Emma Jensen - Entwined (11 page)

Isobel allowed herself a single sigh. At least it appeared her father had limited his sticky fingers to the decanters and his single attempt at petty thievery. There seemed to be nothing amiss with the records. It was a small blessing, perhaps, but a welcome one.

Interspersed infrequently among other hands was one she now knew belonged to the marquess. Cleaner then, but just as bold, it spoke of confidence, arrogance, and the best education money could buy. It stopped appearing altogether a year before. That must have been when he had gone off to the Peninsula, she decided, and felt a stab of pity. Whatever had happened there had taken the very control of his property from him. What a blow that must have been.

Isobel resolutely pushed all soft thoughts aside and turned to business.

Yes, she would read. And she would learn. Whether she wanted it or not, she had a job to do, and she would do it better than any before her. She would not have it any other way.

Fifteen feet above, hidden in the shadowed recesses of a balcony alcove, Nathan sat still and patient. He could not explain, even to himself, why he was there. He had relegated himself to quiet discomfort, perhaps for hours, but he had been unable to resist the impulse.

Some twenty minutes into her reading, Isobel had begun humming.

Nathan wondered if she was even aware she was doing it. It was, to his ears, a lovely sound, soft and lilting, but not a tune he recognized. And it seemed to change with each quiet slide of a new ledger. It was quick and airy, then low and melancholy, as if she were setting the estate's past years to music.

After perhaps an hour, he heard her rise and move through the library, most likely relieving cramped muscles. In those minutes, she stopped humming and sang instead. Nathan could not help smiling at her choice of songs. It was lively and undeniably bawdy, telling of a Highland lass whose love of morning dips in a secluded loch afforded the local men with the best of entertainment.

This was a side of Isobel MacLeod that Nathan had not expected, and it charmed him completely.

Well, there was no doubt about it now. He would bind her to him in any way possible. Somehow, in a brief two days, she had changed his future beyond imagining. A brief two days, and he could not imagine her gone.

He would go to London on Gerard's foolish errand, but even when that was over, he would have Isobel. As she returned to the desk and began humming again, he leaned back, more at peace than he could remember being in a very long time. She would read to him in that fluid voice, and sing. Music was a pleasure he had forgone, one whose return was poignantly sweet.

But there was more. Turning to face the sun-brightened room again, he smiled. It was not something he planned to tell Isobel just yet, but he got an even more stirring pleasure from seeing the fiery glory of her hair.

Oh, his eyes were useless, at least as far as the basic tasks of living were concerned. But in strong light he could perceive faint shapes and color.

With the sunlight coming through the window, he could see the red of Isobel's hair. The rest of her was hazy, except in his imagination. But it didn't matter how little he could actually see. That fire was enough.

When he had awakened in the Portuguese field hospital, he had kept his near-total blindness to himself in the desperate hope that it was temporary.

Later, only slightly improved and home in England, he had cursed the incompleteness of his ruin. He had been convinced there was nothing so cruel as to be taunted by the colors and faint shapes of life without being able to move easily among them.

Accepting the loss of sight as penance for Rievaulx's death had been simple enough. Living with that cross had been all but soul-crushing. Now, for the first time, Nathan gloried in what little sight had been left to him.

In all his thirty-two years, he had never thought anything as beautiful as the wavering, indistinct, sunlit halo of Isobel's hair.

CHAPTER 7

Wi' lightsome heart I pu'da rose,

Fu' sweet upon its thorny tree!

And my fause luver staw my rose—

But ah! he left the thorn wi' me.

—Robert Burns

Isobel was used to sermons. Reverend Biggs on Skye had possessed a set of lungs worthy of competing with the famed MacCrimmon bagpipes.

And the good reverend had been vastly pleased with the resonant sound of his voice, especially when he had a helpless target trapped in the pews below. The MacLeod brothers had once engendered a tirade so loud and eloquent that no doubt people would be talking of it for years to come.

Aye, Isobel thought, she was used to sermons, but seldom two in one day. The first, a fiery speech from the Reverend Mister Clarke of Lord Oriel's parish, had ended an hour ago. That diatribe against fallen women was now being continued by Frank Patton, a truly incongruous source for spiritual guidance.

