
Isla rounded on him. “You have no say,” she snapped. “You sit in your filth and drink. You let candles fall. You let newspapers tell your sister her home is ash. You should be on your knees with pen and paper, not sprawled like a degenerate.”
He flinched as if struck. “I am doing what I can,” he muttered. “You think I haven’t been to Glenmore? To the bank? To every man who owes us favors? They smell the smoke and they shut their doors.”
“Then try again,” she said. “Sober.”
Silence dropped heavy. Isla and Edward faced each other across the scattered papers, across the smudge of charred ink on the carpet. Too close for detachment. Too far to touch.
“You should go,” Isla said at last, stiffly. “You are clearly unhappy to find yourself in our ruin. I will stay. He is my brother.”
“And my brother-in-law,” Edward said. The word still felt new in his mouth. “Whether I like it or not.”
“You have made your feelings plain,” she said. “You suspect everyone. You trust nobody. Go.”
He opened his mouth. Closed it.
“I will go to Latham,” he said finally. “There is work to be done that cannot be accomplished here while Strathmore can barely stand.”
“Very well,” she said. “Leave, then. That you are good at.”
The words hit harder than he cared to let show. They echoed old accusations spoken in his father’s study years ago.
Running away solves nothing, boy.
And aboard the Argus he had learned to hold fast. To stand his ground while hell opened up around him. He looked hard at Isla. She held his gaze for a moment then looked away, blinking back tears.
“If you are going, I must help Alistair. Make this room safe.”
Alistair had slumped back in his chair, hands on the desk in front of him.
Presently his face joined his hands, his body slumping.
Isla looked at him and then took off her cloak and cast it about his shoulders.
Edward watched her smooth his hair back from his face, righting a bottle so that it did not leak wine any further and begin to pick up the scattered papers.
She took on the work of a scullery maid. And a mother. Neither role belonged to her but she did them anyway. Edward bent to gather papers from around his feet, shuffling them before placing them on a table. Isla glanced at him.
“I did not ask for help.”
“I did not offer. I merely began. Do not be ungracious.”
“Ungracious? Ger yerself away,” Isla said in rolling Scots.
“No me meuva di aqui,” Edward muttered, gathering another handful of pages.
Isla straightened and placed her fists on her hips. There was a fierce light in her eyes.
“What was that?” she demanded. “If you have something to say to me …”
“It means, I am not leaving. Said in a very emphatic way,” Edward cut across her.
Isla stared at him for a moment.
“The word you are looking for is gracias,” Edward told her.
“Ta,” Isla replied.
She hid a smile by bending for more papers.
Edward continued to work, suppressing a smile of his own.
He didn’t know if he was the world’s biggest fool.
Didn’t know if the Drummonds were the arch manipulators the ton had them pegged as.
But the thought of abandoning Isla to the care of her drunken brother and the repair of his disordered house was beyond his ability. It was dishonorable.
I will stand my ground, father. I learned that in the Service though you think I learned only cowardice.