Page 85 of The Spy and the Nightingale
“Talk to your sister.” He shrugged into his jacket. “The next mail coach does not leave for several days. I’ll be at the Arms till then.”
She found his hat on the peg beside the door where Lucy had hung it earlier. He donned it and then paused, hand on the door handle.
Tiger’s-eyes met hers. “I’ve thought of you often, these past months.”
He was out the door and gone before she could frame a suitable reply.
Chapter 25
“Mr. Blackmore returned to the village,” Isobel stated when Lucy returned.
“Shall we expect him again?” Lucy wrinkled her nose. “You’ve been drinking whisky.”
She preferred not to address the whisky. “Would you be comfortable if he returned?”
Lucy sighed. “It was quite a shock. He is inextricably linked to—that time.”
“It was no less a shock to me. Although my memories of that time are different than yours.” An understatement, really.
Lucy’s eyes were on her hands; she rubbed one thumb along the other. “My very first assumption about his character, formed at— formed on that first night. My assumption was not good, although soon enough I learned the truth of it. But aside from watching him shoot out the kneecap of someone who’d just held a knife to my breast, I was not acquainted with him, not for good or for ill, outside several hours answering his questions before you and I left Paris.” Her gaze speared Isobel’s. “I believed at the time you didn’t know him well either, butnow... It seems to me thatyoumust have known him far better than I realized, else he’d not have turned up on our doorstep.”
“I hardly knew him at all,” she said, not untruthfully. “We were in one another’s company not even two weeks.” Eight days, in fact.
“And yet he has come all the way to Kirkcudbrightshire a half year later. This man you hardly knew,” Lucy said with considerable irony. “I rather doubt he is already on his immediate way back to England.”
“I mentioned that we’ve been looking to repair the crofter’s cottage.”
Lucy looked up, eyes unreadable.
“I told him I must talk it over with you,” she added in a rush, “because I will make no decision that causes you distress. Nor would he accept.”
Lucy crossed to the pitcher, pouring herself some water. “It was too windy today to enjoy walking, even with the tide in. I do not know why you persist with your hikes on such days.”
She said nothing. Lucy would get to it when she was ready.
Eventually her sister sighed. “It was, as I said, a great shock to open the door to Mr. Blackmore. I will not pretend that my mind did not immediately return me to a time and place I try to spare as little thought as possible. I do not know if I can be easy with him, but what is more pertinent,mostpertinent, is whetheryouwant him to stay. Do you? Although is he not still involved in that... work?”
She wished only the whisky were to blame for her light-headedness.Yes. I do want him to stay.That he might not... She wouldn’t think of that yet. “The matter which brought Nathaniel to France concluded several months ago.”
And he nearly died.It took a momentto remember how to breathe.
“Nathaniel, is it?” Lucy lifted one eyebrow. “And you still have not said if you want him to stay.”
“I offered him the room and the work here, but only if it will not discomfit you. Which he said himself as well: He will not consider it unless you are in full agreement.”
This time Lucy let the indirect answer pass. “Then I will ask you this. Can you say with certainty what manner of man he is?” She looked significantly at Isobel, adding, “If, as you say, you hardly knew him.”
It was a fair question, but how on earth was she to answer it? She knew so much of his character and yet so little of anything else.
“He is relentless in pursuit of his objectives. He is just in his dealings with others as their own dealings merit, but when deserved, he is capable of being ruthless. You saw that for yourself outside the Théâtre de la Gaîté.” She thought further. “I believe wholeheartedly that he never deceived me, intentionally or otherwise, despite the necessity of preserving the many secrets involved with his work.”
I wished to answer your question without prevarication,he’d told her during that vulnerable conversation about loneliness and missing intimacy.
Lucy was watching her closely.
She drew a deep breath. “I trusted him with my safety. My life, even.”And yours.“And it was not misplaced.”
There were, of course, additional truths that she wouldn’t admit aloud even to her own sister. She had never shared with Lucy the details of their fictitious liaison, beyond what her sister saw the night at Le Repaire they’d found her, and nothing about the genuine relationship that supplanted it.