"Luscious food for thought, ain't it?" the squire's elder son was asking, leaning down in the saddle to leer in her face. He was wearing the same coat he had been wearing the night Rob had deprived him of two pounds, and still resembled a great, green fig. "Daughters of Eve, one after the other, skipping merrily along their path. Can't help it, not a one of you."

Behind him, his brother Charles chuckled. "Ah, but you forget the matter of guidance, man. With the proper male hand..."

Isobel and Maggie had been strolling from church, talking peacefully, when the Pattons had all but run them down in the road. The sisters had been liberally sprayed with dirt, and Isobel now made an exaggerated show of shaking it from her skirts. The motion disturbed the Pat-tons' horses enough that, for a moment, the brothers were forced to turn their attention from baiting her.

"Isobel." Maggie tugged at her arm. "Let's go."

Frank, having quickly warmed to his subject, blocked the path again before they went more than a few feet. "In such a hurry. And we haven't even gotten to important matters."

Isobel's neck ached from having kept her chin rigidly aloft during Reverend Clarke's sermon. Now, she raised it another notch and tried to walk around the horse. Charles immediately rode forward so she and Maggie were effectively boxed in.

"Yes. You see, we have a question, Miss MacLeod." He grinned broadly, displaying mossy teeth. It was not an attractive sight. When Isobel made no response, he simply shrugged. "Since it appears Oriel has let you out of his sight, what do you say to giving us a firsthand view of fallen virtue?"

"We have two pairs of the best guiding hands," his brother chimed in, aiming one of those hands at Isobel's bodice.

She jerked away, her own hands fisted at her sides. "Why, you clod-pated, foul-minded worm! I'd sooner lie with the devil!"

"Izzy." Maggie's hand moved to her shoulder in warning.

"Some say you have already," Charles jeered. "Why, you heard it yourself. Kind of Reverend Clarke not to call you by name, don't you think? Come now, Isobel, the entire village knows what's been going on up at the Hall these past days. We've a mind to see just what has Oriel so fascinated that he hasn't let you out of his sight until today. We'd even be willing to give you a coin or two, of course. More if you prove worthy of it."

Isobel cursed the heat she knew was coloring her face. Shaking now, and past clear thought, she let loose with a string of vivid oaths.

The brothers, clearly unimpressed by the Gaelic, merely laughed. "Spirit counts somewhat," Frank mocked, "though I daresay your mouth is far better used at other occupations."

"You will die and rot before you'll ever get more of me than curses," she shot back. Then, drawing a steadying breath, she muttered, "Come along, Maggie, before I lose my chance at heaven by going to violence." Tugging her now-sputtering sister behind her, she deliberately pushed past Frank's horse.

"Well, Charlie, I'd say Miss MacLeod means to turn us off." Frank gave a mocking tilt of his hat. "I daresay she won't be so grand next time." The pair rode in front of them again. "You might want to rethink your Sundays, Isobel. The Church of England is hardly a place for a Scottish whore."

There was another spray of dirt as they charged off.

Isobel stood, frozen in shock and fury. Her sister gently grasped her hand. "Pay them no mind, darling. They haven't half a brain between them, nor the morals of a pig."

"Nay, they haven't. But you cannot say that of the entire village, Maggie. The good folk there have made their opinion clear enough."

And they had.

Perhaps no one had said anything close to what the Pattons did, and perhaps some looks had been more curious than condemning, but there had been much whispering behind hands and long stares. There had been, too, unstifled repetitions of the various ghastly names by which the marquess was known in the village.

Reverend Clarke's sermon had been fuel for an already flaring fire.

Taken haphazardly from Genesis and Luke, it had roved from the digressions of Eve to the penitence of Mary Magdalene. And the reverend's eyes had focused on Isobel through it all. By the time the service was over, she felt as if her skin was burning—or branded. Even her sister's loving presence had done little to diminish the sharp pain.

"I should have expected it, Maggie, should have known it would come about so."

"Rubbish! How could you, when you expect only the best of everyone?"

Isobel managed a sad smile. " 'Tis yourself you're thinking of, love. I hope for the best of folk, but expect the very worst. Of the boys, of Papa, of Lord Oriel. Aye, I should have known this would be the way of things."

"Izzy..." Maggie took a deep breath. "You said the marquess keeps mostly to himself. He truly hasn't asked anything... unseemly of you?"

