“How…how long have you been back in England?”
“Yesterday. I visited White’s to catch up on the news. Had a look at their betting book, in fact.”
Bewilderingly, his delivery was almost accusatory.
Suddenly, all at once, his familiar spirit seemed to reanimate his cold stillness. He huffed out an impatient breath. “Isolde…Iheardyou.”
A terrible tension, some suppressed emotion she couldn’t identify, thrummed in his words.
“I beg your pardon, Jacob?”
He yanked off his hat and pushed a hand through his hair. “I…I heard your voice. Yours and…” It was as though the next word was so covered in brambles and excrement he could hardly get it out. “…Redmond’s.”
Realization crawled over her skin on icy, spidery legs.
He’d been watching her and Isaiah for some time.
Someone must havetoldhim she would be here.
With Isaiah.
And Smithfield Curtis was one of the main gossip hubs for Pennyroyal Green.
Clink, clink, clink. A cascade of far-too-late realizations crashed like dominos in her mind. Her heart began rabbit-kicking with dread.
“Mr. Redmond is helping with tidying up the churchyard in preparation for the festivities,” she said stiffly. But her mouth had gone dry. “As was I.”
The flash of cynicism in Jacob’s eyes frightened her. “You were laughing with him, Isolde.”
“I often laugh. You know that I do. With everyone.” She’d tried for insouciance, but the words sounded gruesomely brittle in her own ears. They sounded likeguilty guilty guilty.
A horrible silence ensued.
“Isolde.” Jacob said her name quietly, gravely. Warily. The way one might address someone who had just revealed symptoms of madness. As if he was going to give her one last chance to be honest. “No, you don’t. Not like that, you don’t. Not with just anyone. Please don’t try to tell me that.”
He was suffering, and she had done this to him.
Hot shame scorched her cheeks.
But as she finally found her footing in this exchange, her temper began to simmer.
“How long were you standing here without saying a word, Jacob? How long were youspyingon me?”
His head went back a little, as if she’d confirmed something.
Determinedly, visibly, he gathered his composure with a shift of his shoulders, a long pull of air.
Both his pain and his dignity horrified her. It called to mind a judge who already tried and sentenced her. He was the very last person in the world she would ever want to hurt and she could not bear it.
“I heard you before I saw you…and I was so bloody grateful to hear your voice, I stood and listened. I couldn’t quite make out all the words. I considered calling out to you. But when I saw with whom you were speaking… I suppose I couldn’t believe my eyes. I could not decide whether I ought to just leave. Because I began to feel as though I was...” His pause felt elegiac. Then resignedly, hoarsely, he said, “…intruding upon something very intimate.”
Her stomach roiled.
“But how did you…” her voice had gone arid.
“My impression, Isolde, is that anyone in town could have told me where you were.” The bitter irony in his voice flayed her.
And with that, brutal clarity descended. If even one person in the town knew she’d been in the churchyard or strolling with Isaiah, it was entirely possibleeveryonein the town knew. Such was the gossip stream in Pennyroyal Green.
