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“Over a woman?” Cumberlea sneered, all his careful polish gone. “You have dismantled twenty years of my holdings over a woman who wasn’t worth the trouble? Christ, Duskwell, she wasn’t even difficult.” He shook his head. “I know she was your sister, but Jesus, man. She was a woman! Grantham should have handed her to me in exchange for paying off his debts. Plus, she barely fought it in the end. That’s what you’ve beggared me for. A weeping, biddable little fool who hadn’t the spine to so much as tell her own brother what was being done to her.”

Nathaniel did not move.

Every muscle in his body wanted to. A version of this moment lived just beneath the surface, where his fist met the man’s mouth and didn't stop until he saw red. He could feel the urge pressing against his ribs.

He closed his eyes for a moment and thought of Laura, calm in dark green. He thought of Iris asking to be told the night garden story properly, so she could remember it.

“I made certain she understood no one would come,” Cumberlea went on, too far gone now to notice his own voice rising. “That was the art of it, if you want to know. Two years of making certain she believed she was alone. Grantham drank himself stupid; he was of no use. She wrote you letters, you know. But she never sent them. I made certain of that as well.” His lips curled. “So do not stand there and lecture me about what I owe your sister. I gave her a great deal more attention than you ever⁠—”

“That will do,” called a voice from the doorway.

Cumberlea turned.

Laura stood in the threshold, and behind her, in a silent, appalled cluster, were the Duke and Duchess of Rathbourne, Lord Pembridge leaning on his silver-topped cane, Lady Marchmont, and two gentlemen from the House of Lords.

The color drained entirely from Cumberlea’s face.

“How long?” he wheezed.

Nobody answered him.

“How long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough,” Frederick said in a voice Nathaniel had never heard him use before, cold and final. “Longer than I’d have thought a man able to go on talking without hearing himself.”

“Lady Marchmont.” Cumberlea turned, his eyes wild. “You’ve known me for twenty years! This is a performance, a fabrication. He has orchestrated this entire⁠—”

“I heard you,” Lady Marchmont interrupted. “With my own ears. You will not tell me what I heard. You of all people will not lie to me in my house.”

“You made certain no one would come.” Lord Pembridge’s cane struck the floor once, hard. “I knew that girl when she was a child, sir! I was a friend of her parents, bounced her on my knee. And you stand there and describe what you did to her like that and try to feign otherwise!”

“Get out,” Anna hissed, her voice shaking with fury. “Get out of this room. Now.”

Cumberlea looked from face to face, and Nathaniel watched him finally realize there was nothing here to salvage. By tomorrow noon, it would be in every drawing room in London, carried by five people whose word no one would think to question, and it would follow him for whatever remained of his wretched life.

He shoved past Laura without saying a word and stomped down the corridor.

For a moment, nobody spoke. Until Nathaniel broke the silence.

“It’s finished,” Nathaniel declared, his voice unsteady in a way it hadn't been all evening. “That’s all I wanted. Only for the truth to be known.”

“A great many people will know it by Friday,” Lady Marchmont said grimly. “I shall see to that personally.”

They did not stay past midnight, much as they had cause to celebrate. The carriage was quiet for the first stretch, London all dark and wet outside as the rain began to fall.

Laura sat close beside him, her hand in his, saying nothing and letting him have the silence.

“You were magnificent,” he said.

“I did very little. I only opened a door and stood behind it.”

“You got five of the most respected people in that house to follow you into a corridor on nothing but your word, and you did it quietly enough that he never heard you coming.” Nathaniel turned her hand over in his. “And you trusted me to stand there and take it without swinging my fists. I’m not certain I’d have trusted myself.”

“I knew you could.” She said it simply. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for months. You were never the man in those stories. You were only a man who’d been grieving for so long that he’d started to believe them himself.”

He was quiet for a while.

“He kept her letters,” he murmured. “She wrote to me, and he kept them. I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t think I will for a long time.”