So what else could she say?
Nathaniel was respectful towards her right up until she herself had invited him to behave otherwise, in his rooms that night infront of the mirror. Had it complicated or simplified matters that fact and fiction blurred? She’d never quite decided.
As he could, he’d willingly given her final choice in every matter between them, personal or otherwise, when he might so easily have dictated their every interaction, both tactically and from a position of superior physical strength. And he’d been gentle with her, tender even, when he could so easily have been otherwise. Well, other than the night she herself had not wanted tenderness. Always, though, the give-and-take was underlaid by something unexpectedly sweet.
She wouldn’t tell Lucy what else had passed between herself and Nathaniel. Not today and perhaps never. She finally settled on saying, “He is disciplined when nine of ten men would not be. He is formidable in many ways, but he is also fundamentally kind.”
Lucy studied her so long that she became uncomfortable. What of her unspoken thoughts had Lucy divined? Likely some of it was on her face, but if Lucy guessed any of it, she chose to let it go.
“I have little enough reason to trust my own judgment with men.” The acid in Lucy’s voice was self-directed, but it cut her all the same. “So in this, I will trust yours,” her sister continued. “If you find reason for Mr. Blackmore to stay here for a time, I will abide by that. No, I mean it truly, Issy. I give my consent freely. He has come on your account, and I will not stand in the way of that.”
“He has not come for me.”
Lucy’s smile was skeptical. “If you say.”
When Isobel entered the Auchencairn Arms the next morning, Mr. Bairden, the innkeep, was behind the tap, polishing glasses.
He gave her a warm smile. “Ye hae come for Mr. Blackmore, hae ye?” He pointed with his chin towards the far corner of the main room. “He’s ower there, reading. Ye knew him afore, he says?”
“Before we left England,” she said distractedly. Nathaniel had noticed her entry. “He’s an officer in the 95th Rifles. Was, rather.” Explanation enough, she hoped; Mr. Bairden knew she was an officer’s widow, herself.
“Wull he be staying wi’ ye, then?”
“I’ve come to offer him our extra room if he’ll work on the crofter’s cottage for us.” The heat of Nathaniel’s gaze registered from across the room. “He’s looking for work.” Not exactlyuntrue.
“I expect ye ken whit yer aboot,” Mr. Bairden said, “bit if he gives ye any trouble, I want tae hear aboot it straecht away, lass.”
Auchencairn was a community that looked out for its own, and although she and Lucy had only been here since December, they’d been accepted into it. The Bairdens in particular were very kind.
She smiled at Mr. Bairden. “Thank you, truly. I don’t think he will though.”
“I dinnae think it either, conversing wi’ him fur a while lest nicht. A body can ne’er be tae canny though.”
Nathaniel closed the book as she approached. Two books, actually. His hands were laid neatly on the table beside them. Of course her eyeswouldfollow the way his fingers curved across the scarred wood.
“A translation ofJulie; ou, la nouvelle Héloïse, perhaps?” she asked lightly.
The left corner of his mouth tipped up for a moment. “As ithappens, no.” He opened the larger book to the title page and angled it towards her: Goethe’sFaust: Eine Tragödie. The second book was a dictionary.
“Another language beyond English and French,” she commented. “I shouldn’t be surprised to learn that you also know German.”
He shrugged a shoulder. “I picked up Hanoverian German from the King’s German Legion hussars brigaded with the 95th, but that was spoken. My reading in standard German has room for improvement. I thought to do it on the journey up here.”
“And so you’ve chosen some lighthearted reading material to help further your knowledge.”
She was rewarded with his mouth ticking up again. The smile, faint as it was, reached his eyes and stayed there. “On occasion I refine myself as I may.”
“How many languages do you know?” Really, she wasn’t here to discuss his proficiency for languages, but met by the intensity of his eyes, she found herself a coward to make her offer.
“Fluently?” He ticked them off with his fingers. “Several dialects of French. German. Castilian Spanish and a bit of Galician. Portuguese along with that, although I don’t read the latter particularly well. Dutch and Flemish enough to make passable conversation.”
She suspected him of understated modesty on the last two. “With English, seven languages, not including dialects.”I shouldn’t be surprised that he’s a genuine polyglot.She’d suspected it early on, wondering to what use England set him that led to his pursuit of Compton across Europe.
He again shrugged. “Languages have come easily to me since boyhood. My father was steward to the local landowner, and I was allowed to take lessons alongside his son. Latin and Greek—French too—stuck far better with me thanever they did with William.”
Ninetotal, if one included the dead languages. And he was entirely nonchalant about it. Truly, it was remarkable.
Hewas remarkable.
