Chapter 14
The last of the candles had guttered an hour before dawn, and Christina sat at the breakfast table with eyes that felt too wide for her face and a mind too restless for the small white plate before her.
George’s testimony — four close-written pages in his careful, cramped hand — lay folded in the locked drawer of her writing desk in the next room.
She had read it three times in the small hours while George paced the floor above her and the house held its breath around them both.
The ball at Lord and Lady Southport’s seemed a lifetime ago rather than only the evening before.
She could still feel the warm spill of light from the ballroom doors, the scent of climbing roses heavy in the summer air, the weight of Isaac’s hand at her back as they had turned beneath the trellis.
It was always real, she had whispered, and he had looked at her as though committing the moment to memory.
It had been, she thought now, the last wholly happy quarter of an hour she would have before George’s knock at the servants’ door and the grave, trembling story that had followed.
She was still at breakfast, the tea gone cold in the cup beside her, when Thompson appeared in the doorway.
“Lord Coventry, my lady.”
She had barely time to rise before Isaac was in the room — his coat still buttoned to the throat, his hair in some disarray from the ride, his expression taut with a worry that admitted no polite preamble.
“I received word from my valet’s contact that George’s lodging house was disturbed yesterday. Someone came looking for him.” His eyes searched her face. “Christina, if Pennington has found George — ”
“George is here.”
Isaac went very still. “What?”
“He came to the house last night. He was frightened and had nowhere else to go.” She kept her voice steady, though her heart was not.
“He told me everything — that Pennington had a hold on him through his gambling debts, paid him to leave your employ for ours, and used him to deliver the forged letters. He gave me the one I thought was from you with his own hand. I had him write it all down overnight. His testimony is in my desk.”
“When last night?”
“Very late — well after midnight. He came to the servants’ door.”
“And you did not send word to me?”
The question was quiet, but it carried an edge that Christina had not heard from him before. She straightened in her chair. “George was exhausted and terrified. My first concern was his safety. I planned to tell you this morning, once he was settled.”
“While Pennington was potentially searching for him through the night.” Isaac’s jaw tightened.
“Christina, I could have come immediately. I could have arranged for George’s removal to Kinsley’s estate last night.
Instead, he has been sitting in your household — where Pennington is known to call — for half the night and all the morning. ”
“My servants are perfectly capable — ”
“Your servants do not know who Pennington is or what he is capable of.” Isaac ran a hand through his hair, the gesture sharp with frustration.
“He is a man who forged letters, bribed servants, and has been threatening you with ruin. You cannot treat him as if he observes the normal rules of conduct. Granton cornered me last night at the ball — he has been cataloguing our walks in the park, every card party, every glance I have given you. He is gathering currency against us. These are not theoretical dangers.”
Christina stood. Her cheeks were warm, but her voice was level. “I was not treating him as anything. I was protecting a frightened young man who came to me for help and who needed shelter before he needed strategy.”
“Strategy is what protects people, Christina.”
“Compassion is what convinced him to help us in the first place.”
They stared at each other across the breakfast table, the air between them charged.
“You made a decision that affected us both,” Isaac said, more quietly now, “without consulting me.”
The words landed with precision. Christina felt the truth of them. “Yes. I did. Because you were not here and George was, and the decision could not wait.”
Isaac looked at the floor, at the ceiling, at the sideboard — anywhere but at her. His hand went to his cuffs, straightening them with compulsive precision.
“You are right that George needed shelter,” he said finally. “And you are right that your compassion is what won his trust. But Christina — when I learned that Pennington was looking for George, and I did not know where George was or where you were, I was — ” He stopped. “I was frightened.”
The admission cost him. She could see it in the way his shoulders dropped.
“I am sorry I did not send word sooner,” she said. “That was a mistake.”
“And I am sorry for raising my voice.”
The silence that followed was different from the charged one before.
This was two people recognizing the shape of a recurring problem — his instinct to protect overriding his trust in her judgment, her instinct to act independently overriding her trust in their partnership — and choosing, deliberately, not to let it grow.
“Show me the testimony,” Isaac said.
Christina went to her writing desk, unlocked the drawer, and placed George’s written account on the table between them. They sat side by side — closer than before, shoulders touching — and read through the careful, cramped handwriting together.
The testimony was damning. Dates, amounts, instructions — everything George had told Christina the night before, now set down in ink and signed. The payments from Pennington. The placement in both households. The sealed letter delivered to Christina on the morning after the engagement.
“Thirty pounds,” Isaac said, his voice barely controlled. “The price of our happiness was thirty pounds.”
He was quiet a moment, his hand clenching briefly on the table before he forced it flat again.
“Kinsley pulled me aside after the dancing last night,” he said.
“He told me he had watched Pennington’s face from the terrace while we were beneath the roses.
He said he had never seen a man so barely containing himself.
He was warning me, Christina. Kinsley saw it, and he knew enough to warn me. ”
Christina placed her hand over his on the table. His fingers were rigid, the tendons standing out. Slowly, feeling the warmth of her palm, his hand relaxed.
“We have enough,” she said. “George’s testimony, the letter comparison, the things we have observed. The question now is what we do with it.”
Isaac was quiet for a long moment. Then he looked at her — really looked, not through the haze of anger but with the steady attention of a man who had learned, painfully, that his first impulse was not always his best.
“What do you think we should do?”
The question cost him something. She could see it in the effort — the deliberate setting aside of his own instinct, the conscious choice to defer. It was the beginning of a repair between them. Not a grand gesture. Just a question, asked sincerely.
“We secure George first,” she said. “Lord Kinsley’s country household — today, if possible. Then we gather Sophie and Lord Wickton and decide, together, how to confront Pennington in a way that protects my reputation.”
Isaac nodded. “I will send word to Kinsley at once.” He paused. “And Christina — the next time a decision must be made, we make it together. Even if that means I pace the floor of my study at midnight.”
She smiled — the first real smile either of them had worn all morning. “I would not mind being rescued, on occasion. I would simply prefer to be consulted about the timing.”
He took her hand. His thumb traced the arc across her knuckles — I am here — and she pressed his palm — I am yours.
The gesture was familiar now, worn smooth with repetition, but it had not lost its power.
The argument had sharpened it. They were choosing each other not in a moment of passion but in a moment of friction, and that choice was worth more than a thousand kisses in moonlit gardens.