Page 52 of The Lover’s Eye

Isobel shifted in bed, even as she acknowledged the new position would not offer sleep. Nothing would. She just needed to free her arm …

She sighed relief when the movement did not rouse Giles. His breaths came deep and heavy, his body still claiming a good portion of her side of the bed. Isobel wiggled her tingling fingers before lacing them through his hair, caressing methodically.

She had misread him. The pain in his eyes had shattered her, cut her bone deep with the realization that he was keeping secrets for a reason other than distrust. He was petrified. Wounded.

I was glad to be done with their damned mess.

The words echoed in her mind, linking with a dozen other clues. It couldn’t be true. But if it was …

Giles would never tell her. She would have to find the proof for herself.

It was about more than curiosity now. Isobel wanted to free her husband of what haunted him, and only the truth could do that.

She waited to rise from bed until sunlight threatened behind the curtains.

Pausing by the dressing room door, she cast a glance over her shoulder.

Giles did not stir an inch. She might have worried about him, had she not seen the relaxed skin between his brows, the barely perceptible tilt of his lips.

He had clung to her all evening and night, like a man starved of love and making up for lost time.

He now slept with the same indulgent fervor.

“Take good care of him, will you?” she whispered, crouching to rub Smooch behind the ears. The spaniel leant against her legs and licked her hands. Isobel grinned like a child. Oh yes, she was finding her place in this family.

She crept back to her own bedchamber, dressing quietly and without ringing for Betsey. Hopefully she would be returned before Giles awoke, but she penned a note and left it on her bed as a precaution.

Darling,

I have gone to visit Marriane. The coachman will see me brought back before dinnertime—not to worry. Oh, and Giles?

I love you.

Isobel

The quill pen shook a little as she set it down, but she smiled at the words. Tonight, she would speak them. And after this one, final endeavor into the past, she would leave it there, along with all trace of half-truths.

She wasn’t going to see Marriane, she was going to that island.

Isobel stepped into the corridor to find Mr. Finch and Giles’s valet standing in shadow, engaged in quiet conversation. They stopped talking as soon as they saw her. “Good morning, milady,” they echoed.

“Good morning.” She saw the curious draw of their eyes, no doubt wondering why Giles was still abed. “My husband is resting well. I ask that no one disturb him, and I need the carriage brought around.”

“Yes, milady,” the valet said with a bow, striding away to carry out her wishes.

The old butler remained, his eyes two dimensional and penetrating in the dark hall.

“Mr. Finch, if there is anything you should like to say to me, I beg you to voice it now.”

He said nothing.

Isobel almost walked away, but paused, bracing her feet. “I must confess I am sick of your nonsense. Perhaps I could understand losing your favor after what occurred with the luncheon, but I never possessed it, did I?”

She took a step closer, the action of her tongue instilling confidence. “Since the first moment of our meeting, you have detested me. You find me unsuited to be Lady Trevelyan.”

Finch still said nothing, but the harsh lines of his face subdued. He looked as though he wanted to run from this conversation, and only propriety kept him in place.

“Mr. Finch, let me speak plainly. I have a place here. I know how you value your duty to my husband, and if you should like to help him, perhaps you can begin by giving me a fighting chance. He needs us both.”

They stood, eyes locked, for an extended moment. The butler bowed, and when he rose, said, “Yes, my lady.”

As Isobel left him in the hall, she felt his eyes on her. It was a sensation that had made the hair on the back of her neck stand up for weeks, made her posture shrink and her mind unravel with concerns for what must he think of me?

Not today. Mr. Finch was watching Lady Trevelyan leave, perhaps a little shocked to have found her in a woman he had long underestimated.

?

The coachman gave Isobel a peculiar look when she asked to be dropped off at the gates of Shoremoss Hall rather than be driven up to the house. However, when she held his gaze steadily, he tamed his raised brows and assented.

“You may return for me at seven this evening,” she said. “I will be waiting for you, just here.”

He drove away, leaving Isobel in a wake of finely milled dust. She did not even consider pausing to visit her sister, but struck out for the coast, following the jagged cliffs south toward the village.

She had not been gifted with such fine weather for walking as the day before.

