“No, you’re not.” He looked down at the doll. “Whatareyou seeing, Isobel? You told me only violence…or death affects you so. Are you hiding something?”
Isobel gave him a look of innocent confusion. “What do you mean? I just see your stepmother…coming here and touching these things, thinking about Effie.”
He held her gaze, searching her face for the truth.
Isobel had to look away. “It’s her grief. I feel it as if it’s mine.”
She glanced at him. He gazed down at the doll, gripped in hisstrong hands. She’d never thought a man’s hands could be beautiful, but his were. Broad and tan, with cords of muscle along the backs and wrists that shifted and moved when he flexed his fingers. She imagined them on her, flexing…
She held out her hand. “Give it to me.”
“We should stop. For now. So you can regain your strength.”
She leaned forward and put her hand on the doll. He didn’t release it. His eyes met hers.
“I want to do it, Philip.”
“You will tell me what you see—no matter what it is? No matterwhoit is?”
Isobel couldn’t look away from him, but she would not promise him that. “I will tell you anything I see about your sister.”
His hands tightened on the doll, pulling Isobel closer, so her face was inches from him. “I want to know everything.”
Do no harm.That’s what her mother always told her. And she would not harm him.Never.“Very well,” she lied.
He released the doll. Isobel began untying the tiny points on the dress, blocking out the misery that radiated from the garment.
“What are you doing?”
“The dress is new. Your stepmother made it only a few years ago.”
Philip was silent. Isobel looked up, and he frowned at the doll as she undressed it, looking slightly ill. He leaned on his knees again, his hands laced over the back of his head. Isobel wished she hadn’t told him that.
When the dress was off, she set it aside. She held the doll between her palms and closed her eyes, breathing deeply. “What did your sister look like?”
“Dark hair…blue eyes. Uhm…she was verra small, a brownie, I oft called her. She never seemed to eat much—at least not at the table. But I sometimes caught her sneaking food from the kitchens, late. Ye’d never know it, she was so thin. She liked to fish. She wasna afraid to put a sand eel on a hook…”
Isobel smiled slightly, forming a picture in her head of Effie, hoping it would be a beacon of sorts, guiding her through the maelstrom of Mairi’s anguish. The emotions slammed through her. Isobel tried to close them out, imagining a chest or a door, stuffing the pain inside and closing it, but she could not. Sifting through it all was impossible. She was assaulted with images of Mairi with the doll, rocking and crying, raging against fate. But Isobel persisted, repeating Effie over and over in her mind.
Rage, like a shock filled her. It was Mairi again, but this was different. A child cowered in the corner, small and trembling, clutching the doll to her chest. Mairi yelled at her, “Can you do nothing right? Is it so difficult for you to just do as I say?” She ripped the doll from Effie’s grasp. At that moment, Philip pried the doll from Isobel’s fingers.
She blinked until his face swam into focus, blurred. Her head throbbed.
“What the hell happened?” His voice shook slightly.
Isobel’s face was wet. She touched her cheek, surprised to find tears.
“You curled into a ball on the bed and began to greet.”
Isobel shook her head. “It’s nothing.”
“That’s a bloody lie! What the hell did ye see?”
She tried to sit up, but he was leaning over her, his hands on her shoulders. She swiped her sleeve across her face, drying it. “I told you before…it just makes me so sad…I feel it all, as if it were happening to me.”
He stared down at her, his eyes bleak. “I knew I’d broken Mairi’s heart. Iknewit, but seeing you like this…”
He started to turn away from her, but Isobel caught his arm. “Philip, it happened a long time ago. You were young—whatever Mairi feels, you cannot keep punishing yourself.”
