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Chapter Five

T hen, one day, without warning or explanation, Jacob disappeared.

It began when an entire morning passed without a visit from him. Which was disappointing but not very unusual. The Sylvaines expected they would likely see him in the evening, so no one remarked upon it.

Still, for the entirety of the day, Isolde pitched her ears for his mare’s hoofbeats. The sound always sent her heart aloft.

The night wore on, each Jacobless hour more torturous than the last for Isolde, until all of the Sylvaines were compelled to go up to their rooms to sleep.

Two more days and two nights passed in just this way.

Isolde was unprepared for how cataclysmic his sudden absence would feel, or for the deafening silence it seemed to create in both her inner and outer worlds. Tense shock nearly rendered her mute. She couldn’t bear to meet at her parents’ worried eyes at the dinner table. She picked at her food.

George shrugged off Jacob’s absence. He did not seem surprised about it. But if he knew where Jacob was, he didn’t reveal it.

Then a fourth entire day passed.

Isolde spent the fifth night without a visit from Jacob staring at her bedroom ceiling rather than sleeping.

On the sixth night, Isolde accidentally overheard her parents whispering in the dining room. “He is an Eversea,” her mother said. “Perhaps we ought to have expected it?”

A vise clamped around Isolde’s heart. She could not bear to remain and listen to the rest.

Jacob finally called at the Sylvaine home on the evening of his seventh day away.

His beard was beginning to darken his jaw, his cravat was limp and his coat was a bit rumpled.

He seemed weary and uncharacteristically somber but satisfied in a sort of steely way, as though he’d gone straight to the Sylvaine home upon emerging victorious from some struggle, the nature of which could have been either internal or external or both.

“I hope you’ll forgive my sudden absence without explanation.

I was called away to London by my family rather abruptly.

” He said this almost stiffly as tea was brought in to their sitting room.

All the Sylvaines were gathered around, as had been their custom.

“My parents requested my presence at a ball and a few other events to which my entire family was invited. I obliged them and our hosts. After which I explained to my parents that henceforth I would be sending my regrets to all other invitations this season, as I did not intend to return to London from Pennyroyal Green.”

His words were shot through with something fascinatingly and impenetrably implacable. As if they were a door between this room and a hidden world of conflict and machinations.

The pop of the fire fair echoed in the silence that followed.

Isolde’s breathing went shallow and ragged as a painful epiphany swooped in.

How ridiculously na?ve she had been. Naturally the Everseas were ambitious for their only son and heir. No doubt they thought Jacob could “do better” than marry a Sylvaine. Perhaps Jacob had been skirmishing with his parents over this very thing for weeks.

He’d never once let on.

Her own parents had probably suspected this all along.

What had Mrs. Hart said? I don’t think an Eversea has ever married a local girl.

Isolde couldn’t look directly at Jacob. Her cheeks were scorching. She aimed her gaze at the fire instead.

She’d been such a fool. She had been so enveloped in, so certain of, Jacob’s regard that she had not once imagined he might be spending these evenings away gazing into the eyes of some beautiful heiress while he danced with her. Perhaps even Miss Fanchette Tarbell.

Finally, her mother said kindly and gently, “We’re always very happy to see you, Jacob. Did you enjoy London?”

Jacob lifted and let fall one shoulder. “It was pleasant, thank you.” He turned to Isolde. “But this is where I prefer to be.”

It sounded so like a declaration that Isolde, her mother and Maria sucked in swift, surreptitious breaths.

Jacob’s face went softly radiant with relief when Isolde turned to slowly smile at him.

Thusly, their days of socializing and leisure resumed as if he’d never left at all.

For nearly a fortnight.

But hovering like a bird of prey over those days following his return from London was Jacob’s impending departure for the Orient.

Being with him often felt a bit like holding onto the string of a kite dancing in a stiff breeze.

Isolde liked this feeling perhaps more than she ought to; every day he returned to their house she felt as though she’d won him anew, and this made her feel powerful and exhilarated and always ever-so-slightly unsettled in a good way, the way she did when choosing just the right stepping stones to get her across a swift stream.

Paradoxically, she believed in his steadfastness. Because she had come to know that he never swerved when he decided upon a course of action. For instance, going to the Orient.

This made her wonder whether he hadn’t yet quite decided upon her .

She noticed that her parents were just slightly cooler to Jacob now. They, too, had fallen in love with him, but every day he appeared at their house but did not state his intentions toward their daughter, the possibility of broken hearts and social embarrassment intensified.

But more than once Isolde had looked up in the midst of swinging a mallet during Pall-Mall or passing around plates for a picnic to find Jacob standing apart from everyone, gazing at her, his expression wondering, almost puzzled, but wholly enthralled.

As if he somehow found it safer to experience the enormity of what he felt about her from a distance.

And when their fingers brushed, or when a pirouette in a dance brought their faces close together—a need for him she did not fully understand coursed through her body with such force she nearly swayed.

