Page 1 of My Duke, The Stranger
One
“Isolde, if you might come and see me now,” her father, Vicar Whitmore, called from his office. “Thank you, dear.”
Isolde’s ten-year-old sister, Marianne, and her seven-year-old brother, Thomas, were curious.
“Can we come, too?” Marianne asked, tugging on her sleeve.
“What does he want?” Thomas asked with a hint of worry. “Father isn’t in trouble, is he?”
“No, no,” Isolde assured her younger brother. “I am certain that he is just checking on us, that’s all. Nothing to worry about.” She touched her brother under the chin and made sure to smile. Hopefully, that would be enough to calm him. “Marianne…” She looked at her younger sister. “Take Thomas outside. It is too nice a day to be cooped up indoors.”
Marianne did not look as though she meant to obey the request. Her expression hardened as Isolde turned to face the open doorway into their father’s office. She was clearly worried, which made Isolde smile.
She is like me in so many ways… even if there is nothing that she can do, I know that would not stop one as stubborn as she. Yes, so much like me…
“Enough of that.” Isolde looked at her younger sister with kind eyes and what amounted to a dismissive smile, one that told her sister not to worry so much. “Take Thomas outside, enjoy the day. I’ll join you as soon as I see to Father.”
“Fine,” Marianne said with some reluctance. “Thomas, come on.” Marianne took her brother’s hand and dragged him toward the front door.
As they went, Thomas looked back at Isolde, partly confused and partly worried. It broke Isolde’s heart to see her brother like that, because one so young as he should not live in a world where he needed to worry about things beyond his control. He should want to go outside and play and have fun. In a just world, that’s all that would be on his mind.
But where does it say that the world is just?
It was only once her younger brother and sister had gone that Isolde turned to face her father’s office. She took a moment and braced herself for whatever was to come; worrying was what Isolde did, and that was how she kept this household afloat.
Her heart thumped against her chest, and had Isolde been a different type of person, she might have descended into a panic that would undo her. But such was Isolde’s life; all that she had been through in her twenty-two years meant she did not have the luxury of such things.
Thus, with little choice and knowing she needed to face this head-on, she firmed herself, took a deep breath, and walked into her father’s office.
“Ah, good,” her father said when he saw her. A warm smile took his aged face, and reached his tired eyes. At that moment, he almost looked like the man she had once known to be so full of life that hardly a day went by without her hearing his laughter filling their small home. “Close the door, won’t you?”
As quickly as the light had filled her father’s eyes, it faded, returning him to the withered old man that he had lately become. Much like a flower without soil and sunlight, he was decrepit and fading—not even bothering to pretend that this was only a phase that he might soon get over. Those days were long behind him.
And then, as if to prove the point, he started to cough violently. Each one made Isolde wince, and how she wished that there was something she could do.
Once, there might have been… now, it is just a matter of time.
The door closed softly, and Isolde turned back, keeping to the other side of the room as if she meant to flee when theopportunity came. She had a sense that something was very wrong. The reason for this caution was not due to her siblings’ worry, but the presence of the man who sat across from her father.
“Miss Whitmore! Oh, it has been too long.” Mr. Harwood stood up as soon as he laid eyes on Isolde. “Remind me, when was the last time we spoke to one another?”
“It has been years now, I am sure,” Isolde said nervously. “I pray that my father has done nothing wrong.”
“What? Oh, no,” he chuckled. “Nothing like that. Forgive me, please, for this random visit. I can only imagine what must be going through your head.”
Mr. Harwood was a man whom Isolde knew well enough, if not by sight, then certainly by reputation. He was the same height as she was—rather small for a man—but with a belly that put her own father’s to shame. His head was balding, which only served to draw attention to the liver spots that peppered his pate, and his jowls were thick and heavy. And while he was clearly in good health—having as much money as he did certainly helped—he was somewhere in his sixties... possibly older.
What Mr. Harwood was most known for, however, was his position on the estate. He was the local Justice of the Peace, in effect the arbiter of law and order, and an unannounced visit from him was never a cause for celebration.
That was why Isolde had spent the last ten minutes in a state of nervous worry, doing what she could to ease her siblings’ fears, while wondering what on earth might have happened for this man to walk through her front door.
Nothing good, I am sure…
“If it concerns my father’s debts, I can assure you that we are working to cover them,” Isolde spoke carefully. Her eyes flicked to her father as she tried to capture a sense of what was going on. “And surely, such a matter is not cause for one of your standing to intervene. We were led to believe that we had time to?—”
“This has nothing to do with debt collection,” Mr. Harwood assured her. “Although…” He looked at her father and chuckled. “Perhaps it does, in a way.”
“Please, Isolde, take a seat.” Her father gestured to the seat across his desk, the one beside Mr. Harwood.
