Chapter 4
After the non sequitur about Rousseau’s novel, Isobel fell silent. Nate suspected her mental gymnastics had nothing to do with his taste in reading.
Now that light filled the room, he had his first opportunity to truly study her in daylight. Her eyes were large, uptilted slightly at the inner corners, and an unusual shade of blue just this side of violet. Her hair, which he’d known was dark, revealed itself as nearly black.
“I’ve a small pocket beneath my petticoat,” she finally said.
“You missed it last night when you searched me. For which I am grateful, incidentally,” she added, her smile unexpectedly bright, “as it implies you did not rummage so closely about my person as to reveal it. If you will consent to avert your eyes somewhat while I untie it, I pledge on my sister’s life I haven’t any further weaponry concealed beyond what you discovered last night. ”
He fixed his gaze on her feet rather than turning away.
He had considered taking her boots from her to lessen the chance of escape but ultimately left them alone after gauging her condition the night before.
The sturdy boots looked made exactly to her feet and intended for walking rather than appeasing the dictates of feminine fashion.
She couldn’t have hidden a boot knife in one, else.
The chair creaked, followed by the soft slap of something hitting the table. “There,” she said.
The linen pocket between them was small, intricately embroidered with flowers and animals.
She met his eyes squarely. “My name is Isobel Graham. I am the widow of Captain James Graham of the Scots Greys. My sister Lucy—Lucinda Muir—is nineteen, nearly twenty. She disappeared from London this April.”
She drew a deep breath. “I’ve come to believe she was seduced at the outset, willingly, by a less than scrupulous young man.
I’m nearly certain that she did not leave England voluntarily, that she was coerced into doing so.
I believe it likely that she travelled to Paris sometime in June or July.
And that Jeremiah Compton was responsible. ”
Another deep breath. “You may be of help if I am to find Lucy. And if you are to gain a modicum of trust in me, I must share this.” She loosened the drawstring of the pocket and pushed it towards him.
Its contents were a tiny bound journal with attached pencil, a small roll of French and English banknotes, and her travelling papers. Wrapped in a bit of soft cloth were a tiny whorled shell and a delicate silver chain strung with two items: a slender silver knotwork ring and a locket miniature.
He examined the travelling papers first, issued in London in August to Mrs. James (Isobel) Graham, granting her passage to France. They appeared authentic, but papers were easy to fabricate if one had the right connections, his own papers having allowed him to leave England as Nathaniel Beaumont.
He picked up the chain next. “Lucy?” he asked, looking at the portrait.
“Yes. It was painted several months before her seventeenth birthday. Three years ago now, but it is still a fair likeness of her.” Isobel’s mouth turned down at the corners. “Or was, last I saw her.”
Lucy Muir, so painted, was a lovely young woman. Her softly curling ringlets were mid-brown rather than her sister’s straight, nearly black hair. A Cupid’s bow curved in a gentle smile; her expression had something of a dreamy cast to it.
“If this is true to life, you have the look of one another through the eyes,” he remarked. As painted, Lucy’s eyes were very like her sister’s in shape and color.
“Yes. We share our mother’s eyes, although I favor my father more in other respects.”
He set it aside without further comment. The silver ring next, delicate and finely wrought. No engravings inside. “Yours?”
Isobel shook her head. “Our mother’s. Da gifted it to her shortly before I was born. She wore it always.”
“Wore?” Past tense.
Isobel’s expression shuttered. “She died this June. She was in delicate health for several years, which worsened during last winter’s harsh weather, but after Lucy’s disappearance .
. . Maman blamed herself. And the cold damp this spring .
. .” She drew a breath, steadying herself.
“I’d have seen her buried with this, had not Da bid me keep it. ”
“Your mother was French?” Which fact explained Isobel’s nearly flawless French.
She looked narrowly at him.
“You called her Maman.”
“Yes. French by birth.”
“An émigrée during the Revolution?”
“Before, by several years. My grand-père wrote Da a letter—Da was living in Glasgow—and asked if he would look after Maman and Grand-mère until things here settled.”
“Why your father?”