Jacob’s hands trembled when he accidentally touched her, on purpose or not, which betrayed the increasing tension in his own body.

They were in love. Something would need to be done about it before they did something reckless.

This “something’ all depended upon Jacob.

Oddly, in the fortnight since he’d returned from London, he’d not spoken of leaving for his journey all.

One afternoon, as George and Maria were packing up their Pall-Mall set and squabbling happily over something absurd—Maria was convinced one of their balls always rolled faster than another, and George was exasperatedly explaining about mass and velocity—Jacob said, “Isolde, may I speak to you for a moment?”

The fact that he’d used all the syllables of her first name—he usually called her “Zold’ or Miss Isolde—implied something serious was afoot.

Her heart leaped into a gallop.

He sat down on the steps of the folly, and she sat beside him.

And for long moments, he said not a word.

But his face was so pale and taut Isolde’s dread ramped.

Finally, she spoke. “Jacob….is aught amiss?”

He drew in a breath. “My father won half of a sugar plantation in Barbados in a game of five-card loo.”

This was such a very Eversea thing to do that Isolde almost smiled. But such was the tension of the moment, her lips couldn’t quite perform the proper curve.

He took another breath. “I have,” he said carefully, then paused to clear his throat, “volunteered to go have a look at this plantation for him, to determine whether it’s something the Everseas actually want to or ought to keep.”

Isolde could almost feel the ground drop out from beneath her.

She pressed her hand against the stone of the folly, to brace herself. She couldn’t speak. Her breath went shallow and ragged.

“That is, I am going to do this, instead of going to China. In other words …I will not be going to China at all.” His voice was hoarse. “I will instead be away for six months only.”

She stopped breathing She stared at him, dumbstruck.

The moment was perilous and delicately beautiful.

For the West Indies were only a six-week journey away by ship.

She knew his decision must have been forged during sleepless nights, during those moments where he stood apart to watch her, during the all-too-brief moments when they touched each other. She knew the courage it had taken to make it.

The profound weight of the responsibility she bore for his sacrifice settled down over her. He’d done it for her.

Because she loved him, she wanted him to have everything he ever wanted. So, her heart broke a little for him.

But she was his dream, too, and he likely had calculated she could not, and would not, wait for him forever.

His face went soft and bright and his shoulders dropped in relief as he drew in a breath.

Which is when she realized her own face must have gone luminous. Her eyes began to burn with unshed tears.

She glanced up and noticed George standing still, shading his eyes and staring across at the two of them. He was frowning faintly.

Isolde cleared her throat. “Well, what a fascinating journey that will be. I know you’ll learn so much and make new friends. And six months will go by so quickly.”

They would go by torturously slowly. But she would endure that time for him.

Color was gradually returning to Jacob’s face. “I’ll be gone for my own birthday, but I promise I’ll be home in time for yours. And I will write if I can.”

She almost said “thank you”. But that would have implied that foregoing his dream of China was something she had asked of him. And never, ever would she have done that.

It would take more than six weeks for a letter to make the journey from the West Indies to Pennyroyal Green. They both knew she would be fortunate to have one even one letter from him in six months.

“When do you leave?”

And when he hesitated, she knew. And her heart plummeted.

“At the end of this week.” His voice was a rasp. He swallowed. “So, this afternoon is farewell, for now.”

For an instant, it was like a black veil had dropped over the sun.

She couldn’t speak. Everything—the wind sweeping through the grass, the distance voices of her brother and sister— had suddenly gotten quite loud and harsh and sinister.

The sooner he left, the sooner he would return, she told herself.

And the sooner the rest of their lives together would begin.

Wasn’t this the case? Why else would he take her aside to tell her this?

She had absolutely no frame of reference for this moment. She felt hopelessly young and lost.

She seized upon the truest thing she knew and clung to it: she loved him and she was certain he loved her. She could not imagine this changing.

And so…she chose faith.

When she did, she was able to draw a breath, and the sun came out again.

“Isolde…” He cleared his throat. His voice was so hoarse it was nearly a whisper. “If you would prefer me to sta?—”

“Jacob,” she interjected gently but firmly. “I cannot wait to hear about the people you meet and the things you see and learn. And having you home again will be the best birthday gift I can imagine. I am truly so happy you will be able to see a bit of the world.”

He exhaled his relief.

She knew how much it had cost him to even try to get that sentence out.

She didn’t anticipate he would propose now.

Because he couldn’t do it and just leave her to wait.

And yet, for a fleeting moment, a little cinder of something almost like anger flared inside her, for the fact that she was a woman, which meant her destiny would depend almost entirely upon a man.

Suddenly his hand was gently beneath hers, warm and rough, and he was pressing something cool into her palm.

It was an enameled celandine. A pretty thing. It glowed gold in the sun.

It immediately blurred as her eyes filled with tears.

“Wait for me, Zold? Think of me?” His voice was shredded. His heart was in his eyes.

“Of course. Always,” she assured him on a whisper.

Her last memory of Jacob was the echo of his hoofbeats as he galloped away.