1818_Isabel

by Suzanne Enoch

  Trying to keep her hands from shaking, she opened the wardrobe and dug her hand into the folded stack of pelisses – and felt nothing but material. “What the devil?” she muttered, reaching in farther to pull out the entire pile and set it on her bed.

  “Are you certain you hid it in the pelisses?” Jane asked, hovering nearby but obviously reluctant to put herself in a situation where she might have to touch the orb. “Your shifts would be less likely to be disturbed, don’t you think?”

  Ignoring that, Isabel began pulling garments off the stack and shaking them out – despite the obvious weight and size of the object she sought. Halfway down the pile the balled-up cravat shook free and plopped to the floor. Cursing, she bent down and looked under the bed for good measure before she picked it up and shook it out in turn. She found no other sign of the potato-sized stone set in gold claws.

  “It was wrapped up in this,” she said, wadding the cravat in her fist. The fast beat of her heart pummeled the inside of her ribs, intensifying the ache in the pit of her stomach. “Who would take it? Why?”

  “Who even knew you had it? You only told me about it five minutes ago.”

  “I didn’t tell anyone!” she exclaimed, pushing back against angry, frustrated tears. For most of her eighteen years she’d longed to set eyes on the orb, and after one quick view it was snatched from her again. She nearly hadn’t told Jane, but after a sleepless night she decided someone else needed to know where she’d hidden it.

  “So just Mr. Driscoll knew, then?”

  “He was with me all day, and he didn’t know it was in my wardrobe. Mist knew; you might as well accuse her of carrying it off.” She looked around her bedchamber. “Where is Mist?”

  “Vanished with the orb?” Jane suggested unhelpfully.

  Isabel didn’t want to believe that, but in light of her arguments with Adam, she supposed she had to consider it. After all, he claimed it had to be one or the other – magic existed, or it didn’t. He said it didn’t, at all, in any form. The other side, then, meant that it did, in everything. Which meant the orb and the cat, which had each just seemed to appear, could just as easily disappear again. “But why?” she asked aloud.

  “Perhaps you don’t need it, because you’ve found Lord Alton on your own.”

  “Then why would it appear at all?” Isabel countered, diving back into the depths of the wardrobe just on the chance it might have rolled out from the pelisses.

  “Because you expected it to?”

  “That makes no sense. Dash it all.”

  Simmons took that moment to rap on her half-open door. “Miss Isabel, Mr. Hodgins has arrived. I showed him into your office as you requested.” The butler paused. “I took the liberty of opening a window in the room. The fellow has the distinct odor of mildew about him.”

  Oh, dear. “Thank you, then. And please inform Adam of the architect’s arrival.”

  “I passed Mr. Driscoll on the stairs. I believe he went to fetch your notes.”

  And by the time she made it downstairs he would likely have already given Mr. Hodgins all the information he required. She smiled at Simmons, but cursed to herself beneath it. Adam had said the orangery was her project, that he was merely her tutor. Men were impossible. “I’ll be down in just a moment,” she managed, when the butler shifted in the doorway.

  When she turned away from the door, Jane stood there smiling at her. “Just look at you, Miss Isabel. Here for a week, and already doing renovations.”

  “Grandmama Olivia did renovations. I’m only adding a room to the back because I miss the scent of oranges and the taste of honey.” Truth be told, she also missed her mother’s warm, supportive presence. Perhaps that was why the blasted orb’s re-disappearance aggravated her so. She’d wanted guidance. And now all she had was herself and too-indulgent Jane.

  The blue- and-yellow pelisse she donned over her darker-blue muslin looked both practical and fashionable, she decided. If at least her wardrobe had her appearing competent, it would be an improvement over how she felt. Adding an addition to a building that had stood as long as this one abruptly felt the height of hubris. Cleaning up the paint and wallpaper, updating the dining room fireplace, that was one thing. Altering the building was another entirely. Why did she keep insisting on diving straight into water well over her head?

