A vise clamped around Isolde’s heart. She could not bear to remain and listen to the rest.
Jacob finally called at the Sylvaine home on the evening of his seventh day away.
His beard was beginning to darken his jaw, his cravat was limp and his coat was a bit rumpled. He seemed weary and uncharacteristically somber but satisfied in a sort of steely way, as though he’d gone straight to the Sylvaine home upon emerging victorious from some struggle, the nature of which could have been either internal or external or both.
“I hope you’ll forgive my sudden absence without explanation. I was called away to London by my family rather abruptly.” He said this almost stiffly as tea was brought in to their sitting room. All the Sylvaines were gathered around, as had been their custom. “My parents requested my presence at a ball and a few other events to which my entire family was invited. I obliged them and our hosts. After which I explained to my parents that henceforth I would be sending my regrets to all other invitations this season, as I did not intend to return to London from Pennyroyal Green.”
His words were shot through with something fascinatingly and impenetrably implacable. As if they were a door between this room and a hidden world of conflict and machinations.
The pop of the fire fair echoed in the silence that followed.
Isolde’s breathing went shallow and ragged as a painful epiphany swooped in.
Howridiculouslynaïve she had been. Naturally the Everseas were ambitious for their only son and heir. No doubt they thought Jacob could “do better” than marry a Sylvaine. Perhaps Jacob had been skirmishing with his parents over this very thing for weeks.
He’d never once let on.
Her own parents had probably suspected this all along.
What had Mrs. Hart said?I don’t think an Eversea has ever married a local girl.
Isolde couldn’t look directly at Jacob. Her cheeks were scorching. She aimed her gaze at the fire instead.
She’d been such a fool. She had been so enveloped in, so certain of, Jacob’s regard that she had not once imagined he might be spending these evenings away gazing into the eyes of some beautiful heiress while he danced with her. Perhaps even Miss Fanchette Tarbell.
Finally, her mother said kindly and gently, “We’re always very happy to see you, Jacob. Did you enjoy London?”
Jacob lifted and let fall one shoulder. “It was pleasant, thank you.” He turned to Isolde. “But this is where I prefer to be.”
It sounded so like a declaration that Isolde, her mother and Maria sucked in swift, surreptitious breaths.
Jacob’s face went softly radiant with relief when Isolde turned to slowly smile at him.
Thusly, their days of socializing and leisure resumed as if he’d never left at all.
For nearly a fortnight.
But hovering like a bird of prey over those days following his return from London was Jacob’s impending departure for the Orient.
Being with him often felt a bit like holding onto the string of a kite dancing in a stiff breeze. Isolde liked this feeling perhaps more than she ought to; every day he returned to their house she felt as though she’d won him anew, and this made her feel powerful and exhilarated and always ever-so-slightly unsettled in a good way, the way she did when choosing just the right stepping stones to get her across a swift stream.
Paradoxically, she believed in his steadfastness. Because she had come to know that he never swerved when he decided upon a course of action. For instance, going to the Orient.
This made her wonder whether he hadn’t yet quite decided uponher.
She noticed that her parents were just slightly cooler to Jacob now. They, too, had fallen in love with him, but every day he appeared at their house but did not state his intentions toward their daughter, the possibility of broken hearts and social embarrassment intensified.
But more than once Isolde had looked up in the midst of swinging a mallet during Pall-Mall or passing around plates for a picnic to find Jacob standing apart from everyone, gazing at her, his expression wondering, almost puzzled, but wholly enthralled. As if he somehow found it safer to experience the enormity of what he felt about her from a distance.
And when their fingers brushed, or when a pirouette in a dance brought their faces close together—a need for him she did not fully understand coursed through her body with such force she nearly swayed. Jacob’s hands trembled when he accidentally touched her, on purpose or not, which betrayed the increasing tension in his own body.
They were in love. Something would need to be done about it before they did something reckless.
This “something’ all depended upon Jacob.
Oddly, in the fortnight since he’d returned from London, he’d not spoken of leaving for his journey all.
One afternoon, as George and Maria were packing up their Pall-Mall set and squabbling happily over something absurd—Maria was convinced one of their balls always rolled faster than another, and George was exasperatedly explaining about mass and velocity—Jacob said, “Isolde, may I speak to you for a moment?”
