Page 33
She had lost something. Sophie had lost something. Bits of time and memory, ripped out of her mind like a rug. Strange. This room was certainly curious, wherever it was. There were no windows for clues, but the low ceilings made it warm and peaceful. There was someone’s desk—rather messy—and an assortment of little trinkets on a barrister’s bookcase.
She rose slowly from her chair, her legs sluggish yet featherlight. Had her brief time in London really made her so disused to drink? Surely Anne’s one begrudging glass, drudged up from the kitchen with a scowl carved by Satan’s own hand, couldn’t have made her feel this … beatific.
The word traveled slow as molasses through her brain, straining to join with one similar, until snap: Bancroft. The Bancrofts’ dinner party. Champagne and claret in copious quantities. She winced and sat back down. Maybe she didn’t feel beatific, but a little sick.
In her hands was a thin handkerchief she was sure she’d never seen before. Printed on it was a map, tiny connecting lines and miniature labels written in a foreign tongue she thought was German. That sounded correct, though she couldn’t remember how she knew it for truth.
She ran her fingers over the webbing of fabric and smiled. She didn’t have to be German—or even sober—to take comfort in the careful workmanship. Someone had hunched over their desk and drawn, line by precise line, this intricate map. Every road and label, the neatly confining border and proper scale. That was the universal human way: seek order. Make, from crawling streets and undulating lands, civilization and perspective and readability. Or, rather, the illusion of it.
It was as familiar as it was foreign.
Sophie raised the handkerchief to her cheek and nuzzled the finely woven cotton against her skin. Soft, with just a little scratch. She smiled again, and pressed it to her nose on a deep, quaking inhale. It smelled divine, like a holiday—cloves and warmth and gingery sweetness.
She gasped. Mr. Balfour. Mr. Rafe Balfour’s scent.
She rose to her feet in a quick motion that made her keenly aware of where her stomach was positioned behind her stays. She pressed a hand to her side, turning slowly to look around. This room belonged to him. So where was he?
On the cluttered desk lay page after page of tiny written characters, more than half of them numbers. She pushed a few aside until she found a piece of simple notepaper. The words were nothing more than a list of dull-sounding duties, but the penmanship was nice. Orderly, blocky letters that defied the smooth edges of cursive. So he had nice handwriting, then.
She sat the paper down with a smile and moved to the bookcase. The collection of small objects there made the handkerchief of Germany seem at home. Little trinkets, none of them likely worth much, sat in neat rows on the shelves. Paste porcelain figures painted in vivid reds and purples, small jewelry boxes decorated with teensy spirals of rolled paper, a rectangular piece of silver.
She paused over the final object and picked it up. The silver sheet slid to reveal ivory—sheets of it, covered in wax and engraved with dates written in florid cursive. A calendar. Sophie flipped idly through the sheets, until her eyes captured a dreadful combination of month and day: 20 August.
“Oh, you’re up.”
Her head jerked in the direction of the voice. She hadn’t even heard the door opening, but Rafe Balfour stood in its threshold, his dark eyes pleasant and close. The sight of him untangled the tense stinging in her throat, making room for a sob to rise. His expression faltered.
“What’s the matter?” He was at her side. A tall, warm presence. A holiday. A safe place to empty her grief.
No. She shook her head.
“Are you ill?” His hand came to her shoulder, his fingers warm through her thin dress. “Can I get you something?”
Her cheeks were wet, and it wasn’t until she smoothed the backs of her hands over them that she realized it was from tears. “I’m sorry,” she choked. “I’m causing all sorts of trouble. This—this calendar—” She thrust it out on the full length of her arm, unable to finish the sentence.
Mercifully, he understood, and took it gently from her grasp. “I’ve brought you a blanket.” His voice was all soft edges and consideration. “Let’s sit you down here. It’s been a trying night; you deserve to rest.”
Sophie wrenched her shoulders free of him. “I don’t deserve anything!”
She couldn’t look at him. She wouldn’t see him well if she had been able to muster the courage; the room was a twisting blur and the backs of her eyes were alight with torch-like heat.
“My brother’s dead,” she slurred. She wasn’t trying to go anywhere, but her right foot took an involuntary step that wobbled through her whole body. “He died on the twentieth of August, almost two years ago n-now.”
Her eyes were closed, straining and fighting for balance she couldn’t find, but she felt Rafe’s nearness. A close but not-too-close presence.
“The Battle of Grand Port?” he asked.
She nodded quickly, but the motion rattled her skull and she stopped. “I’m not al-always like this, you know.” She swallowed a sob and it sounded like a hiccough. Like choking. “I know you think me rotten, and, and I am. But I don’t behave like this. I … B-barnard …”
The name shattered into a thousand pieces of pain on her lips. “They’re going to make him sail out again, and I cannot … I cannot bear it. He’s a ch-child.”
The desk was solid behind her, the lone object not spinning, and she pressed back against it. A hand came to her arm, and his touch felt so simplistically bolstering it drew forth another sob. She wanted to collapse into him, to quit fighting her weary muscles and surrender.
“I’m terribly sorry.”
“Be it for them.” Her chest seized, a terrible pressure beneath her sternum. “Not me.”
His fingers circled warmly around her elbow. “I can’t hope to understand, but I do know something of loss myself. I haven’t any doubt you were a good sister to him.”
