"Miss Vane," he said pleasantly, "you have a certain directness that I find admirable. " "Thank you," she said, and kept walking. "It can be a liability, of course," he continued, matching her pace. "Directness without resources to support it tends to look like recklessness. And reckless women in uncertain financial circumstances rarely end up in positions of strength. He paused.
I say this helpfully. Nora stopped walking. She turned and looked at him fully. Lord Harwick was accustomed to people flinching slightly when he applied pressure. It was the point of pressure, the flinch, the recalibration, the backing down.
He had used this particular variety of quiet threat for 20 years across drawing rooms and corridors in four counties, and it had never once failed to produce the desired effect. Nora did not flinch. "Lord Harwick," she said, "I know exactly what you found out, and exactly what you intend to do with it. I know you sent a rider to Coldwick on Wednesday and received a document by 4:00. I know the document concerns my family's land. " She kept her voice entirely even.
"I also know that the Duke was informed of everything in that document before you sat down to dinner on Wednesday evening. " "By me. " Lord Harwick went very still. "So whatever you are planning to deploy," she said, "you should know that you are already 2 days late. " She gave him a small, polite nod. "Good morning. " She walked away. Behind her, Lord Harwick stood in the middle of the hallway and recalculated with the visible effort of a man whose tools had just been removed from his hands without warning. Tilda, who had been walking four paces behind and had heard every word, caught up to Nora at the foot of the stairs and grabbed her arm.
"That," Tilda said, in a voice of absolute conviction, "was magnificent. "It was necessary," Nora said. But she was gripping the stair rail quite firmly, and her hands were not entirely steady, and she did not pretend otherwise to Tilda. "Your hands are shaking," Tilda observed. "Yes. " "But you did not show him that. " "No. " Tilda looked at her with something close to fierce pride.
"Mother has been wrong about you for years," she said. "I want you to know I have always known that. " Nora looked at her youngest cousin and felt something warm move through the cold morning. They went upstairs together. What neither of them saw was Lord Harwick walking directly to Lady Mirabelle's private sitting room and closing the door. What neither of them heard was the conversation that followed, low and rapid and stripped of all pleasantness, in which two people who had expected easy victory rearranged their approach with the grim efficiency of people who did not accept defeat.
Lady Mirabelle said, "If the Duke already knows, we cannot use the land dispute. " "No," Lord Harwick agreed. "Then we use the other thing. " Lord Harwick was quiet for a moment. "That is a harder move. " "I did not ask for easy," Lady Mirabelle said. "I asked for something effective. " The other thing. It had arrived in the same document as the land dispute information, in a single paragraph near the bottom of the page, denoted almost as an afterthought by the man in Coldwick who had done the digging.