Harriet snorted softly, which was her way of not weeping. Isolde managed three bites of bread and a swallow of wine, then lay down in her clothes until sleep, uninvited and incomplete, arrived like a clerk with the wrong papers.
Thornmere House, the next morning, wore its consequence like marble. The façade was pale stone; the knocker was a stag's head; the footmen had the blank courtesy of people trained not to hear. Isolde arrived with Lady Harriet and Mr. Oswald Croft, a spare man in his fifties whose coat was dark, whose manners were dry, and whose mind, Isolde had learned, worked like a well-kept lock.
They were shown into a morning room where the windows admitted a clear autumn light. Maps of estates hung between the windows. A clock ticked with the confidence of a house that expected time to obey it. Lucien was already there, standing, not seated behind a desk like a man prepared to preside. Beside him stood another man: older, neat, with ink-stained fingers carefully scrubbed and a smile that tried too hard to be incidental.
"Miss Fenwick. Lady Voss. Mr. Croft." Lucien's greeting was correct. "This is Mr. Benedict Vale, who has managed certain private affairs of the dukedom since my father's day."
Vale bowed. "A misunderstanding, I am sure."
Croft did not bow deeply. "Misunderstandings leave paper trails. Shall we follow one?"
Isolde produced the note again. Vale took it, peered, and made a sound of mild regret, as if examining a stain on a tablecloth.
"Ah. Yes. An assurance note of the old style. In the late duke's time, certain advances to gentlemen of good family were occasionally... stabilized... by the appearance of Thornmere's interest. Not a loan from the duke himself, you understand. A form of social collateral. The crest reassured creditors that the young man would not be permitted to vanish into disgrace without notice."
"Social collateral," Isolde repeated. The words tasted of metal. "My brother died of fever in rented rooms because every door that might have helped him had already been told he was finished. Your crest did not stabilize him. It marked him."
Vale's smile thinned. "Miss Fenwick, commerce is not sentiment."
"No," Lucien said, and his voice had lost last night's drawing-room polish. "But my seal is not your toy." He held out his hand for the note. Vale returned it. Lucien turned it over, studying the wax as if seeing it for the first time as an object with a history. "Who authorized this after my father's death?"
Vale hesitated just long enough.
"The practice continued," he said carefully, "for the sake of continuity. Young gentlemen still required... firmness. Your Grace was occupied with the estate, the parliamentary matters, the—"
"I was occupied with cards and horses," Lucien said, and the admission landed in the room like a dropped tray. "Do not gild it. Did I sign a warrant for you to use this seal on debt notes?"