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Chapter Eight

T hat night, Isolde leaned over the rose bud Isaiah had plucked for her—she’d tucked into a little glass vase on her writing desk—to open her bedroom window.

She leaned out and whispered. “Jacob, where are you? Please come home.”

Her words hovered in the chilly dark, white and gossamer, like a handkerchief waved in distress. Then drifted away.

Anxiety was rubbing away her starry-eyed faith in him like mist on a windowpane. She resented that she could now clearly see how her parents and other seasoned adults in Pennyroyal Green probably saw him: The… Everseaness of informally courting her, then leaving without a proposal.

Did they think her a fool?

Was she a fool?

She slammed the window shut as if a host of pitying, judging people stood outside.

They didn’t know Jacob like she did.

She was steadfast. Wasn’t she? She was spirited, but not fickle. She might have enjoyed a moment or two of flirtation in her life, but until Jacob, not one man had ever captured her imagination.

Which was why something else that she could now clearly see frightened her.

She had fallen in love with Jacob quickly, passionately, moment by memorable moment.

But what she felt when she was with Isaiah somehow transcended time and place. She knew a strange sense of vastness and… rightness …in his presence. As though she had not only always known him.

But had always loved him.

Beneath his reserve, something devastatingly tender and beautiful wanted to emerge.

But she was forced to admit to herself that the mysteries of him held allure, too—that streak of something unyielding and unforgiving she sensed, a tamped intensity that promised both passion and danger, the kind held by mysterious dark rooms and unfamiliar wild woods.

And this aspect of her own character was a revelation.

She felt as though Isaiah needed her.

And oh, it was seductive, indeed. To be needed by such a fine man.

Did Jacob need her?

If he did, would he have been able to leave?

How ironic that she had never needed him more than at this moment.

What cruel mutation of spirit made it possible to love—and want —two men?

She wanted their arms around her, their lips on her lips, their skin pressed against her skin—she could imagine it too vividly. The kind of physical longing she felt for Jacob—heated, consuming—was different from desperate and fierce way she now longed for Isaiah. But they were equally compelling.

Was this aberrant? Was she the only woman in the world who had ever felt this way?

Who could she possibly ask? Maria would certainly be sympathetic and fascinated, but no help at all. And she doubted there were enough smelling salts in the world to revive her mother if she ever brought the matter up.

And she didn’t know Isaiah’s intentions.

She could not think him a cad, and yet surely a man of his stature and fine looks must be spoiled for choice when it came to eligible young women?

She couldn’t ask another soul currently in Pennyroyal Green about him without arousing suspicion.

The most logical person to ask, George, was away at Lincoln’s Inn, though he would be home in time for the assembly.

She hadn’t the nerve to ask Isaiah outright.

If only she could see Jacob. Perhaps longing for Isaiah would then drift away like her breath in the night air.

But was she really that fickle? She didn’t think so.

And Isaiah was beginning to seem like the only real thing in the world.

She felt like she was perilously perched on the pointiest peak of the world’s highest mountain. The view was heavenly, infinite, exhilarating.

It was also very lonely.

And one wrong move could send her tumbling endlessly down to her destruction.

Jacob made straight for his family’s London townhouse when he disembarked the ship.

His parents were presently visiting his sister Pauline in Hampshire, or so he was told by the footman who’d answered the door with the gratifying, drop-jawed delight reserved for prodigal sons. Pauline was expecting another baby.

Jacob contemplated this happy news and daydreamed about his own future family of little girls that looked like Isolde and little boys that looked like him as he rifled through his father’s clothing press for clean shirts and trousers and stockings, all of which proved a little too loose on him.

Then he hailed a hack and drove to his favorite barber near White’s for a haircut and the kind of ruthlessly close shave he didn’t dare attempt on unpredictable high seas, lest he sever his jugular vein.

He watched his dark, waving hair hit the floor in tufts.

Eventually the barber thrust a mirror before him.

He inspected the tanned, hard, handsome stranger who looked back at him, a little disoriented, not displeased.

Then Jacob took this newly revealed version of himself off to White’s gentleman’s club.

Like Postlethwaite’s and Smithfield Curtis in Pennyroyal Green, White’s was a veritable gossip tributary, and would likely be the most efficient way to discover what he’d missed politically and socially over the last eight months.

