She arrived, as she always arrived, without making a production of it.
The message from her steward came the day before, which was slightly more notice than her first visit and considerably less than the formal visit protocols that most guests of her standing observed. I had the receiving room prepared and told the kitchen to expect a working lunch rather than a formal meal, because Isolda Verne did not come to estates to perform the ritual of formal meals. She came to conduct business and to have conversations worth having.
She looked well. The intervening months had done something to her that most people found the intervening months did not do, which was make her appear more settled rather than more worn.
"Lord Damien," she said, when I met her in the entrance hall.
"Isolda," I said. "You look prosperous."
"I am prosperous," she said directly. "It has been a productive season."
