“I was just thinking how lovely it would be to run like mad when no one is about to see.”
And just like that, they were both wistful.
They were very aware they would need to marry respectably lest they become crushing burdens to their parents or to George. And while a wealthy heiress might be forgiven for gamboling through town if she took it into her head to do it, the Sylvaine girls knew their own modest dowries allowed very little latitude for such eccentricities, even if their father was now a gentleman with a capital “G”. But when two girls were young and pretty and fizzing with high spirits, and when Maria's headwouldof its own accord whip like a weathervane around at the sight of a soldier in a red coat, and when young men had more than once nearly come to blows competing for a chance to hear Isolde's merry laugh—some days treading that line dividing propriety and ruin seemed as perilous as walking a cliff edge.
Suddenly Maria halted and gasped. “Ohno!”
She thrust out her hands.
Which were nude.
“Oh no, indeed, Maria! Did you lose your gloves again?”
Maria snapped her fingers. “I distinctly remember taking them off at Tingle’s when you insisted that I feel the engraved title of that book with my bare fingertips.”
“Ah…er, it was worth it, wasn’t it?” Isolde demanded. Guilt twinged, much like her toe.
“Of course,” Maria assured her. “But Mama will make gloves out of myhideif I come home without them again.”
This wasn’t far wrong. In the Sylvaine household, the budget usually extended to new booksornew gloves, not both. The Sylvaine’s daily life had been characterized by often unnerving financial uncertainty before her father inherited money. And Maria had a tendency to misplace things not attached to her person.
“Well, I'm sure your gloves are still in the bookshop, and no doubt Mr. Tingle will have found them. So, we'll just...”
They turned as one to stare despairingly up the hill.
Mr. Tingle would be locking up his shop any minute.
“But your poor toe!” Maria fretted.
“You go,” Isolde decided swiftly. “I'll wait ….” she scanned the quiet square. “…over there.” Isolde swept out her hand out to indicate the legendary entwined oaks, currently in full fluffy leaf, their combined girth as imposing as the church. “What could possibly happen to me beneath them? I'll be quite secretly snug. And you can run! No one will see!”
Maria spun to look up the hill, then back at the trees, then back at Isolde. “ButIsolde.” Maria breathed in mock horror. “Galloping is for heathens.”
Isolde laughed. “Hurry! Run! Run like the wind, Lightning!”
Maria whirled, clutched her skirts in her fingers, and bolted back up the hill, her laughter trailing her.
Smiling, Isolde limped a little over to the trees and tucked herself underneath their vast leafy canopy. It was cozy to imagine she was probably just one of many creatures sheltering in them now. She dreamily imagined their roots fanning out like capillaries beneath all of Pennyroyal Green.
She’d been told that the oaks were a metaphor for the Everseas and Redmonds, for all eternity doomed to fight each other for supremacy while needing each other to remain upright and alive. She’d heard about the alleged curse, too: namely, that an Eversea and a Redmond were destined to fall in love once per generation, with disastrous results.
It all sounded dashing and apocryphal, as the best myths were wont to be. She’d never witnessed an outbreak of swordplay or fisticuffs in church between Everseas and Redmonds, for instance, which seemed to be the only place those two families were ever together at the same time. On the surface, at least, all seemed civil between them.
And yet. She’d noticed how Jacob’s face went fleetingly dark and hard and remote whenever Isaiah Redmond’s name was introduced in conversation. It made him, for a frightening heartbeat, wholly unrecognizable to her. And once when they were all picnicking near a pond, she’d been startled to come upon a little adder slithering in the long grasses. “Reminds me of Redmond,” Jacob had said darkly.
Her brother George had been intriguingly cagy when she’d asked about this later. “Jacob is a planner, as we both know…. I think Redmond is more of a… calculator and…I think it’s mainly an oil and water thing with them. And Jacob’s not entirely wrong about Redmond.”
The word “entirely” had struck her as significant. It meant George wasn’t certain Jacob was entirely right, either.
She’d only seen the Redmond heir twice—at church—since the Sylvaines moved to Pennyroyal Green two years ago. Like George and Jacob, he was usually away at university. He impressed her as remote and haughty, just like his intimidating father. But his sister Diana was on the town hall decorating committee, and she was pleasant for someone so grand, if a bit shy. At least compared to the Sylvaine girls.
Isolde’s view from where she stood beneath the trees was the churchyard, which was surrounded by a wood and stone fence twice the height of a three-year-old boy. She’d derived this unit of measurement on a Sunday after church nearly a year ago, because while the townspeople mingled and chatted, Jacob’s wily three-year-old nephew Mathias had sneaked through the thicket of churchgoer skirts and legs and clambered up the fence. No one noticed until Jacob bolted mid-conversation through the crowd and caught his nephew just as he was about to topple from the top rail.
He’d tucked the giggling boy under one arm and ferried him back to his grateful, frantic sister, then resumed his conversation with the Sylvaines as if nothing had happened.
Since then, Isolde had revisited this memory again and again, because it seemed to capture an essential truth about Jacob: everyone he loved became as much a part of him as his own limbs. He loved the way he breathed. And in so many ways, he’d demonstrated that this included her, too.
Today, suddenly, it was painful to look at that fence. She jerked her gaze from it.
