Page 7

Everyone glanced somewhat nervously down at the dining table, as if it might dissolve into the ether.

“We all best continue to perceive it,” Isolde mused. “Lest we get gravy stains on the carpet.”

Mr. Eversea flashed a fleeting and heart-stopping grin at her, then turned back to her father.

“Yes, sir, that more or less sums up the theory,” Jacob concurred. “Or, to use another example…let’s say a beautiful, well-bred young woman is dancing alone in the woods and suddenly belches. If no one was about to hear it, would it make a sound?”

Isolde nearly choked.

The audacity of the man!

Her cheeks were instantly aflame.

Everyone laughed. Even her mother, who would have been horrified to learn Isolde had blithely hurled etiquette overboard like so much jetsam the moment she was out of sight of the house. Such were the charms of Jacob Eversea.

She stared at him indignantly, shuttlecocked between furious embarrassment and a sort of perverse joy. In truth, she was very impressed at the ambush. He was a wicked, wicked boy. She ought to feel thoroughly mortified. But she was delighted with him. It could not be helped. This was who she was.

Seconds later, he turned to meet her indignant gaze, his eyes shining with deviltry. Concern shadowed his brow when he noted her expression. His eyebrows leaped up in a question.

She bit back a smile and gave her head a slow, nearly imperceptible shake. “The point is obviously moot, Mr. Eversea,” she said gravely, “as no well-bred young woman would ever dream of doing such a thing.”

Relief flared in his features and he grinned.

She exhaled, as if his comfort was her concern.

It was her first hint that Jacob would never cease challenging her, but would rather die than deliberately hurt her.

.

The rest of their guests arrived after dinner, and if they were surprised to find the Eversea heir in their midst, they recovered quickly enough.

After all, most of them had watched him grow up.

Her mother had dusted off the bottle of elderberry liqueur and everyone had a taste.

Furniture was cleared away from the carpet in the big sitting room, fiddles emerged from cases, and a happy squabble about who would play the first dance on the pianoforte got underway involving ladies almost combatively complimenting each other’s musical talents.

And somehow in all the milling about Mr. Eversea at last made his way to Isolde’s side.

When she turned toward him, a few long, wordless seconds ensued, as if the heady atmosphere created by their mutual proximity was something to which they would need to grow accustomed, like a pair of mountaineers reaching a summit. Isolde’s heart sped fatefully.

“Well, Mr. Eversea. I would call you incorrigible but something tells me it’s a word you've heard so many times it has quite lost its novelty. Rest assured I shall arrive at an appropriate word just for you before the evening is out.”

“I look forward to it,” he told her somberly. His eyes were glinting. “After all, finding just the right word seems the least you can do for an honored guest. Have you a teeming vocabulary, then, Miss Sylvaine? Are you a very well-read woman?”

“Oh, very . Do well-read women frighten you?”

He recoiled a little in mock alarm. Then he snorted softly. “Of course not. Nothing does.”

This bit of outrageous bravado made her smile.

“I did worry that I might have hurt your feelings,” he confided, in a lowered voice. “And I apologize if I did. It was just...you seem as though you wouldn’t…”

She knew what he meant, so she rescued him.

“I've two siblings,” she replied briskly.

“You've some familiarity with my brother, George, so you have some notion of all I’ve endured.” She draped her hand across her forehead in feigned melodrama, and Jacob laughed.

“And I do know the ladylike thing would be to pretend hurt feelings, but thanks to him it’s well-nigh impossible to offend me through ordinary means at this point.

You'll have to do far, far worse. This is not an invitation to take it up as a challenge, by the way.”

He grinned. “Oh, I've two sisters. Both married and older than I am, and if you think George is an education, you ought to meet them. I think George is a capital bloke,” he added hurriedly. “The best.”

“There are worse brothers, I'm sure.”

“Oh, of a certainty. Just ask my sisters.”

She laughed.

George was, in fact, a good brother. He was irritable and irritating in the correct proportions for a sibling, could make her and Maria snort with helpless laughter, and he was pragmatic, thoroughly decent and trustworthy. His regard for Jacob made Jacob trustworthy by default, in her estimation.

It seemed the vicar’s wife had won the honor of being the first to play; she was claiming the pianoforte bench like a hen snuggling into a nest. Now the conversation centered about what , precisely, she would play first.

