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Chapter One

P ennyroyal Green could be read like a clock, if one knew where to look. Isolde Sylvaine glanced over her shoulder at Miss Marietta Endicott’s big red brick academy to discover the lowering sun had striped its roof edge in gold, which told her it was about half past four.

She gently elbowed her sister. “I think we’re going to be late for dinner, Maria.”

Yesterday Isolde had accidentally kicked her writing table while practicing a rigadoon step in her night rail, and her sore toe dictated their drifting pace down the hill from Tingle’s bookshop.

A temporary limp seemed a small price to pay for knowing the figures in a new cotillion in time for the Pennyroyal Green assembly, which was just about a week away.

“Ah, well. Mama will be none too pleased, but I think we deserved Tingle’s after two entire hours of Mrs. Sneath,” Maria said stoutly.

Very little of note was accomplished in Pennyroyal Green without the involvement of Mrs. Sneath, a young matron who had three little boys and a battlefield commander’s zeal for organization.

She was in charge of the upcoming celebrations surrounding the opening of the new town hall, which is where the assembly would be held, and the Sylvaine girls were on the decorating committee.

They admired Mrs. Sneath immensely, but too much exposure to her no-nonsense briskness crimped their usually irrepressible spirits.

Tingle’s is where they went to restore them.

But Isolde and Maria tended to forget that time held no dominion once they crossed the threshold of Tingle’s bookshop.

Mr. Tingle was patient with the Sylvaine sisters, as they—quite rightly, in his estimation—savored books with all of their senses.

They brought them up to their ears so they could listen to the whisper of ruffled pages.

They surreptitiously sniffed them, then closed their eyes in raptures over the perfume of ink and paper and glue.

And even if the Sylvaines hadn't the budget to satisfy their connoisseur tastes, customers had more than once purchased a book after witnessing Isolde and Maria delicately ravishing it.

The whole of the way down the hill Isolde had pretended the delicious press of the new book she held against her ribs was Jacob Eversea's arm looped through hers.

The sound of swift hoofbeats, the moist, rich smell of the Ouse riverbank, the very Pennyroyal Green ground beneath her feet, which she felt a little more than usual at the moment, thanks to the untimely thinning of the sole of her shoe—these sensual memories collected over the previous magical spring were part of the weave that connected her to Jacob.

And now the ocean, visible as a silver thread on the horizon if she stood on her toes (which she could not currently painlessly do), meant Jacob, too.

Because this was all she currently had of him.

Eight months ago, Jacob had gone off to the West Indies on a ship, promising to be home by her eighteenth birthday.

Which had come and gone two months ago.

And just as gossip regarding Jacob Eversea’s intentions toward the oldest Sylvaine girl had flourished before he departed, speculation about his current whereabouts now abounded in Pennyroyal Green.

“I’ll wager that Eversea lad returned months ago and is just gallivanting about London, having a wonderful time,” she’d overheard Mrs. Ludlow confiding to Mr. Postlethwaite in Postlethwaite’s Emporium a few weeks ago.

Mrs. Ludlow was purchasing a length of ribbon for the dress she planned to wear to the Pennyroyal Green assembly and hadn’t noticed Isolde and her brother George—Jacob’s best friend—standing behind them.

They had gone in to collect any family mail.

George and Isolde didn’t speak of it on their walk home.

But Isolde had gone straight up to her room, sat down on her bed, then tipped backward and lay in perfect stillness for two hours, abandoned by her native optimism for the first time since Jacob sailed.

While storms, pirates and sea monsters had all seemed plausible—and forgivable—causes for delay, the possibility that Jacob might just be gallivanting in London had never even occurred to her.

This struck her as a possibly fatal failure of imagination.

George finally interrupted her prone misery when he appeared in her doorway, studied her a moment, and said gruffly, “For heaven’s sake. You know Jacob would never do that.”

Surely, George was right. Everyone knew how unpredictable sea voyages could be! And surely the opportunity to yearn for Jacob was romantic?

But today when the sisters had stopped into Postlethwaite’s Emporium to ask about mail, the unmistakable flash of pity on kind Mr. Postlethwaite’s face left an icy pinprick of dread dead center of Isolde’s heart.

It was confirmation that the gossip about her was likely very different now.

