"Did your brother die because of this?" he asked bluntly.
"My brother died of fever," Isolde said. "The fever found him in a winter made colder by paper. I will not simplify him into a martyr for your comfort or mine. I will say that the crest made his ruin look official, and official ruin is harder to climb out of."
The young man's father, a soft-spoken baronet with tired eyes, nodded once. "Then we climb with better ropes. Thank you for coming, Miss Fenwick. We will not make a parade of your kindness."
"It is not kindness," Isolde said. "It is sanitation. Infection spreads when people pretend the house is clean."
Harriet, waiting in the carriage afterward, took one look at Isolde's face and handed her a peppermint lozenge as if courage were a stomach complaint. "You did well."
"I did accurately," Isolde said. "Well can wait."
In the weeks that followed, Isolde helped Croft draft notices for two families named in Vale's book who wished to settle without spectacle. One family sent a stiff letter of thanks through a solicitor. The other sent nothing, which Isolde respected more. Silence, sometimes, was the only clean reply left.
She refused three invitations that were clearly issued for the novelty of seeing the girl who challenged Thornmere. She accepted one invitation from Lady Prudence—an afternoon of cards among women who played for shillings and news—and won enough to buy her mother a length of good wool. When someone asked her whether she still hated the duke, she said, "I still remember him," and let the distinction stand.
On a Thursday in early December, Croft asked her to come to his chambers to review a final schedule of payments and corrections. Snow sifted down outside the brick-wall window. Isolde read every line. She asked two questions. Croft answered both without flourishes. When they finished, he removed his spectacles and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
"You have done your family a difficult service," he said. "Difficult services rarely feel like virtue while one is performing them."
"They feel like walking with a stone in one's shoe," Isolde said. "Necessary, and ungraceful."
"Precisely." He hesitated. "If I may say so—His Grace is not a villain in the theatrical sense. That does not make him harmless. Watch the difference. Harmless men are rare. Accountable ones are rarer still."
"I will watch," Isolde said. "Watching is free. Trust is not."