The first person he saw was his old friend Wyatt Neeley from Cambridge, who was enjoying a plate of sausages and the morning newspaper. Neeley leaped up, agog, and fell upon Jacob in an exuberant greeting.

He hadn’t seen Neeley since he’d last debated spiritedly with him and George Sylvaine in a coffee house near university.

“It’s bloody good to be home.” Jacob extricated himself from his friend’s affectionate patting. “I’ll tell you all about it after I have a quick look at the betting book. Tell the waiter to bring me what you’re having, will you?”

The betting book was always a reliable source of entertainment, and often more eloquent than The Times when it came to capturing the flavor of current events. The pages were occasionally smudged by brandy or fingerprints.

He was amused and pleased to find himself in it almost immediately.

Lord Carlyle wagers F. McGinty ten pounds that Jacob Eversea was swallowed by a sea serpent

“Ha ha! Sea serpent! Wait until you hear about the pirates!” He called over his shoulder to Neeley.

C. Monkton wagers R. Sedgewick five guineas that Mr. Isaiah Redmond will wed Fanchette Tarbell before the end of the year

A hefty sum, but probably a safe wager, Jacob thought dryly. Redmond always did what was expected of him, and Jacob knew he’d been courting Miss Tarbell, because it’s precisely what a Redmond would do. He turned the page.

Lord Barstoke wagers Lord Emhurst twenty pounds that Mr. Isaiah Redmond will wed Miss Isolde Sylvaine before year’s end .

He stared at those words until they blurred.

He was not conscious of breathing.

He could not feel his limbs.

In recent weeks Jacob had heard the sound of a sword plunged killingly deep into another man’s flesh. He’d been tormented by hallucinatory fever dreams filled with writhing evils.

Nothing compared to the horror of reading those words.

He hadn’t realized this was his worst nightmare until he saw it emblazoned in White’s Betting Book.

It was dated only a few days ago.

“Anything wrong, old man?” Neeley was at his shoulder. Which was when Jacob realized he likely hadn’t moved for a conspicuous amount of time.

Jacob turned swiftly. Neeley took an alarmed step backward.

“Christ. Why are you looking at me like that, Eversea? I’m not a pirate.”

Neeley knew nothing about Jacob’s attachment to Isolde. And Jacob wasn’t going to attempt to explain it now.

“My apologies.” Jacob’s voice sounded muffled to him in his own ears, as if he was speaking underwater. “It’s just I’m certain George would be none too pleased to see his sister’s name associated with such a fiction.” He pointed to the page. “She hasn’t even had a London season.”

Neeley peered at the betting book.

“Ah, I think I know how this came about. Finchley—you know how he is, Redmond boot licker, never forgets the name of a pretty girl—was here with Barstoke a few days ago, claiming he saw this Miss Sylvaine with Redmond underneath those famous trees in Pennyroyal Green or some rot. Barstoke—you know how he always needs to best everyone—said he heard from a fellow in line at Smithfield Curtis tobacconists that a girl named Isolde has been seen walking about with Redmond. And Emhurst—he’s Barstoke’s cousin, not certain you’ve ever met him—was here and called both of them liars, just for the fun of it I suppose. Hence the bet.”

Jacob stared at him. “Walking. About.” He issued the words gingerly. As though they were lit grenades.

“Yes, you know that thing you do to get around on dry land? Ha!” Neeley thumped Jacob on the back.

“So, it’s probably just the usual nonsense intended to muddy Redmond’s smug waters.

Pity they had to drag George’s sister into it.

But better Redmond leg-shackled than the rest of us, eh?

Regardless, on dit is he’ll announce his engagement to someone at the Pennyroyal Green assembly this Saturday.

You won’t want to miss that, eh, Eversea? ”

A hard, fast ride on two changes of hired horses got Jacob to Sussex before mid-day the day after he’d returned to English shores. He’d packed his saddlebags carefully and lightly with only the things he considered critical; the rest of his trunks remained at the Eversea London townhouse.

As he rode, he recalled George Berkeley, the philosopher who’d posited that nothing becomes real until it is perceived.

Over the past few months, he had learned to hold himself at an emotional remove from horrors until it was safe to feel.

And this is what he did as the gratifyingly swift horses ate up the miles between him and Isolde.