Chapter Twenty-Two
Isaac took the portrait from Tom and set it down on the desk with a steadiness that cost him more effort than it appeared to.
"I've never seen this woman before," he said, his voice carrying none of the turmoil currently working through his chest. "None of my staff bear any particular resemblance to her, so far as I'm aware.
Most of my servants were engaged locally—Mrs Ellis handles the hiring, and takes on girls recommended from the surrounding villages.
I'd have heard of it, I would think, if any of them had connections to an earl's household. "
The man studied him for a moment with the particular flat, assessing gaze of a man well practised at reading whether he was being told the truth.
Isaac held the scrutiny without flinching, drawing on the same steady composure that had once carried him through fifteen years of opponents trying to find some crack in his guard.
"I see," the man said finally. "Well. I'm obliged to you for your time, My Lord. Should you happen to hear anything, the reward stands considerable, and there's a means of reaching me through the posting inn at York."
"I'll keep it in mind."
The man bowed before gathering his portrait and taking his leave.
Isaac stood listening to the sound of Whitby escorting him out, the front door closing at last with a heavy, final thud that seemed to echo through the whole silent house.
Neither Isaac nor Tom spoke for a long moment after the sound had faded.
"Do you believe it?" Tom asked finally, his voice low.
"I already know the answer, Tom."
Isaac stared at the empty space on the desk where the portrait had lain only moments before, every strange, unexplained detail of the past months arranging itself, at last, into a single coherent shape.
"You know it too. You saw the same face I did."
Tom said nothing, only watched him with an expression of sympathy.
"What will you do?" he asked eventually.
Isaac was quiet for a long time, staring at nothing, before he finally spoke.
"Send Nell to my study."
Tom hesitated, but he nodded after a moment and left without further argument.
Isaac remained alone in the fading afternoon light for what felt like a longer stretch than the few minutes it actually took before a soft knock finally sounded at the door.
"Come in."
She entered quietly, and Isaac watched her take in, almost immediately, whatever tension still hung visible in the room's air.
A flicker of uncertainty crossed her face before she smoothed it back into the careful, composed expression she had worn for weeks now whenever duty required her presence near him.
Tom, still lingering near the door, excused himself with a murmured word Isaac did not fully register, closing the door softly behind him and leaving the two of them alone.
Isaac remained standing behind his desk, deliberately maintaining the distance, while Nell waited near the entrance, her hands folded before her in the posture of a servant awaiting instruction.
"Where were you born?" he asked, without preamble.
Something flickered across her face. Surprise, perhaps, at the abruptness of the question.
"A small village in the south, My Lord," she answered. "I don't recall the name troubling you before."
"Your parents."
"My mother was a healer, as I've told you. Knew every remedy worth knowing. My father died when I was young—a fever, the winter I was nine."
The answer came smooth and practised, exactly as it had every previous time the subject had arisen.
"So where," Isaac continued, his voice still carefully level, "did a healer's daughter from a village in the South learn French? Or how to dance a proper waltz? Or precisely which fork belongs to which course at a twelve-course dinner?"
He watched her carefully as he spoke, watching as the composure she had carried began to falter.
"Tell me that, Nell. Where does a servant learn all of that?"
She opened her mouth, and he watched her reach for the answer, watched her search for some further invention that might carry her through this question as smoothly as it had carried her through every one before it, some former employer, some great house where she'd observed such things firsthand.
"Let me guess," he said, his voice rising now. "You learned it all while working in all those great houses, is that right?"
"I—" her voice faltered.
"And living in those great houses," he continued, crossing the room towards her. "Is that where you learned to speak the way you do? Acquired your perfect posture? The habit of pausing slightly in doorways, as if expecting to be announced?"
He waited, but still she remained silent, refusing to meet his eye.
"Answer me, Nell."
"I don't know what you want from me, My Lord," she said, her voice shaking.
"I want you to tell me the truth," he said. "Tell me, Helena.”
The room went still as he watched every trace of colour drain from her face.
For several long seconds neither of them seemed to breathe at all, the whole weight of the truth settling into the silence.
Then Isaac let out a short laugh, bitter rather than amused, the sound scraping rough from his own throat.
"I almost wish it had been a coincidence," he said. "God knows that would have been simpler than this."
"Isaac—"
She stepped forward at once, panic breaking through whatever composure remained to her, her eyes bright and desperate.
"I never meant to deceive you, not truly—please, let me explain, before you judge me for something you don't yet understand—"
He raised a hand, and she stopped.
"Every lesson," he said, his voice still quiet, though it now carried an edge that cut deeper than any raised voice might have.
"Every evening in this study. Every word you ever told me about your mother, your family, where you learned your remedies and your etiquette. The library. The Dowager’s cottage.
Everything I told you that night, about my family, things I've never said aloud to another living soul—all of it built on a lie, Nell.
Or Helena, I suppose, since that's evidently the truth of it. "
"My feelings were never a lie."
Tears had begun gathering in her eyes now, spilling over despite her evident effort to hold them back.
"Only my name, Isaac—only the name, I swear it to you.
Everything else, everything I felt in that room with you, every word I said about how I felt watching you fight for those tenants, all of it was true.
I fled London because my father meant to marry me to a man who'd deliberately ruined my reputation to force the match, and there was no one left willing to hear that I was innocent.
I couldn't tell you, or anyone, because—"
"I can't listen to this right now."
Isaac's voice remained level, but something in it had gone hollow, silencing her.
"I need you to leave."
"Isaac, please—"
"Leave, Nell." He did not raise his voice. He did not need to. "Please."
She stood for another moment, searching his face for some sign that he might yet reconsider, some flicker of the warmth that had grown between them across so many quiet evenings, but Isaac had already turned his gaze toward the window, toward the darkening grounds beyond it, and offered her nothing to hold onto.
Helena turned, finally, and walked toward the door with slow, unsteady steps. At the threshold, she paused, but Isaac did not turn.
The door closed softly behind her, and Isaac remained alone in the study's gathering dusk, the whole weight of everything he had just learned and everything he had just done settling over him with a silence heavier than any words either of them might have spoken instead.