Chapter 21 #2
He pushed his hat back a little, exposing his face more fully. There was a smear of rotten wood near his shoulder, another fleck clung to his hair.
“I might ask what you are doing,” he returned. “Driving a trap alone on the Great North Road as though you were a post-boy in a hurry.”
“I am going home,” she said. “Or what is left of it.”
“Without escort,” he said. “Without adequate protection. Without …”
“I can protect myself,” she cut in, brandishing the pathetic remains of her weapon. “You have seen my prowess with … peat.”
“At least you are armed,” he murmured. “Though perhaps next time choose something that is not half-mushroom.”
She threw the bough aside. It fell apart on impact with the ground.
He swung down from the saddle with controlled ease, landing lightly despite the long hours he must have ridden.
Up close she could see the strain around his eyes, the faint shadow of stubble on his jaw.
He had not slept since she left, she would have wagered a month’s allowance.
“You should not have come,” she said, before she could stop herself.
“I disagree,” he said.
“How did you even know?”
“You told my mother you were going to Strathmore,” he said. “Did you imagine a groom would not repeat that to the master?”
“I imagined,” she said tightly, “that you would be delighted to have me out from under your roof. Your mother certainly was.”
His jaw twitched. “My mother delights in many things I do not share.”
“Such as Lady Charlotte,” Isla said before she could bite the words back.
He stilled. “We are not discussing Charlotte in a damp lane.”
“No,” she said. “We are not discussing her at all. You may go back to her. I am sure she has not fainted at anyone in the last hour. She must be starving for attention.”
“Isla,” he said warningly.
“What?” she demanded. “You sent me away, Edward.”
“I suggested,” he said, “that you might be safer in Perthshire than under my mother’s roof while she and Charlotte prepared their exhibition. I did not imagine you would bolt like a startled filly.”
“As you say,” she said. “You did not imagine.”
His temper, which had been held in check since she swung the branch, snapped.
“You accuse me of pushing you out,” he said, “and yet you left without a word to me. You wrote to your brother, you ordered the horse, you took my trap and you did not think to tell your husband you were going.”
“Would it have made any difference if I had?” she asked. “You had already chosen your side.”
“Regardless,” he went on, “you are here now. On the road. Alone. Which is an absurdity I intend to rectify.”
“I am not returning to Wexford,” she said at once.
“Good,” he said.
She blinked. “Good?”
“If we turned back now,” he said, “my mother would take it as proof that she can order my household. I have no intention of rewarding her tactics. We are going north.”
We.
The word slid under her guard before she could raise it.
She crossed her arms. “I am going north. You are going back.”
“I am not,” he said.
“You cannot simply attach yourself to my journey,” she said. “This is my business.”
“You are my wife,” he said, with maddening calm. “Your business is my business.”
“You did not always feel that way. When you shut yourself away in your study to avoid me,” she shot back.
“I feel that way now,” he said. “Which is when it matters.”
She opened her mouth. Closed it.
“She mentioned it to me. Clearly she has also mentioned it to you,” Isla said, quietly.
He watched her, some of his irritation easing into something more thoughtful.
“I came after you,” he said, more quietly, “because the roads are dangerous. Because you are stubborn. Because I could not sit at my desk and imagine every wheel rut and ditch and rogue you might encounter without doing something.”
It was too much. And not enough.
She looked away, toward the main road, the strip of grey vanishing between the trees.
“Very well,” she said. “You have found me. You have scolded me. You may return to your study and your ghosts.”
“I am not returning,” he repeated. “I have business in York.”
“Business.” She poured contempt into the word. “Of course. Not content with one scandal, you go in search of another.”
He did not rise to the bait. “I have a man to speak to,” he said. “A man who claims to have been wronged by Strathmore and his sister. I would rather meet him with you at my side than behind my back.”
“A man? I have wronged no-one!” Isla said, “Is that why you came? Not to protect. To interrogate.”
“No,” he said, with a sharpness that cut. “I could have gone to York alone and drawn my own conclusions. I am giving you the chance to face him to see if he speaks truth or shame. I do not relish the idea, but I prefer it to judging you in your absence.”
It was, horribly, almost reasonable.
She swallowed. “You still doubt me.”
“I doubt myself,” he said. “My own judgment. I have been wrong often enough. I am trying, clumsily perhaps, to be less so where you are concerned.”
The rawness in his voice stole some of her prepared retort.
“I do not want you with me,” she said, because she had to say something. “You make everything more complicated.”
“Likewise,” he said, surprising her into a small, unwilling huff of breath.
