Chapter 6: What Isolde Decided to Do
Edmund set the letters down on the nearest table — carefully, the way you set down something that belongs to someone else — and turned to look at his wife.
The ballroom had not emptied.
If anything, the remaining guests had drawn slightly closer, the way people do when they sense that the most important part is still coming.
"Clear the room," Edmund said to the head of house, who had appeared silently at the edge of the crowd sometime in the last ten minutes.
Within two minutes, the guests had filtered out — reluctantly, in clusters, voices low.
The doors were pulled closed.
The chandeliers hummed on above an empty ballroom, three people, and the cart with its small collection of evidence.
Edmund looked at Isolde.
"How long have you known who she was?"
Isolde smoothed a crease from her sleeve.
"Edmund, I think we should—"
"How long."
She looked up at him.
The careful neutrality was still there, but it had shifted into something more deliberate — the expression of someone choosing their next move rather than simply defending the last one.
"Since before we married," she said.
The words sat in the room.
Edmund did not move.
"Say that again."
"I knew who she was before we married.
The Countess told me.
She felt I should understand the full picture of the family I was entering." Isolde's voice was even.
Measured.
As if she were reporting something mildly inconvenient.
"Cecily had been located.
She was working in domestic service.
The Countess had decided it was safer to leave the situation as it was."
"Safer," Edmund repeated.
"The estate was stable.
The accounts were in order.
Reopening the question of the will, the inheritance, the original distribution — it would have created significant legal complications."
"For whom?"
Isolde didn't answer.
"For whom, Isolde."
"For the estate," she said.
"For you."
"Don't do that." His voice had gone very quiet.
"Don't make this about protecting me.
I was twenty-three when Father died.
I didn't know there was anything to protect me from.
You did.
You married me knowing my sister was alive and working as a servant and you said nothing." He stopped.
"For how many years did you say nothing?"
"Six."
Cecily had not moved from beside the cart.
She was watching Isolde the way you watch something that has not yet decided what it is going to do.
"You moved me to the east wing," Cecily said.
"You could have told Edmund then.
You chose not to."
"I was protecting my family."
"You were protecting your position."
Isolde turned to face her directly.
Something had changed in her expression — the measurement was gone, replaced by something rawer and less controlled.
"You want to stand there in that uniform and judge me?" she said.
"You have no idea what this family looked like from the outside.
The debts your father left.
The creditors.
The staff going unpaid.
Edmund was twenty-three years old and drowning, and I helped him build something stable.
I helped him hold this estate together.
Everything you see in this room tonight — the guests, the standing, the name that still means something — that is six years of my work."
"I'm not disputing your work," Cecily said.
"I'm disputing your right to decide I didn't exist."
"Someone had to make decisions."
"My father made his decision in those letters." Cecily picked up the bundle and held it out toward Isolde.
"He wrote to me.
He wanted me here.
Someone decided his wishes didn't matter."
Isolde looked at the letters.
She did not take them.
"The Countess managed the correspondence," she said.
"I didn't intercept anything."
"But you knew they existed."
A pause.
Very small.
But there.
"You knew," Cecily said again, "and you didn't tell Edmund, and you didn't tell me, and you moved me to a locked wing of the house and waited to see what I would do." She lowered the letters.
"That is not protecting a family.
That is managing a threat."
Edmund had moved to the window.
His back was to both of them.
His shoulders were very still.
"Edmund," Isolde said.
Her voice had changed — softer now, reaching for something.
"Everything I did, I did for us.
For what we were building.
You have to understand that."
He turned around.
"I understand that my father spent the last year of his life thinking his daughter had abandoned him," he said.
"I understand that my sister spent nine years thinking she had no family.
I understand that I have been standing in this house for six years not knowing any of it." He looked at her steadily.
"What I don't understand is how you looked at me every day and said nothing."
Isolde opened her mouth.
Closed it.
"I want you to leave the room," Edmund said.
"I need to speak with my sister."
"Edmund—"
"I'm not asking you to leave the house.
I'm asking you to leave the room." His voice was not raised.
It was something worse than raised — it was finished.
"Please."
Isolde stood.
She smoothed her dress one more time — the gesture of a woman who had always used composure as armor and was finding, for the first time, that the armor had gaps.
She walked to the door.
She stopped with her hand on the frame and looked back at Cecily.
"For what it's worth," she said, "I never wanted it to go this far."
Cecily looked at her.
"I know," she said.
"That's the part that's hardest to forgive."
Isolde left.
The door clicked shut behind her.
Edmund stood in the empty ballroom, holding his father's letters, looking at his sister across the marble floor.
"I don't know where to start," he said.
"Neither do I," Cecily said.
May you like
"But we have time now."
It was the first thing either of them had said that wasn't about the past.
