Five years after cruelly casting out his wife in disgrace, the Duke of Sliff saw her across the ballroom—with a boy who had his eyes and family birthmark, clutching a wooden horse carved by another man he called “Papa.”

 PART 8

Silas Vain called upon Marfleet House three mornings later, while Leof was occupied with estate business he could not in good conscience abandon. Lady Marfleet, unaware of the full particulars of the man’s history and unwilling to turn away a caller who announced himself as the Duke’s own cousin, admitted him to the small sitting room where Isolt sat mending one of Edmund’s small coats.

“Mrs. Rycroft.” Silas’s voice was warm, cultivated. The voice of a man who had spent a lifetime learning to sound trustworthy. “Or should I say — Your Grace? For I understand my cousin has finally seen fit to acknowledge what the rest of London is now whispering about. Forgive my presumption in calling uninvited. I confess I could not rest easy without offering you my felicitations in person.”

Isolt set down her needle with a care that did not match the sudden wariness in her spine.

“Mr. Vain,” she said. “I do not believe we have been formally introduced. An oversight I have long regretted.”

He seated himself without invitation. His gaze moved briefly, assessingly, to Beatrice, who had retreated to a corner of the room with her book at the sight of the stranger. And something in his eyes as he looked at the child made Isolt’s protective instincts rise sharp and immediate.

“I understand my cousin has been paying you a great deal of attention of late,” Silas said. “I wonder if I might speak plainly with you, Mrs. Rycroft? Woman to woman, I shall not presume to say — but plainly, at least.”

“You may say whatever you have come to say, Mr. Vain.”

“My cousin is a man of strong feeling and stronger pride. Both of which have led him in the past to act in haste.” His voice remained pleasant, but there was something underneath it now. A current of warning, carefully dressed as concern. “I would not wish to see you or your children hurt a second time by a man who discarded you once already on far less provocation than the world believes. Have you considered, Mrs. Rycroft, that his sudden ardor might prove as fleeting as his original suspicion? Society does love a scandal. And a duke who abandons a wife and then dramatically reclaims her — complete with previously unmentioned children — makes for very fine gossip indeed. I should hate to see you built up only to be discarded once his interest in playing the repentant husband has run its natural course.”

“You did not come here to warn me, Mr. Vain.” Isolt’s voice had gone very cold. Very still. “You came here to frighten me away. Before your cousin learns what I begin to suspect you already know he is learning.”

Something flickered across Silas’s carefully composed face. The first genuine emotion she had seen from him. Quickly smoothed over. But not quickly enough.

“I do not know what you mean.”

“I think you do.” She rose, drawing herself up to her full height. “I have spent five years learning precisely what it costs a woman to be disbelieved, Mr. Vain. And I have no intention of allowing anyone — not you, not gossip, not my own fear — to cost me a single day more of my children’s chance at knowing their father honestly. If you have come to offer me money to disappear quietly, as I suspect you have, you may save your breath. I did not take money from a duke’s settlement five years ago when I had nothing. And I will certainly not take it from his cousin now that I have everything to lose by accepting it.”

Silas rose. For a moment something dangerous moved behind his careful composure. A glimpse of the man who had spent five years building a lie brick by patient brick, and did not intend to watch it crumble without a fight.

“You are a fool if you believe he will not tire of you again, Mrs. Rycroft. Men of his rank do not stay bound to sentiment forever. I gave him a very tidy reason to be rid of an unsuitable match once. I can find another if I must.”

“Then you have just confessed, in your own words, to the very crime I believe you committed.” Isolt’s voice did not shake, though her heart was pounding hard enough that she could feel it in her throat. “I will remember exactly what you said, Mr. Vain. And I will repeat it to your cousin word for word. And I do not think you will find him nearly so easy to manage a second time.”

Silas left without another word, his composure visibly fraying at the edges. Isolt stood alone in the small sitting room for a long moment after the door closed behind him, her hands trembling now that there was no one left to see them. Beatrice crept from her corner and pressed close against her skirts.

“It is nothing, my darling,” Isolt murmured, gathering the little girl into her arms. “Only a man who does not frighten me nearly so much as he believes he does.”

She told Leof everything that evening. He watched his face darken by degrees as she recounted the conversation. Watched his hands curl slowly into fists at his sides. But his voice, when he spoke, remained carefully level.

“He threatened you. In my own cousin’s mouth. In front of my daughter.”

“He confirmed what we already suspected,” Isolt said. “That should matter more to you than the threat, Your Grace.”

“It matters to me a great deal that he stood in a room with my children and threatened their mother.” And something in his voice made Isolt look at him properly. Made her see, perhaps for the first time since the ball, the full weight of a fury that was not directed at her. Had never truly been directed at her. But had simply been so badly aimed five years ago that she had spent half a decade believing herself its target.

“I will deal with my cousin,” Leof said. “But first, I must ask you something. And I ask it knowing I have very little right to ask you anything at all.”

She waited. Her hands folded carefully in her lap.

“When this is finished — when Silas’s lies are exposed beyond any possibility of doubt, and your name is restored beyond any whisper of scandal — will you consider allowing me to try, in whatever time you will grant me, to earn back some measure of what I threw away? I do not ask you to love me again simply because the accusation against you has proven false. I know love does not work by simple correction of facts. I ask only for the chance to try. For as long as it takes. Without any claim upon your answer beyond the trying itself.”