  Oh, now she was hoping Adam had gone in to meet Mr. Hodgins already, and that he’d detailed every bit of what she wanted. Then she could blame any failure on him. But that made her weak and cowardly, and that would never do, either.

  “You’re fidgeting,” Jane observed.

  “I am not. I don’t want to appear over eager. This is a business transaction.” Smoothing the front of her muslin gown once more, she squared her shoulders and marched for the door. “Please look around for the orb again, Jane. I know you think it may turn you into a frog or something, but you need not touch it; just try to locate it.”

  “I will. If I find it, I’ll bundle it up in a blanket and carry it with me. I won’t even set it down until you and I are face-to-face.”

  Well, that was very brave of her, however unlikely Isabel considered the frog transmogrification possibility. “Thank you. I’ll be down in my office.”

  At the last moment she remembered to collect the pencil and the journal she’d begun after returning from the logging hut. Thus far Adam had proved to be a willing font of valuable information, and she didn’t want to miss any tidbits she might hear during the meeting.

  She headed downstairs and attempted to come up with something pithy to say as she joined the meeting, only to catch sight of Adam standing in front of her office door. It wasn’t the armload of rolled and folded papers he carried that caught her attention, or the sudden realization that he’d waited for her to arrive before entering the room. Rather, it was the proper coat and waistcoat he’d donned, together with a simply tied cravat. In fact, he looked a proper gentleman – which she now knew him to be, considering that his father was a baron. He was also a handsome man with grass-green eyes and a mop of hair even darker than hers, a strong chin and straight nose, and artfully arched eyebrows.

  If not for his calloused hands and hard, chiseled muscles earned through nearly a decade of daily laboring, he wouldn’t have been at all out of place in Almack’s, she imagined, though she’d never set foot there herself. And while not a fan of irony, it didn’t escape her notice that the very things she found most attractive about him were the ones that made them a poor match.

  “Ready?” he asked, shaking her out of her wandering reverie. “Nod at me if you wish me to add something.”

  So she was to lead the conversation? Her head was swirling with all the changing expectations she harbored for herself. Well, this was her property. And it wasn’t just about missing the smell of oranges, whatever she’d said to Jane. They had bees, wanted orange blossom honey, and needed a way to make it all work.

  “Yes, I’m ready.”

  For the next three hours they talked with the mildew-odored Mr. Hodgins, who didn’t know anything about the legend of Nimway Hall, but did appreciate it as a well-made piece of architecture. By the end she was exhausted, but they had a plan, and she’d hired an architect.

  She gave over a downstairs sitting room close by the rear of the house for Mr. Hodgins to work, and a bedchamber in the west wing for him to set up temporary residence. The bedchamber was across the entire length of the house from hers, and while aloud she could say she wanted to give the man some privacy, it had more to do with his odor.

  “Why does he smell like that?” she asked, as she and Adam saw Mr. Hodgins off in his curricle with plans to return in the next two days bearing everything he would need to begin his designs and remain in residence for at least the next two months.

  Adam chuckled, gesturing for her to precede him into the house. “Perhaps it’s his diet. Too much cabbage.”

  “Or he lives under a bridge with trolls,” she added. “I hope it’s his diet, because we can alter tha
t here. Otherwise I’m ordering fresh flowers daily in every room within his vicinity.”

  “Poor fellow. He’s a lifelong bachelor, from what I understand. He likely doesn’t even notice the smell.”

  “Lucky him.” Isabel stopped at the foot of the stairs. “Will you join us for dinner tonight?”

  “I will. Thank you.”

  Halfway up the stairs she paused again, then turned to face him. With him three steps below her, for once she could look down at him. “I’m not going to keep inviting you every night. From now on, unless you have another engagement, I’ll expect you to dine with Jane and me.”

  He sketched a shallow bow. “Then I shall do so.”

  Isabel turned around again and ascended the rest of the stairs. She hadn’t extended the invitation because she liked him or anything. It was simply the proper thing to do. That thought sparked another one, and she turned around yet again as they started down the hallway to their respective bedchambers, now having to lift her chin to meet his gaze since they were on level ground. “You’re a part of the household, after all.”