Today their only correspondence was from their dear friend Elizabeth Bellinger in Plymouth, who had married her true love last year at age seventeen, Maria’s age now.

The sisters paused outside of Postlethwaite’s so Isolde could read the letter aloud.

When Isolde faltered over the news that Elizabeth was going to have a baby, Maria gently touched Isolde’s arm.

This Isolde found both precious and intolerable, because it meant her sister knew precisely what Isolde was feeling and why.

Jacob had not even proposed before he left.

But in her apron pocket now was a little enamel celandine, the star-like yellow flower that heralded spring in Pennyroyal Green. He’d pressed it into her palm the very last time she’d seen him. She carried it with her everywhere. She knew it was as good as a promise.

The churchyard and pub and vicarage came into view as they rounded the cobblestoned curve.

A golden hour hush had settled over the town.

Burnished in the falling light, the familiar shops appeared preserved in amber.

Cooking smoke spiraled from chimneys; the day creatures had retreated to their shelters and the night creatures had yet to stir from theirs.

Apart from her and Maria, not another soul was in sight.

No longer day and not yet night, the hour felt to Isolde like that liminal space between girlhood and womanhood: fraught with portent and promise, tension and magic.

“Maria…Do you remember Lightning and Diamond?” Long before their father had moved his family to Pennyroyal Green, their scandalized mother had caught Maria and Isolde neighing and frisking among the headstones in the churchyard near their Plymouth home.

They were pretending to be ponies named “Diamond” and “Lightning”.

“Yes! What did mama say when she caught us?”

“‘ Young ladies do not gallop like heathens !’” they quoted in unison, laughing.

“What made you think of that just now, Isolde?”

“I was just thinking how lovely it would be to run like mad when no one is about to see.”

And just like that, they were both wistful.

They were very aware they would need to marry respectably lest they become crushing burdens to their parents or to George.

And while a wealthy heiress might be forgiven for gamboling through town if she took it into her head to do it, the Sylvaine girls knew their own modest dowries allowed very little latitude for such eccentricities, even if their father was now a gentleman with a capital “G”.

But when two girls were young and pretty and fizzing with high spirits, and when Maria's head would of its own accord whip like a weathervane around at the sight of a soldier in a red coat, and when young men had more than once nearly come to blows competing for a chance to hear Isolde's merry laugh—some days treading that line dividing propriety and ruin seemed as perilous as walking a cliff edge.

Suddenly Maria halted and gasped. “Oh no !”

She thrust out her hands.

Which were nude.

“Oh no, indeed, Maria! Did you lose your gloves again?”

Maria snapped her fingers. “I distinctly remember taking them off at Tingle’s when you insisted that I feel the engraved title of that book with my bare fingertips.”

“Ah…er, it was worth it, wasn’t it?” Isolde demanded. Guilt twinged, much like her toe.

“Of course,” Maria assured her. “But Mama will make gloves out of my hide if I come home without them again.”

This wasn’t far wrong. In the Sylvaine household, the budget usually extended to new books or new gloves, not both.

The Sylvaine’s daily life had been characterized by often unnerving financial uncertainty before her father inherited money.

And Maria had a tendency to misplace things not attached to her person.

“Well, I'm sure your gloves are still in the bookshop, and no doubt Mr. Tingle will have found them. So, we'll just...”

They turned as one to stare despairingly up the hill.

Mr. Tingle would be locking up his shop any minute.

“But your poor toe!” Maria fretted.

“You go,” Isolde decided swiftly. “I'll wait ….” she scanned the quiet square.

“…over there.” Isolde swept out her hand out to indicate the legendary entwined oaks, currently in full fluffy leaf, their combined girth as imposing as the church.

“What could possibly happen to me beneath them?

I'll be quite secretly snug. And you can run! No one will see!”

Maria spun to look up the hill, then back at the trees, then back at Isolde. “But Isolde .” Maria breathed in mock horror. “Galloping is for h eathens .”

Isolde laughed. “Hurry! Run! Run like the wind, Lightning!”

Maria whirled, clutched her skirts in her fingers, and bolted back up the hill, her laughter trailing her.

Smiling, Isolde limped a little over to the trees and tucked herself underneath their vast leafy canopy. It was cozy to imagine she was probably just one of many creatures sheltering in them now. She dreamily imagined their roots fanning out like capillaries beneath all of Pennyroyal Green.