Chapter 28
They reached Wexford under an overcast sky, the kind that pressed low upon the downs and made every window glimmer with a muted, pewter light. A month had passed since they left that same gravel sweep as near-strangers.
Now he and Isla rode side by side, close enough that their boots nearly brushed. Every mile south had felt like a quiet recomposing of a life he had once believed fixed and unyielding. Yet nothing prepared him for the sight awaiting them.
Lady Charlotte Pembroke stood on the front steps of Wexford Hall, gloved, poised, and humming with officious energy.
Behind her, two footmen carried a porcelain vase he had never seen before, a ghastly thing painted with cherubs.
Another was hauling an embroidered screen out of a crate.
Isla reined in beside him and stared, aghast.
“Has she redecorated your entire entrance hall?” she murmured.
Edward felt a muscle twitch near his jaw. “It would seem she has attempted to.”
The Dowager Duchess swept out behind Charlotte, her face sharpening with astonishment as she caught sight of Isla. Shock rippled through her expression, then disappointment, then a brittle, disdainful composure.
“Edward,” she called. “I had not realized you intended to bring … your wife back.”
The tone made Isla’s spine stiffen. Edward felt her draw in a breath beside him. He dismounted, handed his reins to the groom, then turned squarely to his mother.
“She is Duchess of Wexford,” he said. “Her home is here.”
The Dowager Duchess glanced between him and Isla as though witnessing something distasteful. Then she reached for his arm and pulled him aside.
“You must listen,” she whispered fiercely. “You have had a month of reflection, good. Now, please, make the sensible choice. Annul this marriage while you still can.”
Edward stared at her.
“Mother,” he said in a level voice, “annulment is impossible.”
She paled.
“Impossible?” she breathed. “You … you have … already—?”
Isla, overhearing, flushed a shade so vivid he felt heat rise in his own neck. Edward cleared his throat.
“That is hardly your concern,” he said, though his mother’s expression made clear she thought it very much was.
Charlotte approached then, looking almost triumphant, until she realized neither Edward nor Isla were leaving. Her smile withered.
“I thought,” she said sweetly, “that after so much time away, the Duchess might prefer to reside elsewhere.”
Isla merely arched a brow. “You thought wrongly.”
Edward stepped between them before Charlotte’s claws emerged.
“Charlotte,” he said, “you are a guest here. Nothing more.”
Her face tightened. For the first time since he had known her, he saw something like panic behind her composure.
Good. It is time to put an end to secrets. All of them.
He led Isla down the west corridor with a purpose that startled even him. Dust rose beneath their boots, the air smelled faintly of mildew and long-shrouded things. At the end of the passage stood the locked double doors. Edward paused only long enough to draw a steadying breath.
“Are you ready?” Isla asked softly, “you have the key?”
“I do.” Edward said, then he raised his foot and kicked.
The first door shuddered but did not break. The second kick splintered the lower panel. The third sent both doors swinging inward with a groaning wail of old hinges, dust billowing like smoke around them. Isla coughed, waving away the cloud.
“Well,” she said, “that was certainly dramatic.”
“It was symbolic,” Edward muttered. “I am done hiding from ghosts.”
She slid her hand into his, warm and assuring, and together they crossed the threshold.
His father’s wing smelled of paper and old leather, of hearths long cold.
Chairs draped in sheets. Cabinets locked.
A writing desk with a quill still in its holder as though its owner might return at any moment.
Edward swallowed. He had feared this place for so long that walking into it felt like stepping into the hollowness of his own chest.
“Where do we start?” Isla asked gently.
“Here,” he said, moving toward the desk.
She followed without hesitation. For the next hour they opened trunks and drawers. With Isla beside him, the memories did not feel like weights. They felt survivable. He was beginning to sort a stack of letters when the wing’s silence shattered.
“What do you think you are doing?!”
Charlotte’s shrill voice echoed like a bird trapped in a tomb.
Edward turned. She stood by the fireplace, within which Edward had set a fire burning to warm the long cold of years.
Charlotte held something small and leather-bound in her hand.
She lifted it high over the empty grate like a priestess about to perform a sacrifice.
The Dowager Duchess hovered behind her, white-faced and aghast.