  “For the next four months, anyway,” he returned. “I’ll see you shortly.”

  His bedchamber lay several doors before Jane’s, and he turned out of the hallway and went inside as Isabel continued toward the end of the hallway and her own large room. Lord Alton would have walked her all the way to her door, but then Geoffrey was skilled and practiced in all the gentlemanly arts. Adam just assumed she could manage walking another thirty feet on her own while he went off to see to more important things – like changing for dinner, she assumed.

  Behind her, a door opened. “Isabel?”

  She stopped. “Yes, Adam?”

  Mr. Driscoll stood in his doorway, his expression…annoyed? Perplexed? She couldn’t decipher it. “Would you join me for a moment?” he asked.

  “I – No. That’s not at all proper.”

  That made him scowl. “I’m not going to ravish you. I need you to see something.”

  Her heart began to beat in an odd, unsettling tempo. “And what, exactly, might that be?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake. I’ll stay right here in the doorway if you want. Go look.” He jabbed a finger at the interior of his bedchamber.

  Now she had to accept that this wasn’t a subversive attempt at romance. As for why that was the first place her thoughts went, she would decipher later. Clasping her hands behind her back, Isabel marched to his door. “Very well. Show me whatever it is you want me to see.”

  “Thank you.” Even that short sentence sounded exasperated. He strode into the room ahead of her and jabbed a finger at his dressing table. “Did you put it there?”

  She looked. The orb. It sat squarely in the middle of the small table, its image reflecting back to her in the mirror behind it. Mist the cat lay curled on the seat of the chair pushed up to the table, a lighter shadow amid darker ones. “No. I didn’t.”

  “I gave it to you yesterday.”

  “Yes, I recall,” she returned, her mind swirling with questions and possibilities. “And I went to show it to Jane before we met with Mr. Hodgins, and it was gone. Your cravat was still in my wardrobe, but it was empty. Did you take it?”

  “No. As a rule I do not dig through my employer’s wardrobe. Someone did, though. And that troubles me.”

  “If someone went to the bother of finding it, I doubt they would place it on your dressing table.”

  “And yet there it is. Your argument is faulty.”

  “And you are annoying.” With a sniff she stomped over and picked it up. As her hands closed over it, the orb glowed. Ha! “Look!” Swiftly she whirled around, but as she held it out, the inner light faded once more.

  His gaze lifted from the orb to her face. “Look at what?”

  “It… Oh, never mind. You wouldn’t believe it even if you saw it. That’s likely why it doesn’t bother with you.” Stubborn, pedestrian man. “Come along, Mist. I have to dress for dinner. And find a better place to secure my treasure.”

  Clearly in high dudgeon she swept out of the room, the small gray cat at her heels. Adam stayed where he was, gazing at his reflection in the mirror. Gazing just where he’d been looking when she’d picked up the orb, his mind refusing to move beyond that moment. The damned thing had glowed.

  The sun hadn’t caused it; this was the east wing of Nimway Hall, and late afternoon. Reflection from a lamp? Adam supposed that was possible, but even as he considered the logical options he had to conclude that none of them made much sense. Neither, though did a glowing rock.

  Perhaps she’d rubbed something phosphorescent on her hands and the moonstone. That could be it. Except that they’d spent the last three hours together and he hadn’t noted anything during that time. The damned orb hadn’t been there when he’d changed out of his riding attire, and he’d closed the door when he left.

  The cat had found a way in, however, so at some point the door must have been opened. If he wanted answers and an explanation, then, he needed to discover who’d been entering his bedchamber – twice now, at least.

  Swiftly he changed his coat for a darker one, deciding the rest of him looked well enough for dinner in the countryside. As he left the room to head downstairs he did something he hadn’t bothered with since he’d arrived better than five weeks ago; he locked his door.

