Sex, violence, illness, commerce—Redmond, that craven pleaser of authority, might have been a wrangler at Cambridge, but Jacob would wager the Eversea fortune in perpetuity that this journey was a better education. He was returning wiser, soberer, lustier, humbler, more grateful. An altogether better human. In all ways a grown man.
Perhaps the biggest revelation to him was that he saw and felt Isolde in everything. Not a conscious moment passed, not a beauty or strangeness or horror had he witnessed, without wondering what she would think of it, or wishing he could share it with her.
As he leaned over the rail, not one speck of land was visible behind or ahead of him. Not one cloud interrupted the sky.
But everywhere was blue, blue, blue. Blue like her eyes.
And soon she would be his, forever.
It seemed to him the rest of his life unfurled before him with a promise as endless as the sea.
ChapterFour
Isolde considered it a striking coincidence that dancing alone in her night rail had indirectly led to meeting Isaiah Redmond.
Because she’d been dancing by herself when she’d first seen Jacob Eversea, too.
Nearly three years ago, when Isolde’s father inherited the money and property in Sussex that would transform him from schoolmaster into gentleman, he moved his family to Pennyroyal Green at once. Whereupon the Sylvaines cheerfully threw themselves into local society: they volunteered for church committees and sewing circles; they attended social evenings at The Pig & Thistle; they invited their new neighbors to tea and dinner and for evenings of music and games. They learned the main sources of local news and gossip: Smithfield Curtis, the tobacconists, The Pig & Thistle, Postlethwaite’s Emporium, and the lady’s church volunteer groups. They were caught up on the news in no time. They heard varied and colorful opinions about the Everseas and Redmonds, of course. “The Everseas are often rogues and bastards, but they have pretty manners and pretty faces,” a drunk fellow had announced at the Pig & Thistle one night. “The Redmonds think they were anointed by God.” The Sylvaines did not take any of this as gospel.
Mr. Sylvaine put out the word that he would be happy to tutor young men in Latin and mathematics for a reasonable fee; he soon had a number of pupils. Clever George, to everyone’s delight, was sent to Cambridge thanks to the inheritance; he was going to be a barrister.
The Sylvaines were pronounced good company by their neighbors and considered a happy addition to the town. Soon their house was a lively place.
The Sylvaine siblings had been delighted to discover their property included a crumbling folly built to resemble an open pavilion. It was surrendering without a fight to the encroach of nature: ivy laced around its pillars and wildflowers nodded from fissures in the flight of five steps which led to a railed mezzanine of sorts. A grassy meadow unfurled before it—“perfect for Pall-Mall and cricket and fencing,” George enthused—and a row of oaks and hedges divided it from the narrow path that curved off the main road and meandered up to their house. Their father hoped to one day widen it to make the passage easier for larger carriages.
Isolde and Maria immediately put the folly to use as a besieged castle, Juliet's balcony, and most often, a stage from which to orate, sing, and practice their rigadoons, chassés, pirouettes and all the other steps in the day’s popular dances. The meadow often rang with their laughter and squabbles over whose turn it was to play Titania or Lady Macbeth.
On this fateful day, Maria had been compelled to redo her French lesson, which, according to their tutor, was “Shocking. Honestly, Miss Maria, we both know you’re not a halfwit.”
As Isolde’s lesson had passed muster and she wasn’t needed anywhere else, she slipped out of the house with her sketchbook and dashed out to the folly to enjoy the last of the day’s warmth.
It was the first time she’d ever had the entire meadow to herself. Late afternoon sunshine had turned the dandelion fluffs into tiny, glowing lamps and painted a bright rectangle from the meadow all the way up the folly’s steps. Isolde scrambled up it and performed an exuberant pirouette on the stage, followed by a frisky demi-jeté, pretending she was one of Shakespeare’s wild, earthy, elemental creatures.
So when an urge to belch overtook her, she opened her mouth and tossed her head like a bugling buck just for the pleasure of hearing it echo in the clearing. Just like she’d heard George do many times before, because boys could get away with anything, it seemed.
“And that concludes my performance,” she told the dandelions, as she dipped a graceful curtsy.
When she was upright again, she staggered backward with a gasp.
A man was watching her from the road.
He was mounted on a black horse. They had paused between the trees, and both man and horse were motionless.
For a blessed instant she thought he might be—sheprayedhe might be—merely a trick of shadows and light.
His light eyes glinted bright as arrowheads in the lowering sun.
For as long as it took her heart to thud five or six times, they regarded each other.
And then he flashed the brightest, boldest, wickedest smile to ever curve a man’s mouth, doffed his hat and bowed in the saddle with an ironic flourish. His hair was black.
Seconds later he was gone, leaving behind only the echo of hoofbeats.
She would soon learn that Jacob Eversea went nearly everywhere as fast as he could, as if his very spirit resented being confined to a mortal costume made of mere skin and bone, and had instead been born for soaring.
Two hourslater she found herself sitting across from him at the dining table.
Her family was entertaining the vicar and his wife for dinner, and a few more neighbors were expected to arrive later for some casual, lighthearted music and dancing. And it seemed that Mr. Jacob Eversea himself had seized the need to return a book he’d borrowed from George as an opportunity to gallop his new mare to the Sylvaine’s house. They were both home from university.