For a moment, in the damp lane with rotting branches at their feet and Morrow flicking her tail impatiently, they simply looked at one another. Isla broke first.
“Very well,” she said. “You may come as far as York. After that, you may do as you please.”
“And you?” he asked.
“I shall go on to Strathmore,” she said. “With or without you.”
He nodded slowly. “That, at least, is honest.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Do not sound so pleased about it.”
He stepped back to his horse, gathering the reins. She moved to the trap, but paused, fingers on the side rail, as another thought, sharp and unwelcome, surfaced.
“Why was she allowed into that wing?” she asked.
He looked over. “Who?”
“Lady Charlotte.” Her throat tightened on the name. “You said you had invited no one into that room. Yet she came out of it, and your mother speaks as if she knows every object inside. Why them? Why not me?”
The question escaped before she could tether it. His expression shifted, something like shame, something like anger.
“I trusted no one with that room,” he said. “Least of all Charlotte.”
“But your mother …”
“My mother has keys to every door in Wexford Hall,” he said. “I was a fool to forget it. I should have taken that set when I inherited. I did not.”
“So she let Charlotte in,” Isla said.
“Yes,” he said. “Without my knowledge. Whatever Charlotte found, whatever story she chose to tell, she did so with my mother’s complicity.”
Pieces shifted in Isla’s mind. The Dowager’s pointed remarks. The way she had spoken of the wing as if it were a test Isla had already failed. The timing of Charlotte’s arrival. Isla’s fingers tightened on the wood.
“She wanted me to see Charlotte coming out,” Isla said slowly. “She wanted me to question her. To lose my temper. To look jealous and grasping in your eyes.”
“She succeeded,” he said grimly. “For a time.”
Isla bit her lip. “What is in there, Edward? Truly. If it is not gold and treasure as your mother clearly wishes me to believe.”
“You think I imagined you prising at the lock in search of coin?” he said.
“What else was I to think,” she snapped, “when every person in your orbit insists on believing I am in league with my brother to fleece you?”
He flinched again. “I deserve that.”
He drew a breath, let it out slowly.
“It is nothing so dramatic,” he said. “No secret chest. No incriminating documents. I put all of my father’s personal possessions in that wing after he died.
Clothes. Books. The things that sat on his desk.
His scent lingered on them. I could not abide walking past them every day.
I had the rooms shut and the key sent to my study. ”
“You could not bear to see them,” she said softly.
“No,” he said. “I could not.”
The simple admission altered the locked wing in her mind.
It was no longer a mystery hoard, no longer a test devised by a cold dowager to see whether a Scotswoman’s fingers itched for silver.
It was a mausoleum. A place where a son had entombed the memory of a father whose approval he believed he had never won.
Anger at his mother flared anew. “She used that,” Isla said. “She used your grief as bait.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Does she know what is in there?”
“She claims she does,” he said. “Says she found a diary. Says she has read it. Says my father wrote thoughts I have never heard.”
“And she taunted you with it,” Isla said. “Like a carrot before a donkey.”
He glanced at her, a spark of unwilling amusement there. “Your imagery is charming.”
“It is accurate,” she said.
He sobered. “She threatened to burn it if I left.”
Isla stared at him. “And you came anyway.”
“Yes,” he said simply.
The wind sighed through the bare branches overhead.
Would I have done the same. Risked so much for Edward?
The answer rose in her chest, her heart telling her what she would do before she could quash it. She looked away, blinking hard against the sudden tightness in her chest.
“Your mother is afraid of something,” she said. “Something in Scotland. Or in York. Or both. She would not burn your father’s words lightly.”
“I know,” he said. “I do not yet know what it is. But I mean to find out.”
He nodded toward the trap. “Now. Before full dark. Will you drive, or shall I?”
“You?” she scoffed. “You sit a horse like a king, but I have yet to see you manage a trap through a puddle without drowning us.”
“That is a slander,” he said mildly.
“Prove me wrong another time,” she replied, climbing up to the seat. “You may ride beside so long as you do not lecture me on every rut.”
He swung into the saddle. “Very well. I shall merely wince at the worst ones.”
She gathered the reins. Morrow tossed her head, eager to be off. Edward’s horse moved up on the off side, the two animals settling into a companionable pace.
“This does not mean I forgive you,” she said.
He did not look over. “I should be alarmed if you did. You forgive too quickly when you wish to forget. I would rather be remembered.”
She made a small sound. “You are insufferable.”
“So you have told me,” he said. “Frequently.”