Page 26 of A Debt Inherited

“I remember Lord Julian.”

Lady Isobel folded her hands in her lap. “Then you remember what was intended.”

“I remember what I lost.”

The answer altered the room. Lady Isobel did not reach for her cup.

Julian’s death upon the road had been called tragedy. Highwaymen. Darkness. A foolish return from Cambridge. Another young gentleman dead beside him, his name softened by distance until only “a university friend” remained. That was the tale. It had stood long enough to become respectable. Lies that endured did not become truth, but they learnt to wear its coat.

Lady Catriona looked back from the window.

“Forgive me,” she said. “I did not come to ornament grief.”

“No,” Lady Isobel said. “I do not think you did.”

“Then we may speak plainly.”

Lady Isobel watched the steam thin above the untouched tea. “Plain speech has not served this family well.”

“Nor has silence, I think.”

There was no insolence in it. That made it worse.

Lady Isobel inclined her head by the smallest degree. “You are changed.”

“I was seventeen.”

“You were obedient.”

“I had not yet learnt what obedience purchases.”

Lady Isobel’s fingers closed once upon the fold of her gown. “And what has it purchased you?”

Lady Catriona’s mouth did not soften. “Six years unmarried, three declined offers, and a father who now finds Lord Ashby’s renewed interest very acceptable.”

“And you?”

“I find it late.”

“Lord Ashby has been much occupied by the duties of his succession. A title may descend in a day; the obligations of it do not settle so quickly.”

Lady Catriona sipped her tea. “No. They wait upon a convenient hour.”

“In this matter, perhaps too long.”

“My father thinks otherwise.”

“Lord Dunrannoch thinks as fathers are apt to think when an earldom returns to the table.”

Lady Catriona set her tea aside. “And what do you think, my lady?”

Lady Isobel looked at her across the tea service. “That the present is a poor inheritance. An earl must secure his future.”

“By marriage.”

“By a son.”

“Lord Ashby has no son,” Lady Catriona said.