The sky felt close, clouds the color of grey pearls lying flush against the horizon.

The wind whipped tirelessly, gusts tripping up her steps and forcing her to remove her bonnet.

Her hair begged free, winding itself into tangly strands, and her eyes stung from the assault of misty sea air.

As the cliffs ebbed into flatter land, drawing inland to form a bay of mud and salt, Isobel’s nerves began to quicken. The island did not look so far away from this vantage; a direct path of scalloped sandbar stretched between her and it, but she still questioned her sanity.

There was a real possibility that the woman inhabiting the island knew nothing of Aurelia, Giles, or their elusive, tangled web. But it still seemed the only chance of plunging the truth from someone other than Giles himself.

“I can do this,” Isobel said to herself, taking a deep breath and hitching her skirts up in her hands.

She’d had the good sense to wear her shabbiest gown of navy cotton, knowing the sea-soaked terrain would leave her filthier than she had been in all her life. She took her first steps off the solidity of grassy land, her boot squelching into wet sand.

Isobel hesitated, her skirts trembling in her hand. She pushed away every sensibility and took another step.

The way was clear to her, even if strips of the sandbar were still pooled with seawater. Before leaving, she had asked a footman when the tide went out, claiming she and Marriane intended to go watch birds. It seemed he had given her an accurate answer.

The encroachment of the sea was still within sight. It lapped at the edges of the exposed seabed, giving the impression that at any moment it might decide to come into its own again.

Isobel shuddered as her foot sank to ankle depth, cool mud penetrating her stocking and slithering into her boot. She hadn’t expected to have so little balance here, to feel like she might topple over at any moment.

She ploughed onward in several tottering steps, pausing once she reached a more solid bit of path.

A glance cast over her shoulder revealed just how little ground she had covered, and the promise of land ahead did not appear any closer.

With a sigh of surrender, she leant and removed her filthy boots and stockings.

Her shoulder soon began to give her pain from carrying such cargo—a bonnet under her arm and the boots that swung like a pendulum by their strings, periodically crashing into her side to leave strikes of fresh mud. But her passage was far easier barefoot.

It allowed her to regain much of her surefootedness, and despite the frigid temperature of the seafloor squishing between her toes, there was something oddly pleasant about it.

Freeing or humbling, perhaps, stripping all those who walked here of their titles and accolades, reducing them to mere people, seeking passage, praying the sea did not reach them before they reached dry ground.

Shallow pools of water reflected the sky like spills of melted silver. Isobel’s feet occasionally caught on something sharp, or slid against a slick of grass and seaweed. By the time she reached the shores of the island, she had small cuts on the soles of her feet and had lost all concept of time.

But even as she stepped onto the refreshing solidity of dry land, the twinge of foreboding did not leave her. It was as though a little bead of instinct was pressing her, saying, You shouldn’t be here.

Isobel fought against it, as she had done with all her other finer senses, and summited the grass-sprung dunes.

It still appeared to be a wasteland; a barren patch of earth only ever intended to support wild creatures that might swim or fly freely from its banks.

Had Reverend Gouldsmith not affirmed for her that someone did, in fact, live here, Isobel might’ve turned her back at that very moment.

She walked on, the land morphing into a field of mixed grass and headstrong, wiry wildflowers that made her shins itch. There were no disruptions to suggest someone walked here. Not even a thin path or a round of dampened earth to suggest animal presence.

The ground drew up on a slight incline, and Isobel paused at its crest. A multitude of sound mingled over her head with a lightness akin to falling rain. Her chin jerked upward as a dark shadow fell over the field.

A flock of starlings.

The birds flew overhead in remarkable harmony, lilting, sinking, and beating ahead with unexplainable synchrony. They flew so low that Isobel could see their individual bodies—oil slick black, glistening in the darkest shades of green and blue—just whispers of color.

She had not seen such a large display in months, and never so close as this. It was as though this island did not obey the laws of nature.

A small shack rested at the base of the hill, constructed of native stones and driftwood. She made her way to it, straining her eyes for any sign of life, and rapped on the rickety door with her heart in her throat.

Silence. Well, not quite.

