They met in Croft's chambers again. Snow had turned to slush in the street. Lucien looked tired in a way that could not be blamed on late cards.
"I cannot restore your brother," he said. "I can only make it harder for my house to mint the same harm."
"That is the correct limit of your power," Isolde replied. "Do not promise resurrection. Promise procedure."
He almost smiled at the severity. "You would have made a formidable steward."
"I make a formidable sister," she said. "It is a narrower office and a harder one."
Harriet, in the corner with her fan, murmured, "And a permanent one."
When the protocols had been signed and copied, Lucien paused at the door. "Miss Fenwick. If society softens toward you, it will be for the wrong reasons as often as the right. I cannot control that. I can refuse to feed the wrong reasons. That much I will continue to do."
"Continue, then," Isolde said. "Continuance is the only apology that does not spoil."
He left. The slush took him. Isolde remained long enough to watch Croft file the papers where future hands could find them if future hands grew careless again.
Spring came late, with a wet wind and a green so sudden it looked improvident. With it came a letter from Lucien, brief and unadorned, informing Mrs. Fenwick that a small annuity arrangement—administered through Croft, not through Thornmere's public charity lists—had been set aside to ease the household's constraints for five years, "as partial repair for harm done under my seal, not as purchase of goodwill." Mrs. Fenwick read it twice, then gave it to Isolde.
"He learns," Mrs. Fenwick said.
"He tries," Isolde answered. "Trying is not absolution. It is better than the smirk."
She wrote a reply in her own hand, equally brief: the annuity was accepted as repair; no further claims would be made on the cancelled note; any future crest-marked papers discovered would be sent to Croft at once. She did not sign with affection. She signed with her name, entire and unhidden.