Lucien rose. He was taller than the candles made him look when seated, and for the first time that evening he looked his age—young, cornered, and unwilling to admit either.
"This is not the place," he said quietly.
"It is precisely the place," Isolde replied. "You deal here. You win here. My brother lost elsewhere, and the paper that followed him home wore your family's beast and coronet. If you prefer privacy, you should have kept your crest private."
A murmur rolled around the table. Lord Harwick looked sick. Someone laughed once and stopped. Lady Harriet's fan opened again, white as a flag that refused surrender.
Lucien gathered the cards with hands that were no longer quite steady. "Miss Fenwick. If you will attend me in the small library—"
"With my aunt," Isolde said.
"With your aunt," he agreed, and the agreement cost him. Dukes did not agree so quickly unless they were buying time or bleeding from a cut no one else could see.
They left the green baize behind them. Whitcombe House's corridors were lined with portraits of men who had never been asked an inconvenient question in public. Isolde walked as if she had rehearsed the distance. She had. For three months she had rehearsed every corridor that might lead from accusation to consequence, and every face she might need to endure afterward.
The small library smelled of leather and lemon oil. A fire burned low in a grate that had seen better arguments. Above the mantel hung a hunting scene so vigorously painted that the fox seemed to be escaping into the frame next door. Lady Harriet closed the door and stood with her back to it, fan lowered, eyes bright with a fury that was not aimed only at the duke.
"You will speak," Lady Harriet said to Lucien, "as if my niece were not alone in the world. She is not."
Lady Prudence had followed them—of course she had—and now hovered just inside the threshold until Lady Harriet gave her a look that would have stopped a carriage. Prudence retreated only as far as the outer passage, where she could still hear if voices rose, which was as much discretion as London usually afforded.
Lucien remained standing. He did not offer chairs like a host. He looked like a man who had discovered the floor was not where he left it.
"I do not know the note you mean," he said.
Isolde opened the silver chatelaine. From a small hinged compartment she drew a folded paper, creased soft with handling. She did not give it to him at once. She held it where the firelight could find the seal.