“There was some old family connection dating back to the Auld Alliance. When Da was in France for a time as a young man, studying, he looked up my grand-père. They maintained a correspondence thereafter.”
“Did your mother never return to France?”
“Never. She and Da married soon after she and Grand-mère came to Scotland. A marriage made initially for practical reasons but ultimately of love as well.” Her brief fond smile was soft, sad.
“And your grandfather?”
“He remained in hopes things would turn but lost his life during La Terreur.”
Facts he could possibly verify, with a name. “Your mother’s name?”
“Marie-Iseult Blanchet, although she used an anglicized form of her forename after she married my father. Isolde.”
“And your father?”
A spasm of grief crossed Isobel’s face. She slipped a folded paper from inside the journal’s cover, passing it carefully over.
It was a letter signed by a Robert Muir, soft and worn along the creases as though read many times, although it was dated only the second week of August.
He looked sharply up at Isobel after scanning the lines.
She anticipated his question. “Da did not take his own life. His heart had a weakness, something to do with its rhythm. But my mother’s death, so soon after Lucy’s disappearance . . . It was grief that carried him off, as much as his heart.”
He returned his eyes to the letter, rereading it more closely.
My dear Isobel,
By the time you read these words, I will have left you.
These nine weeks past have been the longest I have been parted from your mother in close to thirty years, and while I rejoice in the knowledge that soon I will again embrace my beloved Isolde, I regret more than I can say that in rejoining her, I leave you alone.
I know you will do all that is possible for Lucy.
My solicitor has record of the provisions I have made for you, both for that endeavor and all the years ahead of you.
I must believe in my heart that you will succeed in bringing Lucy home, whether to England or Scotland.
However, should you not find your sister and she is lost to you as well, I beg you, a nighean, do not remain all your life in the darkness of grief.
Walk towards the light and find happiness.
Remember that night always ends and nightingales sing most sweetly as dawn is breaking. Thig crìoch air an t-saoghal, ach mairidh gaol is ceòl. Embrace joy, a spideag, for you have always been meant to sing.
I love you, daughter.
D’athair gràdhach / Your loving father,
Robert Muir
“That line in—Gaelic, is it? What does it mean?” He couldn’t begin to guess the meaning of the non-English words.
A slight tremor shook her, but her face was placid as she spoke it aloud. “Thig crìoch air an t-saoghal, ach mairidh gaol is ceòl. It’s a proverb of sorts. ‘Life comes to an end, but love and music will endure,’ roughly.”
“And this?” He pointed to a word.
“‘My nightingale.’ Da’s pet name for me.”
He returned the letter to her. She traced a finger across her father’s signature before gently refolding the paper and placing it in front of her, squaring it to the table’s edge.
He turned his attention to the notebook, partially filled with precise, minute script, some pages inked and some with pencil. Dated entries, some with what looked like proper nouns: initials paired with surnames, possibly, and what he presumed were place names.
Isobel’s eyes were on him when he looked up. “Gaelic?” he asked.
“Yes, Gaelic. Da taught us using a Bible printed in that language so his girls would take pride in our Scottish heritage.”
“Why Gaelic?” She was fluent in spoken French as well as English.
“I remade my notes in Gaelic when I began to perceive the danger in my course of action. Lest the book fall into the wrong hands, or should I.”
Admirable caution and foresight, both, although it would make his work rather harder. Locating a Scottish Gaelic speaker in Paris, let alone one who could read it, would be no small feat.
“You do not believe you are even now in the wrong hands?” he asked, just to see how she’d respond.
She held a breath a moment before releasing it. “Meaning you? Are there right hands, in my situation?” A small smile tilted one corner of her mouth. “Aye weel,” she said, her soft burr broadening into Scots, “’n even are ye, ye canna read the wee book, now can ye?” Her eyes dared him to laugh.
His lips twitched upwards in response. “I cannot,” he admitted. “Although within a handful of days I can have this translated.” I hope.
“Your resources are that great, are they?” she remarked, dropping the dialect.
“Perhaps a week for written Gaelic,” he allowed drily. “Or two. Definitely three at the outside.”