Chapter 25
“Mr. Blackmore returned to the village,” Isobel stated when Lucy returned.
“Shall we expect him again?” Lucy wrinkled her nose. “You’ve been drinking whisky.”
She preferred not to address the whisky. “Would you be comfortable if he returned?”
Lucy sighed. “It was quite a shock. He is inextricably linked to—that time.”
“It was no less a shock to me. Although my memories of that time are different than yours.” An understatement, really.
Lucy’s eyes were on her hands; she rubbed one thumb along the other.
“My very first assumption about his character, formed at— formed on that first night. My assumption was not good, although soon enough I learned the truth of it. But aside from watching him shoot out the kneecap of someone who’d just held a knife to my breast, I was not acquainted with him, not for good or for ill, outside several hours answering his questions before you and I left Paris.
” Her gaze speared Isobel’s. “I believed at the time you didn’t know him well either, but now .
. . It seems to me that you must have known him far better than I realized, else he’d not have turned up on our doorstep. ”
“I hardly knew him at all,” she said, not untruthfully. “We were in one another’s company not even two weeks.” Eight days, in fact.
“And yet he has come all the way to Kirkcudbrightshire a half year later. This man you hardly knew,” Lucy said with considerable irony. “I rather doubt he is already on his immediate way back to England.”
“I mentioned that we’ve been looking to repair the crofter’s cottage.”
Lucy looked up, eyes unreadable.
“I told him I must talk it over with you,” she added in a rush, “because I will make no decision that causes you distress. Nor would he accept.”
Lucy crossed to the pitcher, pouring herself some water. “It was too windy today to enjoy walking, even with the tide in. I do not know why you persist with your hikes on such days.”
She said nothing. Lucy would get to it when she was ready.
Eventually her sister sighed. “It was, as I said, a great shock to open the door to Mr. Blackmore. I will not pretend that my mind did not immediately return me to a time and place I try to spare as little thought as possible. I do not know if I can be easy with him, but what is more pertinent, most pertinent, is whether you want him to stay. Do you? Although is he not still involved in that . . . work?”
She wished only the whisky were to blame for her light-headedness. Yes. I do want him to stay. That he might not . . . She wouldn’t think of that yet. “The matter which brought Nathaniel to France concluded several months ago.”
And he nearly died. It took a moment to remember how to breathe.
“Nathaniel, is it?” Lucy lifted one eyebrow. “And you still have not said if you want him to stay.”
“I offered him the room and the work here, but only if it will not discomfit you. Which he said himself as well: He will not consider it unless you are in full agreement.”
This time Lucy let the indirect answer pass. “Then I will ask you this. Can you say with certainty what manner of man he is?” She looked significantly at Isobel, adding, “If, as you say, you hardly knew him.”
It was a fair question, but how on earth was she to answer it? She knew so much of his character and yet so little of anything else.
“He is relentless in pursuit of his objectives. He is just in his dealings with others as their own dealings merit, but when deserved, he is capable of being ruthless. You saw that for yourself outside the Théatre de la Ga?té.” She thought further.
“I believe wholeheartedly that he never deceived me, intentionally or otherwise, despite the necessity of preserving the many secrets involved with his work.”
I wished to answer your question without prevarication, he’d told her during that vulnerable conversation about loneliness and missing intimacy.
Lucy was watching her closely.
She drew a deep breath. “I trusted him with my safety. My life, even.” And yours. “And it was not misplaced.”
There were, of course, additional truths that she wouldn’t admit aloud even to her own sister. She had never shared with Lucy the details of their fictitious liaison, beyond what her sister saw the night at Le Repaire they’d found her, and nothing about the genuine relationship that supplanted it.
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 in front 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 exactly untrue.
“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 eyes would follow the way his fingers curved across the scarred wood.
“A translation of Julie; ou, la nouvelle Hélo?se, perhaps?” she asked lightly.
The left corner of his mouth tipped up for a moment. “As it happens, no.” He opened the larger book to the title page and angled it towards her: Goethe’s Faust: Eine Tragodie. 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 than ever they did with William.”
Nine total, if one included the dead languages. And he was entirely nonchalant about it. Truly, it was remarkable.
He was remarkable.
“I’ve spoken with Lucy,” she said rather more abruptly than she intended.
“I thought you might have done.” His eyes were grave once more.