"Truly."

But he has asked me to wed him. Six times. Once for each supper we've
had together. Other than that, he is brusque, polite, and has me all but sure
the earth is flat.

As much as it troubled her, Isobel could not tell her sister about the proposal. Not yet. Perhaps she would be able to tell the whole tale when this grim chapter of their life was past and they had moved on to wherever the wind took them.

"The fact that he hasn't touched me counts for naught now," she said wearily. "People see only what they wish to. They see I've been living under his roof and hence see a blemish large as the Hall on my reputation."

"Oh, Izzy."

" 'Tis all right, Maggie Líl. I daresay I'll survive."

"But it grieves me to see you hurt."

"I know it does." Isobel turned and rested her forehead against her sister's. They had had so little time together, just these fast-fleeing hours out of an entire seven days. " 'Tisn't real pain I'm feeling. I'll need some time to think on the matter before I know just what it is."

She forced herself to speak lightly, knowing even as she spoke that there would be no fooling Maggie. "I'll tell you what grieves me, lass—that rag you're wearing, and knowing it's your best."

Maggie's beautiful face hardened for a moment, and Isobel could see fierce love and understanding warring in the green eyes. Understanding won out, for Maggie gazed down at the moss gray muslin that had once been green and shrugged. " 'Tis clean, has no holes, and will do well enough 'til autumn. I'm thinking of buying some fabric for Tessa, though, with the money you've given me. She grows like a weed."

"Aye, and always seems just as green. Best buy black cloth to hide the grass stains." Isobel managed a smile and said firmly, "Choose something for yourself. You deserve it."

"I've all but decided on some new dishes," Maggie replied after a moment with far more resignation than enthusiasm, "and Thomas's has some lovely blue glass jars. The color will keep my herbs fresher."

Isobel rolled her eyes. "God forbid you take a fancy to blue silk."

"What use would I have for silk?"

"Of course. 'Twould only be gilding the lily.
Och,
Maggie. Go and buy your glass, then, if it makes you happy, and Tessa will have her dress." A new thought, bleak and sharp, flashed into her mind. "The merchants, they're not spurning you because of me?"

"Oh... nay. They're not."

"I heard that pause, Mairghread Líl. Out with it."

Maggie sighed and stared down at her work-roughened hands. "There was a bit of a to-do Thursday at the tailor's. Geordie wanted a new pair of breeches, and Mallon wouldn't see to it. But then, he's had bad enough luck with the boys. I'd say likely as not it has nothing to do with you."

"You're still not telling me something."

"Oh, Izzy. 'Tis nothing, really. Let it go."

"I'll do no such thing."

"You will." Maggie's soft voice held a thread of steel. "I'll see to the garden now. There's no need to be buying from the Kendalls what we can grow on our own."

So the righteous Mrs. Kendall was casting stones, was she? Even as she reminded herself that revenge was far more bitter than sweet, Isobel tried to recall if her grandmother had a spell for the evil eye. It was no use. Like Maggie, the woman had been more for healing than cursing.

"May her beans rot on the vine," Isobel muttered with some small satisfaction.

"Everything comes full circle eventually," Maggie said gently. "And we'll be due some comfort."

They walked on, Maggie's hand tight around Isobel's.

It was hard keeping silent, harder still for Isobel to say good-bye when it came time to part. So she gave her sister a hard, quick embrace, then turned and hurried up the drive to the Hall.

Unwilling to face the confines of the house, she headed instead for the rear gardens. There was solitude to be found even in the midst of the grand entry hall, but there was peace in the garden. She had discovered the roses several days before, and even their sorry state, overgrown with weeds, had done little to stifle the glorious burst of pleasure. Isobel loved plants, roses most of all. So it was only natural that she would seek their solace now.

Perhaps, had Maggie not been with her, Isobel would have been less pained by the morning's events. Naively, she had never thought her position with Lord Oriel would become a matter of public speculation. But of course it had, and her family was feeling the brunt of the scorn. Maggie, beautiful, kind Maggie, deserved only adulation. Tessa, even though she was, at times, insolent and a nuisance, deserved the brightest of futures. Instead, they had been saddled with a careless, selfish father and brothers, and now, a sister who had all but been publicly labeled a whore.