Jacob settled comfortably against the wall next to her.

“Not to belabor it, but your afternoon performance today was one of the best things I've ever seen in my life, Miss Sylvaine.

And among the best things I've seen in my life are a cow almost as tall as a barn, Pennyroyal Green sunsets, a head of foam on the dark at The Pig & Thistle, and the expression on Isaiah Redmond's face when I won the Sussex Marksmanship trophy last year.”

She loved every word of this recitation: it was daft and deft and charming and arrogant, a vivid glimpse into his world and his mind.

“I can attest to the glory of Pennyroyal Green sunsets, Mr. Eversea,” she replied. “I confess I'm deeply envious you saw such a cow.”

“Oh, you really must see it, Miss Sylvaine.

It's in Gorsely, a quarter day's journey from here when the roads are good and one has a barouche, and I do. The farmer won’t mind giving us a look if we send a message on ahead.

We'll get up a picnic and go, George and your sister and I and perhaps my sister and little nephews, too.”

He said this firmly, with the ease of someone accustomed to taking charge of things and unaccustomed to being countermanded, and with a familiarity that would have seemed brazen if it hadn't felt so natural and destined: of course she would be going to see a gigantic cow with the Eversea heir she'd only just met.

“I should like that very much, indeed.”

“And if you wouldn't like it...”

“I would, of course, say so.”

He smiled at her as if she'd said something darling, something which confirmed for him some unspoken suspicion, and for an instant, she merely basked in that smile.

“Celandine,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I saw the first celandine of spring today. Immediately after I saw you at the folly.”

“Did you? Is it a favorite flower of yours?” She was hungry to know everything about him.

“I always think it looks like the forest is suddenly sprinkled with little suns when they begin to bloom. Every year, whenever I see the first celandine in Pennyroyal Green, it’s a sign to me that something new and hopeful and beautiful is about to begin.

When I was a little boy, I would wish on the first one I saw. ”

Well.

For the second time tonight, he’d stopped her breath.

The slightly challenging tilt at the corner of his mouth told her that he knew it, too.

But his eyes were serious.

She suddenly felt out of her depth.

This bold, cocksure boy had just said this unexpectedly poetic thing, which somehow managed to be both subtle, vulnerable, and frank.

His meaning was unmistakable.

And it also felt like he was daring her to ask a question.

When she did, her voice was low. “What did you wish for?”

He didn’t reply. But his slow smile wound round her heart like a lariat.

And then the vicar’s wife applied her fingers to the keys in a sprightly minuet, and Jacob and Isolde found themselves opposite each other as dance partners.

After an exchange of bows and curtsies, the gathered guests began to move in the figures of the dance.

Nothing frightened Jacob Eversea. Or so he’d said.

But his smile vanished the moment their hands met for the first time. His expression went grave and intent and almost dumbfounded. As if he didn't know quite how she'd done it, but she'd taken him captive.

Oh, he was frightened, she’d warrant.

Because she was, too.

She suspected he, too, could feel a current rush through him from where their hands joined. As if they’d been swept up into the same, fast-moving river together.

Perilous stuff, indeed.

“Well, Miss Sylvaine. Have you arrived at a word to describe me?” His voice was gruff.

“Enchanted,” she said shortly.

He blinked. Something raw and almost furious flashed across his features, as though he'd been caught naked.

Her own audacity amazed her. Still, she thought he ought to know that he wasn’t the only one with the capacity to surprise.

Her instincts told her that her entire being—the shy parts, the bold parts, the clever and stubborn parts, the worthy and unworthy parts, every bit of her—was safe with him.

She supposed this was her way of testing this theory.

He regarded her with a certain cautious appreciation, which softened into something like surrender.

Then he gave his head a slow shake, like a man who was had just learned his ultimate fate and was peacefully content to submit to it.

“Yes, of course you are enchanted,” he managed, finally, with a certain amount of bravado. His voice was graveled. “But have you thought of a word for me ?”

They smiled at each other.

Earlier that week she’d stood with her father in the garden during that deep blue hour between sunset and nightfall, admiring the sharp, dark outlines of the first swifts to arrive that spring from wherever they wintered in some sunnier clime.

They soared and circled and dove, clearly exhilarated to be alive.

“Did you know swifts almost never land?” her father told her absently. “They do nearly everything in flight.”