“Just an observation,” he added mildly, tapping tobacco into his pipe. “I think Jacob is genuinely a very fine person.”
“Fine person” was about the highest praise her father would give a man. Isolde exhaled.
“But he’s a bit…restless…perhaps?” her father added.
Isolde’s heart lurched.
Her father was never casual with words, and the word “restless’ landed on the raw. Because while Jacob’s fearless, voraciously curious spirit enchanted her, and she loved hearing him talk about the medicines and myths, and emperors and sages, and art and history of the Orient—a filament of fear flared hot inside her every time he did.
She was increasingly uncertain she would be unable to bear it when he left.
She had also witnessed in him qualities she could not quite reconcile with what she felt to be true about him.
One afternoon, Jacob and George decided to practice fencing in the clearing near the folly while she and Maria looked on.
She had never seen anyone move like Jacob with an epee in his hand. Every one of her muscles locked and her lungs seized as she watched. His lethal grace, precision, speed and ferocity excited and unnerved her.
How odd to realize that Jacob had been exquisitely trained to kill, should the need arise. Not only that, but he seemed capable of it.Bornfor combat.
He’d wanted to join the army as an officer; his parents would not allow it. For the first time she wondered what sort of toll it might take upon a man to be denied his true calling.
Finally, the boys had collapsed on the grass, laughing. “Pity Redmond wasn’t here to give you an actual contest,” George remarked good-naturedly.
Jacob had growled low in his throat.
As far as Isolde knew, Jacob had said nothing to anyone about his intentions toward her, as obvious as they seemed. But she knew parliament was in session, which meant the London social season was in full sway, which meant most if not all of the wealthy young bloods of marriageable age were in the city, too. The Sylvaines could not afford a London season for Isolde and Maria, but echoes of the ton’s festivities reached them by way of the gossip sheets sold at Postlethwaite’s and Tingle’s: it seemed a Miss Fanchette (Isolde had never heard a fancier name, her own name notwithstanding) Tarbell, the daughter of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had been anointed this season’s diamond of the first water. Mr. Isaiah Redmond’s name had even appeared once in a flattering context, which meant he had departed Pennyroyal Green for London weeks ago.
Which made Jacob’s continued presence in Pennyroyal Green conspicuous.
It didn’t take long for everyone in town to realize what kept him at home.
Whereupon Isolde found herself fixed in the beam of curious eyes when she was in company. Some of those gazes sparkled when they gently teased her. At a meeting of the Society for the Protection of Sussex Poor Mrs. Sneath archly observed, “why, Miss Sylvaine, you’re positively radiant. Must be all the good works you’re doing lately.”
One evening Isolde arrived at a sewing circle just in time to overhear Mrs. Hart remarking, “He could do worse, but I don’t think an Eversea has ever married a local girl. Then again, the Redmonds only maketriumphantmarriages.”
This was greeted with assenting murmurs and knowing, muffled laughter of the sort one likely only understood after living in Pennyroyal Green for decades.
ChapterFive
Then, one day, without warning or explanation, Jacob disappeared.
It began when an entire morning passed without a visit from him. Which was disappointing but not very unusual. The Sylvaines expected they would likely see him in the evening, so no one remarked upon it.
Still, for the entirety of the day, Isolde pitched her ears for his mare’s hoofbeats. The sound always sent her heart aloft.
The night wore on, each Jacobless hour more torturous than the last for Isolde, until all of the Sylvaines were compelled to go up to their rooms to sleep.
Two more days and two nights passed in just this way.
Isolde was unprepared for how cataclysmic his sudden absence would feel, or for the deafening silence it seemed to create in both her inner and outer worlds. Tense shock nearly rendered her mute. She couldn’t bear to meet at her parents’ worried eyes at the dinner table. She picked at her food.
George shrugged off Jacob’s absence. He did not seem surprised about it. But if he knew where Jacob was, he didn’t reveal it.
Then a fourth entire day passed.
Isolde spent the fifth night without a visit from Jacob staring at her bedroom ceiling rather than sleeping.
On the sixth night, Isolde accidentally overheard her parents whispering in the dining room. “Heisan Eversea,” her mother said. “Perhaps we ought to have expected it?”
