Chapter 23 #2
Edward looked away toward the distant, invisible line of the border.
The decision to chase Isla north had cost him less materially than Henry’s elopement would cost him, but he felt the echo of the sacrifice all the same.
He had left his estate, his mother’s grudging regard, his father’s ghost, for a woman he did not yet entirely trust, but could no longer comfortably doubt.
Henry’s eyes sharpened, seeing more than Edward wished him to.
“You know,” Henry said quietly, “what it is to leave things behind.”
Edward changed the subject with a brusqueness that fooled no one. “We should get the horses tended and secure rooms. If Ashford is to parade his scandal before a tavern full of strangers, let us at least do it with a roof over our heads.”
***
The inn’s common room was warm and crowded. A fire roared in the hearth and men shouted at one another over dice. The air was thick with the sticky smell of ale and roasting meat hung.
They secured a private parlor with some difficulty and more coin, ate a stew that tasted of onions and effort, and made a dent in a bottle of tolerable claret. Elizabeth, exhausted from hours in the coach, pleaded weariness early. Isla offered at once to sit with her awhile.
“I would like to wash the road from my hair,” Elizabeth confessed. “And to talk to another woman who does not think elopement a symptom of a brain fever.”
“Then you have come to the right duchess,” Isla said. “I left half of London convinced I was mad. Let us add your tally to mine.”
They laughed, rose, and climbed the narrow stair to the small chamber the landlord had assigned.
Edward and Henry lingered in the parlor until the clatter from the common room grew too noisy to make conversation pleasant.
At Henry’s suggestion they stepped outside, into the cool night.
The yard had quieted. The post-coach horses stood dozing in their traces.
A stable boy moved among them, checking girths.
The sky was a low ceiling of cloud, thinning in places to show a scatter of stars.
Henry leaned against the inn wall, drawing a cheroot from his pocket. “Smoke?”
Edward nodded, taking one. They lit them from a spill brought from the kitchen.
“Is she very frightened?” Edward asked, nodding upward, toward the rooms.
“Libby?” Henry smiled around the cheroot. “Terrified. Thrilled. Determined. I suspect that combination will carry us through most storms.”
“And you?” Edward said. “Are you frightened?”
“Of poverty?” Henry shrugged. “I have been cold and hungry before. The army is an excellent tutor in discomfort. Of Doncaster’s wrath? I have weathered that too. Of losing her? Yes.”
He tilted his head, studying Edward through the smoke.
“What of you?” Henry asked. “You left in a hurry. Even for you.”
“I chased my wife,” Edward said. “Apparently this is considered romantic by some and idiotic by others.”
“I count it in the first column,” Henry said.
“You also count marrying without your father’s consent a sensible plan,” Edward pointed out.
“True,” Henry said amiably. “Perhaps my judgment is impaired. Humor me regardless. You rode after her. Why?”
Edward took a slow draw, exhaled.
“She left alone,” he said. “The roads are bad. The distances long. I could not let her go like that.”
“You could have sent guards,” Henry said. “You came yourself.”
“Yes,” Edward said. “I did.”
Henry was silent a moment. “You still doubt her,” he said at last. It was not quite a question.
Edward’s hand tightened on the cheroot. “I doubt many things,” he said.
“Deverell,” Henry said quietly, “you believed him,”.
“For a time,” Edward replied. “My mother believes him.” He broke off.
“And yet?” Henry prompted.
“And yet I have looked into Isla’s face,” Edward said slowly, “and seen … something that does not fit with the picture of a scheming adventuress. She is impulsive. Fierce. Not always wise. But I have seen her with horses, with servants, with her brother. There is care there. Not calculation.”
Henry nodded. “I have seen the same. She offered me work today, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to take in a half-disinherited cavalry officer and untitled wife.”
“She has a talent for inviting strays,” Edward said quietly.
Henry smiled. “You say that as if you were not the stray in this case.”
Edward huffed, then sobered. “Even so. Deverell’s statement exists. He believes he was duped by a Scottish pair using Isla’s name. Either she has forgotten the encounter entirely, a feat I find unlikely, or someone else wore her name for an evening.”
Henry took the cheroot from his mouth and looked at the glowing tip. “I heard a rumor,” he said. “Before I left Town. From a fellow officer who has a cousin in Deverell’s circle.”
Edward’s head came up. “What rumor?”