“Edward,” Charlotte cried, “you must stop this woman. She is corrupting you! Look what she forced you to do, breaking into your father’s sanctum …”
“I broke the doors,” Edward said flatly. “Isla did nothing but walk beside me.”
Charlotte’s gaze flicked to Isla with undisguised loathing. “She wants to destroy your legacy. To steal what is yours.”
“That diary,” the Dowager Duchess snapped, “belongs to the Ravenscroft line.”
Charlotte seized on that. “Then perhaps it should be destroyed before she twists its contents against you!”
Isla opened her mouth in outrage, but Edward silenced her with a touch to her wrist.
“Charlotte,” he said, “put the book down.”
She stepped closer to the fireplace, brandishing it higher.
“Make me.”
She tilted her wrist, hovering the diary above the hungry flames. The look she gave him then was triumphant. Edward exhaled once. Slowly.
“Burn it,” he said.
Both Charlotte and his mother froze.
“E-Edward,” the Dowager Duchess whispered. “You cannot—”
“I said burn it,” he repeated. “If destroying my father’s words is how you believe you will control me, then you may as well strike the match.”
Charlotte faltered. He felt Isla move beside him. Quietly. Purposefully. She crossed the room. Picked up the old bucket sitting beneath a leak. And dumped the entire contents of cold, stale water over the fireplace.
The fact that Lady Charlotte stood before the fireplace meant that she received as much of a soaking as the flames. The shriek Charlotte released could have curdled milk. She stood dripping, soaked from head to toe, hair plastered to her temples, gown sagging, every inch a drowned cat in silk.
“There will be no burning without a fire,” Isla said, calmly.
Edward’s lips twitched despite the tension.
Charlotte sputtered. “You … barbaric … uncivilized …”
“Give me the diary,” Isla said.
Charlotte clutched it tighter.
Isla simply reached out with one swift, decisive motion and plucked it neatly from her fingers.
Charlotte gasped. Edward took the diary from Isla with hands he tried to keep from trembling.
Isla looked up at him then, a small, private smile warming her face before she turned away.
The Dowager Duchess could only stare between her soaked favorite and her unmovable son, realizing too late that her schemes had dissolved along with the fire.
***
Night fell before Edward opened the diary. He sat on the edge of the bed in his chamber, the room he and Isla now shared without hesitation and turned the brittle first page. His father’s handwriting leapt out at him instantly.
—Received dispatch from Admiralty. Edward promoted to lieutenant. Should have been sooner. Boy outshines half the men they keep aboard …
He blinked. He read the next.
—News from Argus. Edward engaged a privateer with remarkable courage. Men speak highly of him. He will be a fine commander …
And another.
—Wish he would write more. But I see him in the Admiralty reports. A steadiness of judgement. A touch of recklessness, very like his mother there …
Edward’s eyes blurred.
His father … proud? His father … admired the very qualities Edward had believed he despised?
Page after page dismantled the narrative Edward had built around the man.
The fear. The shame. The belief that he had run from duty, disappointing the duke beyond repair.
His father had followed his career. Had boasted of him to correspondents.
Had spoken of him with warmth Edward had never heard in life. A hand touched his shoulder.
Isla. She had not said a word since he began reading. She simply sat beside him, waiting, steady as a harbor light. He closed the diary slowly and looked at her.
“I thought he hated me,” Edward said hoarsely. “I thought every step I took away from Wexford, he saw as cowardice.”
Isla reached for his cheek with both hands.
“He was proud,” she whispered. “So proud. A man who cannot say the words aloud does not mean them any less.”
His breath shuddered. Her touch anchored him. Isla shifted closer still until her forehead touched his.
“You have spent years punishing yourself for something that was never true,” she murmured. “Let it go, Edward. Let him rest. And let yourself live.”
He kissed her. Not out of impulse. Not out of desperation.
But because in that moment she was the only truth he believed in.
The diary slid from his hand to the coverlet as Isla’s arms went around his neck.
He drew her against him, feeling every breath she took, every trembling inch of emotion he had denied himself for years.
“There is nothing in this house,” she whispered against his mouth, “that you cannot face.”
“With you,” he murmured, “I can face anything.”
Their lips met again, slow and deep. The last of the weight he had carried for so long seemed to break apart under her hands. The storm that had chased them across Scotland, across months, across misunderstandings and ghosts old and new, finally broke into light.
THE END?
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