Isobel toed her way around the border of the shack and found a woman on her knees, tending to a messy plot of garden. Her shovel worked methodically against the soil.

Though the woman’s back was to her, it was evident she was up in years. Long straggles of grey hair scaled down her back, and scalloped vertebral bones shone through the fabric of her clothes.

Isobel didn’t know what to do. She remembered Marriane saying the woman had drawn a pistol on Reverend Gouldsmith—the last thing Isobel wanted was to startle her. She opened her mouth to announce herself, but the stranger spoke first.

“Come along, there,” she said, her voice strained and gravelly. “It’s taken ye long enough.”

Isobel swallowed hard, but did as she was asked. The upturned earth of the garden was sharp and ticklish against her bare feet, and her burn blared painfully in the absence of exertion.

“Help me, would ye?” asked the woman, gesturing to a nearby collection of potato sprouts.

Isobel hesitated a moment, but sat aside her bonnet and boots, and retrieved a sprout for the prepared furrow.

“I’ve already got my shallots an’ onions in the ground. See there?”

“Yes,” Isobel said, stung by rising embarassment. “I see.”

What had she been thinking? This was the most benign interaction possible. The woman was no witch or oracle, but a common hermit. When Isobel reached to place the sprout in the dirt, her hand was snatched up in a firm, calloused grasp. She shrieked.

The woman looked up, revealing her face. A map-like network of creases lined her skin, culminating in a soft sag of flesh beneath her jutting chin. Her nose seemed to droop like a bit of half-melted candlewax, but her eyes—

Isobel could not look beyond them once she met them. They were an arresting shade of green, like the skin of limes. They were fixed on her, the thoughts behind them unreadable. Isobel was almost grateful when they turned their focus to her hand, flitting over her palm with hungry interest.

“Have you come ’bout a love matter?”

“No. I’ve come to inquire after a young woman, who I suspect came to see you.”

The woman looked at her again. “All of ye come ’bout yourselves. Every last one of ye.”

“What made you assume it was a love matter?” Isobel asked, unable to help herself. The woman was studying her palm again, a long, dirt-stained fingernail tracing the lines.

“Ye feel more than most people. It can be a blessin’,” the old woman said, her voice rising to a soprano and a smile spreading across her mouth. “Or it can be a veritable curse. I believe at present, it must be a curse.”

Isobel swallowed, and when she pulled her hand back, the elderly woman allowed it. She massaged her palm, hoping to cleanse the memory of her nerves, which still tingled from the strange woman’s touch.

“That is, in essence, why I have come,” Isobel said. “But all that can help me is knowing if Aurelia Gouldsmith came to you.”

The finishing traces of the woman’s smile bowed into a scowl, her wild and wiry brows lowering over her eyes. “No.”

“No, she did not, or no you do not wish to say?”

The woman stood then, her joints moving with surprising ease, and stalked off toward the shack. Isobel saw then that she was wearing a fine pair of gentlemen’s trousers. She almost laughed, wishing she could know the details of that exchange, but quickly rose to pursue the woman’s receding figure.

“Wait!” Isobel called, stumbling over the rough ground. “I will pay you handsomely.”

“I’ve no want of your sovereigns,” barked the old woman.

“Well, good. For I’ve brought you better than that.”

The woman froze on the shack’s threshold, wheeling around on her heels. Isobel was breathless, feeling the all-importance of this moment. She had come all this way, and she’d be damned if she left with nothing.

She made slow, delicate work of removing the old reticule from her wrist, opening the bag with little tugs. She had managed to fit a sampling of delicacies from the kitchens. “Let’s see here,” Isobel said, sighing. “I’ve got a nip of sugar …”

In the periphery of her vision, she watched the woman salivate on command, her tongue peeking out to wet her bottom lip.

“Oh, and some tea leaves—these are very fine, I assure you. And …” Isobel pretended to scrounge around in her reticule for another moment. “Ah, yes. I’ve also brought nutmeg for your consideration.”

The old woman’s hands leapt out at Isobel, but she skipped out of reach. “ After you tell me all you know of Aurelia Gouldsmith and Giles Trevelyan.”