Cut to the Quick
took it down from the wall. “Isn’t it beautiful?” she breathed, turning the jewelled pommel this way and that, to catch the light. “Feel how heavy it is. Sir Roland must have been a very powerful man, to carry such a sword into battle.”
    She let him hold it, hovering anxiously, like a mother putting her baby into the arms of a stranger. He cut a few swipes in the *air, and she seemed a little resentful, as though it offended her that any man but a Fontclair could manage Sir Roland’s sword. She took it back and brandished it herself, her hand trembling a little with its weight.
    The character of a female warrior suited her, Julian thought. She was tall, like Isabelle, and strong—many women would not have been able to lift the sword at all. He thought she must have been handsome when she was young. Even now, she did not seem old so much as ravaged: her steel-blue eyes were glassy, her cheekbones sharp, her mouth marked off by frown lines. Her hair, instead of fading gradually with age, was dark red, shot with bolts of silver.
    She gave him a tour of the gun room, dwelling with particular pride on her ancestors* military decorations. He noticed several that Geoffrey had won for his service under Wellington in Spain, but Lady Tarleton showed no interest in those. Apparently she only cared about heroics of the distant past.
    “When I was a girl,” she said, “these weapons were displayed all over the house. But after Robert married Cecily, they were all gathered together in one room. She said she didn’t want her children growing up surrounded by dangerous objects. Dangerous! Why,
    when I was their age, I used to play with daggers and dress swords all the time! It made me proud of my family's military tradition. She won’t even allow her daughters in this room alone. I’m surprised she doesn’t go so far as to put a lock on the door.”
    Julian wondered fleetingly what Lady Tarleton’s children would have been like, if she had had any. Little girls running about like Amazons, with quivers on their shoulders and spears in their hands? Well, he was glad she had brought him to see this room. He could easily have whiled away hours here, trying out the grip of different swords or observing how guns had improved over the years, from seventeenth-century muskets to the newest Manton fowling pieces.
    By the time they left the gun room, she was in charity with him enough to take his arm. They entered the drawing room—and she froze. She made a small, strangled sound in her throat, and her arm went stiff in his.
    The company was grouped around Mark Craddock, who sat on a sofa beside Maud. Isabelle sat at a table across from them, sketching Craddock’s face. Hugh stood behind her, watching her pencil dart across the page, while Sir Robert and Lady Fontclair looked on from farther away.
    Lady Tarleton rushed at Isabelle. Wrenching her sketchbook out of her hands, she tore off the drawing of Craddock, ripped it to shreds and flung the pieces away. Craddock leapt to his feet and stared at her. The others were too stunned to move.
    Isabelle stood up, unhurried and unafraid. “Mr. Craddock has an interesting face, Aunt. He said I might draw it.”
    “And I say you will do nothing of the kind! You’re treating this man as though—as though he were a member of our family, the same as one of us! And he will never be that! He may force his daughter on Hugh, but she’ll never really be a Fontclair. And he’ll never be anything but what he is—a cit, a little trumped-up tradesman, and before that—”
    “Don’t say it!” Craddock thundered. “Don’t say it, I warn you! Another word, and I’ll take my daughter and leave this house, and that will be the end of everything. Of everything/” he ground out, his face close to hers.
    She scared back, breathing hard, giving no ground, but she was silent.
    Sir Robert’s face settled into a grim, inscrutable mask. Hugh was scarlet to the roots of his hair. Maud Craddock

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