“A lord.”
The answer had only encouraged another question, one whose answer Isabel had anticipated with dread. “Not Montfort?”
“Not Montfort,” Eva replied, flat and hollow. “Ariel’s father is French.”
Just now, Montfort held out his arm. “Will you join me for a turn about the grounds?”
Although the question was phrased like an invitation, it wasn’t. It was a command, and Isabel must obey. She touched her sweat-sheened palm to the navy superfine of his morning jacket, no more than the lightest application of pressure. Still, revulsion seized her as she caught his sweetish, musky scent.
Once they’d settled into their stroll, he began, “Would it be too forward for me to ask just what the hellfire happened last night?” His visage had transformed from jolly avuncularity to dead seriousness.
“I—” Isabel wasn’t sure she could speak around the knot in her throat. “I got the wrong man.”
Montfort chuckled humorlessly. “You most certainly did.”
“I followed the instructions to the letter.” Isabel hated the defensive note in her voice. “But it was he who was at the table.”
“Is that so?” Montfort’s brow wrinkled. “And, pray tell, how did you discover your error?”
“When he won the last hand, he didn’t ask to take me to—” Oh, what a thing to speak aloud. “Bed.”
“What did he ask for?”
“He asked”—Isabel wracked her brain for a morsel of information to feed this man who held the future of her family in the palm of his hand—“He asked for the keys,” she finished just as the memory came to her.
Montfort’s eyes narrowed on her. Had he found significance in that last part? Isabel hadn’t.
“What do you know about Lord Percival?”
“Nothing.” Which wasn’t precisely true. She knew he was inscrutable and ruthless and devastating and, oh yes, handsome.
“While he was away on the Peninsula—”
Isabel blinked. “The Peninsula? Spain?” That was how he’d known her accent. Most English, like Tilly, dismissed her as exotic. Not Lord Percival.
Montfort’s mouth widened into a smile that seemed to delight in her discomfort. “He was one of those lordlings who thought he would look Napoleon in the eye before putting a saber through his heart. You must remember the type during the war.”
Isabel bit back a sneer of disdain. They’d all come to her country for a taste of war and adventure. She doubted they noticed the suffering around them. As far as those men were concerned, her country had been a stage set for the enactment of their glory.
And Lord Percival had been one of them.
Montfort continued smiling that spidery smile of his, and it occurred to Isabel that he could be playing her emotions and prejudices to his benefit. “Well done, Isabel.”
“For what?” Was this a twisted joke? She’d done nothing but fail over the last twenty-four hours.
“You’ve hooked a bigger fish.”
Isabel’s heart thunked a hard beat in her chest. Those weren’t the words she’d expected to hear. “Oh?”
“You don’t know him?”
What was Montfort going on about? Somewhere along the way, this conversation had turned into a different one. “Only what I’ve told you.”
Montfort gave her hand two firm pats. It was all she could do not to recoil. “New objective.”
“What?” she asked, an expulsion of nerves in word form.
“You have stumbled into another chance at securing your dear Papa’s freedom and paying your and Eva’s debt to me.”
From the moment Montfort had sauntered into the breakfast room, Isabel had prepared for the worst. He would explain that her failure meant that her family had used up its last chance. She, Eva, and Ariel would be transported back to Spain where they would face the consequences for the “crimes” of their father. They would lose the life of promise that they had been building with their dressmaking trade in London.
And Papa? He would continue to rot in a prison cell. How long could he survive it? He’d been there for nigh on two years.
But new objective meant there was . . . hope.
Even as Isabel tamped down that slippery emotion, she made a vow. She would do anything this man said.
Anything.
“Before we get carried away, a single question.” Montfort spoke with the sort of indifference one had when discussing the weather. “Are you, by chance, still carrying around your maidenhead?”
All the breath left Isabel’s lungs. Mortification streaked hot through her. How she wished she could slap his face. In a past life lived long ago, she would have been able to do so. But not in this life, the one she’d somehow become possessor of. In this life, she must endure such insulting questions.
“Or did your new husband divest you of it last night?”
“You know he’s not my husband.”
“But you still haven’t answered my question.”
Isabel’s eye fixed, unseeing, on a distant building. “I am yet a virgin.”
“Excellent.” Satisfaction twisted off Montfort in waves. “Your directive from last night?”
Dread slithered through her. “Yes?”
Montfort chuckled. “Must I spell it out for you?”
Isabel remembered Lord Percival’s hooded gaze that conveyed an impression of utter indifference to her physical person. “I’m not sure he’s that sort of man.”
Montfort’s eyes narrowed on her. “You’ve noticed, have you?”
Isabel’s eyebrows met. “Noticed what?”
“Lord Percival’s proclivity toward self-denial.”
Isabel opened her mouth and closed it. She had known the man for less than a day. How was that long enough to understand such a thing about another person?
Montfort continued on, indifferent to Isabel’s lack of response. “The boy was always prone to extremes. Mad as a march hare in his youth. Admittedly, a difficult man to get close to, but you, Isabel, might be the temptation that breaks through his resistance.”