“That Deverell boasted,” Henry said. “After the fact. Of having escaped a trap. He spoke of a Scotswoman, tall, raven-haired, eyes like midnight, a voice like whisky. Called her Isla. Said she and her brother nearly had him, but he was too clever.”
Edward frowned. “Isla is not raven-haired.”
“No,” Henry agreed. “Nor are her eyes like midnight. They are more like the last bit of green on a summer hill. The description did not fit. The name did.”
“Glenmore is a Scot and his family is large” Edward said slowly. “He is dark in coloring.”
“Coincidence?” Henry asked.
“I do not believe in coincidences of that sort,” Edward said. “If Glenmore wished to ruin Strathmore, what better way than to set up some unfortunate woman to pose as Isla, then whisper of it in every ear? Deverell’s shame does the rest.”
“So you mean to go to York,” Henry said. “To look Deverell in the eye and ask him to describe her.”
“Yes,” Edward said. “If he speaks of a raven-haired goddess with whisky in her voice, I will know that whatever traps were laid, Isla was not the one laying them.”
“And if he speaks of a copper-haired woman with a temper?” Henry asked lightly.
“Then I will know I have married a better actress than London has ever seen,” Edward said. “And I shall have to live with that.”
Henry was quiet a moment, then said, “Does she know?”
“Some of it. That there is a man in York who alleges she and her brother attempted to dupe him. She doesn’t know his name.”
“You mean to tell her,” Henry said.
“I mean to give her the chance to face him,” Edward said. “To speak in her own defense, if defense is needed.”
Henry snorted. “You always did have a way with romance.”
Edward smiled grimly. “I am learning. Slowly.”
Henry’s gaze lifted to the upper story of the inn. One of the small windows above stood ajar, a faint flicker of candlelight showed behind the curtain.
“Be careful,” Henry said quietly. “She is not a problem to be solved, Edward. She is a person. If you treat this like an exercise in logic alone, you will lose something you cannot put back.”
Edward glanced up as well, following Henry’s gaze.
“She is also the only person who can answer this question,” Edward said. “I am trying to find a way to ask it that does not break what little trust we have managed to build.”
Henry took one last pull at his cheroot and ground it under his heel. “Then perhaps lead with that,” he said. “With the trust you wish to have. Not with the doubt you cannot shake.”
Edward did not answer. His eyes remained on the strip of lamplight above.
Chapter 23
The towers of York rose first as a faint smudge against the sky.
Isla saw them between the ears of Morrow, a grey blur where the flat northern fields lifted and the air seemed to tighten.
The city grew with every mile, a darker line, then suggestions of walls, then the pale finger of a spire. Her hands tightened on the reins.
Behind her, the trap creaked and rattled in time with the mare’s gait.
To her left, Edward rode in easy silence, cloak flung back now that the afternoon had warmed a little.
On the far side, Henry and Elizabeth rode double on Henry’s gelding, Elizabeth’s arms around his waist, her bonnet pinned fiercely against the wind.
They had made good time. The road north from the last inn had been dry and well kept, the weather mercifully clear.
It should have been pleasant, the sort of travel day people wrote lyrical nonsense about in letters.
Open country, good company, wheels that did not break.
In many ways it had been. Isla had enjoyed the road. She had enjoyed Edward.
They had fallen into a rhythm almost without noticing. Mornings began with mild bickering over where to stop and who knew the route better. Middays passed in story-sharing.
Henry, once the immediate panic of the elopement faded, proved a cheerful companion, full of tales of barracks and battles told with self-mocking flair.
Elizabeth, when she lost her initial shyness, possessed a sly humor that left Isla laughing more than she had in months.
But it was Edward who surprised her most.
He had always seemed so contained. Even at his most furious, there was a restraint to him, as though he held his temper on a short chain.
On the road, that chain loosened. He told stories of the sea, of storms that flung men across decks like rag dolls and of calm days when the water lay smooth as glass.
Of a cook who had once attempted to bake a pudding in a gale and ended up chasing it the length of the ship when it escaped its tin.
He spoke of foreign ports. Of monkeys stealing hats and a French captain who had attempted to surrender with such theatrical flourish that even Rearden had been impressed.
He laughed as he spoke, not the tight, polite smiles of London but full, unguarded laughter that creased the corners of his eyes and made his whole face younger.
Isla had found herself laughing with him.
Truly laughing, not the brittle sound she had perfected for drawing rooms.