Chapter 11
Isobel rested on the bed in the small room as Philip tore it apart, looking for anything that retained something of his sister.
She watched him, her heart heavy. She wasn’t quite certain what to attribute her depression to.
Everything she touched that belonged to the child was saturated with someone else’s thoughts and feelings.
Mairi Kilpatrick and her deep, relentless grief.
Some of it was old—the heartbreak of a mother who lost her only beloved child—and some of it was fresh, as if the child had just disappeared.
Mairi still came to this room and touched her daughter’s things, held them, cried over them.
Sometimes raged over them—furious at Philip for losing the only thing she loved, furious at her husband for caring more about Philip than their lost daughter.
In this room, Philip’s stepmother had even contemplated suicide, had sat with poison gripped in her fist—brought the cup to her lips—before hurling it across the room.
Isobel could not tell Philip the things she saw, and yet it broke her heart to see the hope she had put in his eyes dim each time he came to her with something new, something he’d found buried in the bottom of a chest, certain that this time it was untouched.
And when she touched it, she felt nothing but Mairi’s heartbreak and bitterness.
The despair was so thick there was nothing of the child left.
Each time she told him that she saw nothing of his sister, she took away what she had given him. Hope. And she hated herself for it.
Isobel lay back against the bolster, closing her eyes to block out the sight of him as he shoved a stack of books and trinkets off a cupboard, sending them crashing to the floor.
Her heart ached. It was rarely this difficult.
But she hadn’t anticipated his stepmother.
Isobel had felt other’s grief so that it broke her own heart, but she’d never felt anything like this before.
She placed her palms against the embroidered quilt she lay upon and felt Mairi.
She’d lain here, on this very bed, and cried—screamed even.
The servants stayed away when she came here, afraid of the state she worked herself into.
The bed creaked and moved as Philip sat on it. Isobel turned her head and opened her eyes. He sat at the end, elbows braced on knees and head in hands.
“That’s it,” he said. “That’s everything. I can think of nothing else.”
Isobel had told him she would help him. She felt like a liar, a cheat, a charlatan.
“I’m so sorry, Philip.”
“I don’t understand,” he said to the floor. “It seems so easy with everything else you touch.” He straightened, twisting to pin her with an accusing stare. “The Kennedys—hadn’t the girl’s mother been holding the handkerchief for days?”
“That’s because it was only for a few days. Laurie had owned the handkerchief much longer than Heather had held it. And Heather’s emotions had not yet become so powerful that they saturated the handkerchief…not like this…”
“My stepmother is all you feel when you touch Effie’s things? Can you not dig deeper? Get beneath Mairi? Effie must be there somewhere.”
It was sometimes like that, but she was strangely reluctant to go that far, that deep. She feared she wouldn’t find Effie at all, but something even more unpleasant about Mairi Kilpatrick. However, she’d never been one to shirk from duty, and she wouldn’t start now.
She sat up. It seemed there was a weight around her, dragging her down. She was exhausted, filled with leaden sadness.
She scanned the room, looking for the doll she’d held earlier. “That—bring me the doll.”
Philip was off the bed, fetching the doll to her. It had a leather head and body, its painted face faded. The clothes were new—which disturbed Isobel inexplicably. In her mind she’d clearly witnessed Mairi painstakingly sew and embroider new clothes for the doll years after Effie disappeared.
Philip started to hand it to her, then drew back, frowning. “You look faint.”
Isobel squared her shoulders and forced a smile. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.” He looked down at the doll. “What are you seeing, Isobel? You told me only violence…or death affects you so. Are you hiding something?”
Isobel gave him a look of innocent confusion. “What do you mean? I just see your stepmother…coming here and touching these things, thinking about Effie.”
He held her gaze, searching her face for the truth.
Isobel had to look away. “It’s her grief. I feel it as if it’s mine.”
She glanced at him. He gazed down at the doll, gripped in his strong hands. She’d never thought a man’s hands could be beautiful, but his were. Broad and tan, with cords of muscle along the backs and wrists that shifted and moved when he flexed his fingers. She imagined them on her, flexing…
She held out her hand. “Give it to me.”
“We should stop. For now. So you can regain your strength.”