  The likeliest culprit, the one who knew about the orb and its importance to Isabel and who had unlimited access to her and to the rest of the house, was Jane Davies. The woman seemed horribly honest and adoring of her charge, however, and he couldn’t conceive of a reason she would wish to take the orb from Isabel and put it in his private quarters. Was this a very poorly planned attempt to see him let go for theft? Hmm. That, he could imagine. And if seeing him gone was the play, it could be anyone in the household.

  None of that, though, explained the moonstone’s glowing when Isabel put her hands on it. Perhaps he’d just seen it wrong after all. An illusion wasn’t magic. It was simply a reality that hadn’t yet been explained.

  Straightening his coat, deciding “an illusion, as yet unexplained” would suffice for the night, Adam made for the upstairs drawing room that adjoined the formal dining room. The house boasted a small dining room that would have been more appropriate for three diners, but he knew Isabel liked seeing the fireplace in the larger room. And modeled after her mother or not, it was exquisite.

  He poured himself a whiskey and sat on the overstuffed couch, then immediately stood again as Isabel entered the drawing room. She wore silk tonight, a deep, soft green with deeper green glass beads sewn throughout the bodice and skirt, like random, twinkling stars. Likewise a green ribbon wove through her long hair, which was drawn up into an artful tangle at the top of her head. Abruptly he felt both underdressed and overdressed – as in he would prefer to be wearing nothing, with her in his arms.

  “Jane will be down in a moment,” she announced, strolling to the window to view the deepening twilight.

  “You look very nice tonight,” he said, clenching his half-full glass hard as he walked over to join her. Don’t touch her! he shouted at himself. Just this morning he’d promised to be a damned gentleman.

  “Thank you.”

  They stood there, looking outside, while he searched for something clever to say to her. “The orb is secure?” he finally asked. It wasn’t particularly clever, but it was conversation, at the least.

  “I certainly hope so. I can think of nowhere more secret to put it, except perhaps the beehive.”

  Adam laughed. On their first meeting he would never have guessed that she was funny and clever, but she was. Genuinely so. “You would know who took it from there by the bee stings. Perhaps you should consider it.”

  “If it disappears again, I shall. Some of my ancestors tried displaying it in a place of pride. Even with the entire household keeping an eye on it, the orb still managed to vanish.”

  “You believe it has a mind of its own, then?”

  She s
lanted her eyes at him. “I’m not going to have this argument with you again.”

  The question had been more a matter of genuine curiosity than a comment about the way she viewed the object, but he inclined his head. “Very well. May I ask you something else, then?”

  Isabel faced him. “What is it?”

  He should probably keep his damned mouth shut, but she looked so lovely, and he felt so…drawn to her that he’d sooner be able to resist breathing. If he said nothing, he would have to rightfully call himself a coward. “Have you decided on Alton?”

  Her cheeks darkened. “Decided on him for what?”

  Adam smiled a little. “No offense meant, but you don’t play coy well, Isabel.”

  “Hmm. I don’t see what business it is of yours, then, but no, I haven’t decided anything. Why?”

  To hell with it. If he didn’t act now, he might as well cut bait and go join the army after all. “Because I would like to invite you to join me for luncheon on Thursday.”

  11

  Stormy gray eyes met his, and it took every ounce of his willpower not to close the distance between them and kiss her. He’d never been in this position before, of having to step so carefully. Yes, he wanted her to see him as trustworthy, but at the same time he wasn’t a damned puppy dog. She had money and property, whereas he did not. But she also claimed to believe in magic, so he had a thing or two to overlook, himself. And he was certainly willing to do just that.

  “You want to…call on me?”

  “Yes, I wish to call on you.”

  Her gaze lowered to the buttons of his waistcoat. “Because you don’t approve of Alton?”

  No, he damned well did not approve of Alton. “There are at least three additional male property owners – or their sons, rather – in the area without wives,” he returned, not terribly thrilled to be pointing that out. “Alton’s merely the first to come calling. He may have warned away the others, for all I know. I don’t answer to him, though.”