The Duke's Hound Hated Every Woman He Courted — Until a Young Lady Walked Through the Gate
Chapter 4
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The Duke took it with the faint distaste of a man who expects to be asked for money. He broke the seal and began to read. And Isolde, watching his face, saw the exact moment the distaste went out of it.The letter was short; the Baron had never been a man for long sentences. He wrote that he did not blame His Grace for the silence of the past three years, because grief makes hermits of the best of us. He wrote that he had sent three petitions to Ravenhurst Park and received one reply, and that he understood. And near the bottom, in a hand that had begun to shake:I grieve with you for Edmund. I loved him as a son. Tell him, wherever he is, that I kept my promise.The Duke read the last line twice. "Why would your father write of my brother as a son?" he asked very quietly.Isolde did not answer. She unwrapped the bundle in her lap, one fold at a time. The faded wool was a muffler thin from years of wear, in a gray-and-cream check the Duke had last seen around the neck of a laughing boy racing down to the lake in a snowstorm.Inside lay two objects: the first was a gold signet ring engraved with the Ravenhurst heron; the second was a folded paper bearing two signatures and a church seal.Sovereign lifted his head. He pushed his nose into the wool and breathed in, long and shuddering, and the whine came again, thin as a child's."My name is Isolde Ravenhurst," she told him. "Edmund was my husband."The silence was so complete that the rain on the windows sounded like gravel flung against the glass. The Duke did not move. Then, slowly, he lifted the ring from the wool, held it to the gray light, and read the inscription worn inside the band. His face closed like a door."Where did you get this?""He placed it on my finger in the vestry of St. Aldric's, 11 miles from here, on the 14th of September in the year 1810. We were married by license, with the curate and the sexton as witnesses.""My brother would have told me.""He meant to.""I do not know your face," the Duke continued, his voice hard. "I have no memory of ever being introduced to Baron Marlowe's daughter. We are neighbors, madam. If you were truly what you claim, I would have seen you at church, or at the fair, or across a field.""You would not," Isolde replied evenly. "In those years, you were in London for Parliament three seasons out of four. And when you came home, it was to the estate office, not the village. My father was too proud to push for invitations, and the Marlowe house lies on the far side of the river, with nothing but a footpath between us and Ravenhurst land. Edmund made certain our paths never crossed. He met me at the garden wall, never at your door. He was afraid of what your face would do when he said my name."