She leaned forward and put her hand on the doll. He didn’t release it. His eyes met hers.
“I want to do it, Philip.”
“You will tell me what you see—no matter what it is? No matter who it is?”
Isobel couldn’t look away from him, but she would not promise him that. “I will tell you anything I see about your sister.”
His hands tightened on the doll, pulling Isobel closer, so her face was inches from him. “I want to know everything.”
Do no harm. That’s what her mother always told her. And she would not harm him. Never. “Very well,” she lied.
He released the doll. Isobel began untying the tiny points on the dress, blocking out the misery that radiated from the garment.
“What are you doing?”
“The dress is new. Your stepmother made it only a few years ago.”
Philip was silent. Isobel looked up, and he frowned at the doll as she undressed it, looking slightly ill. He leaned on his knees again, his hands laced over the back of his head. Isobel wished she hadn’t told him that.
When the dress was off, she set it aside. She held the doll between her palms and closed her eyes, breathing deeply. “What did your sister look like?”
“Dark hair…blue eyes. Uhm…she was verra small, a brownie, I oft called her. She never seemed to eat much—at least not at the table. But I sometimes caught her sneaking food from the kitchens, late. Ye’d never know it, she was so thin.
She liked to fish. She wasna afraid to put a sand eel on a hook… ”
Isobel smiled slightly, forming a picture in her head of Effie, hoping it would be a beacon of sorts, guiding her through the maelstrom of Mairi’s anguish.
The emotions slammed through her. Isobel tried to close them out, imagining a chest or a door, stuffing the pain inside and closing it, but she could not.
Sifting through it all was impossible. She was assaulted with images of Mairi with the doll, rocking and crying, raging against fate.
But Isobel persisted, repeating Effie over and over in her mind.
Rage, like a shock filled her. It was Mairi again, but this was different.
A child cowered in the corner, small and trembling, clutching the doll to her chest. Mairi yelled at her, “Can you do nothing right? Is it so difficult for you to just do as I say?” She ripped the doll from Effie’s grasp.
At that moment, Philip pried the doll from Isobel’s fingers.
She blinked until his face swam into focus, blurred. Her head throbbed.
“What the hell happened?” His voice shook slightly.
Isobel’s face was wet. She touched her cheek, surprised to find tears.
“You curled into a ball on the bed and began to greet.”
Isobel shook her head. “It’s nothing.”
“That’s a bloody lie! What the hell did ye see?”
She tried to sit up, but he was leaning over her, his hands on her shoulders. She swiped her sleeve across her face, drying it. “I told you before…it just makes me so sad…I feel it all, as if it were happening to me.”
He stared down at her, his eyes bleak. “I knew I’d broken Mairi’s heart. I knew it, but seeing you like this…”
He started to turn away from her, but Isobel caught his arm. “Philip, it happened a long time ago. You were young—whatever Mairi feels, you cannot keep punishing yourself.”
He shook his head, as if she couldn’t understand. Perhaps she couldn’t, but she wanted to. She put her hand on his face, turning him toward her. He didn’t look at her, but allowed her to manipulate him, his long dark lashes lowered.
“I don’t know everything that happened, but I know you. You made a mistake, and you are sorry. You would never have willfully hurt your sister or your stepmother. You cannot let this rule you.”
He said nothing, holding himself very still.
She realized how close they were. She sat on the bed, his face in her hand, the smooth whiskers beneath her palm.
One of his arms was braced on the bed for support so that he leaned over her.
He had only to turn his face to kiss her—and she could make him.
The hand she held against his face began to tremble.
Her fingers itched to stroke against his warm skin, to urge him to her mouth.
She should not, she knew it, but she could not draw away.
His scent filled her, warm and dangerous.
And suddenly nothing else seemed to matter.
His hand came up, sliding under her hair.
He still did not look in her eyes, though he leaned closer.
His gaze was on her mouth. Her lips parted on a silent breath of need.
She turned her face to him, her heart fluttering wildly as his mouth brushed against hers, their breath mingling.
Isobel’s other hand came up to hold him as he pushed her backward, his mouth closing fully over hers.
Her head had hardly hit the bolster when a voice shattered through them both. “What are you doing?”
Philip jerked away from her.