Should she wait for Mr. Redmond and Miss Redmond to emerge from the church?
But the curricle was only a two-passenger carriage.
And she could not, of course, walk alone with Isaiah.
The town hall door suddenly swung open. Isolde watched Isaiah and his sister board the curricle. Isaiah glanced swiftly, once, in her direction, then ducked his head as he took the reins and snapped them over the backs of the gray horses.
The swift little carriage drove away.
Isolde stared after them, stunned. Perhaps there was an emergency involving the picnic or something else at their home?
But it stung like a shunning.
An odd foreboding settled over her. She shrugged, as if to shake it off.
With hands suddenly clumsy with nerves, she moved to the side of the churchyard opposite the vicarage and fumbled with the latch on the gate.
It finally gave.
She closed the gate behind her. When she turned, she jerked and took a step backward, shocked, her heart jolting.
A man was standing near the fence.
He was half obscured by the drooping willow boughs, and so still she could have easily missed him if she hadn’t paused.
Her senses knew first. Spangles rained from her scalp over her arms and her eyes blurred in shock.
Then her very being clanged with an almost violent joy, like the bell in the church tower.
“Jacob?” It was more of an exhale than a word.
But the man didn’t reply.
Perhaps she was hallucinating him?
Finally, he said, “You look well, Isolde.”
A peculiar unease crept into her joy. It was, indeed, his beloved, familiar voice. But his tone was flat and his expression unreadable. So very unlike him. Never had he regarded her in anyneutralway.
His eyes seemed more brilliant in his sun-gold face, which was all elegant planes and angles now. Not a hint of boyish softness remained. His shoulders seemed broader. He was lean.Toolean.
He was Jacob same, yet so different. Thrillingly so.
Frighteningly so.
She suddenly felt very shy and uncertain.
Perhaps he felt shy, too?
The notion of a shy Jacob Eversea seemed more outlandish than a hallucinated one.
She took a tentative step closer. “But when did…”
The rest of her sentence evaporated in the face of his mercilessly inscrutable expression.
“I arrived in Pennyroyal Green a few hours ago and stopped in at Smithfield Curtis. Whereupon Mr. Curtis suggested I might want to visit the churchyard this morning to admire the preparation for the town hall celebration.”
The back of her neck prickled with portent. Something was terribly, terribly wrong.
