Page 13 of The Spy and the Nightingale
A slight tremor shook her, but her face was placid as she spoke it aloud. “Thig crìoch air an t-saoghal, ach mairidh gaol is ceòl. It’s a proverb of sorts. ‘Life comes to an end, but love and music will endure,’ roughly.”
“And this?” He pointed to a word.
“‘My nightingale.’ Da’s pet name for me.”
He returned the letter to her. She traced a finger across herfather’s signature before gently refolding the paper and placing it in front of her, squaring it to the table’s edge.
He turned his attention to the notebook, partially filled with precise, minute script, some pages inked and some with pencil. Dated entries, some with what looked like proper nouns: initials paired with surnames, possibly, and what he presumed were place names.
Isobel’s eyes were on him when he looked up. “Gaelic?” he asked.
“Yes, Gaelic. Da taught us using a Bible printed in that language so his girls would take pride in our Scottish heritage.”
“Why Gaelic?” She was fluent in spoken French as well as English.
“I remade my notes in Gaelic when I began to perceive the danger in my course of action. Lest the book fall into the wrong hands, or should I.”
Admirable caution and foresight, both, although it would make his work rather harder. Locating a Scottish Gaelic speaker in Paris, let alone one who could read it, would be no small feat.
“You do not believe you are even now in the wrong hands?” he asked, just to see how she’d respond.
She held a breath a moment before releasing it. “Meaning you? Are there right hands, in my situation?” A small smile tilted one corner of her mouth. “Aye weel,” she said, her soft burr broadening into Scots, “’n even are ye, ye canna read the wee book, now can ye?” Her eyes dared him to laugh.
His lips twitched upwards in response. “I cannot,” he admitted. “Although within a handful of days I can have this translated.”I hope.
“Your resources are that great, are they?” she remarked, dropping the dialect.
“Perhaps a week for written Gaelic,” he allowed drily. “Or two. Definitely three at the outside.”
At that she laughed outright before becoming pensive again. “Whatever your resources are for fact-finding, translators of written Gaelic aside, I would imagine they are far greater than mine. I suspect you are someone set to investigate Jeremiah Compton. I do not expect you to confirm that,” she continued with a staying hand. “Perhaps if I share with you what I know and it is of help, you will assist me in turn. Help me determine if Lucy is somehow mixed up with him. If it does not conflict with your aims, and supposing yours are not at cross-purposes to my own.” She bit her lip and released it. “Perhaps, if she is here, you might even help me to extract her from whatever situation she is currently in, should it not be of her own choosing.” Her voice wobbled on the last.
Collaboration was similar to what he’d contemplated the night before, although he wasn’t yet ready to agree verbally. He leveled his gaze at her. “Assuming Compton was involved, have you considered that Lucy may no longer be living? That she might never have left England alive? Or that if she’s here, it may be voluntary?” Blunt, painfully so, but he was gauging Isobel’s resolve and her grounding in reality.
Her face was bloodless. “I’ve considered each of those scenarios. If Lucy is still alive. If she is, that she might be altered nearly beyond recognition should I find her. Even that she may remain here by choice for reasons I do not or cannot understand.” She met his eyes, gaze unfaltering. “But Lucy is my beloved sister regardless, forever, until the day I die. If I have one chance in a thousand of finding her, of helping her if I may—I must seize it. I will deal with injuries to my own sensibilities afterwards.”
“If I am to help you, I must know more about her and what you believe happened.”
“Of course.” Isobel’s eyes were suspiciously bright. “Last winter a woman befriended her, part of a fast crowd that moved on the fringes of London Society. Through this woman, Lucymet the youngest son of a baronet from Gloucestershire. A ne’er-do-well, from what I’ve since learned. Theodore Garnewood is his name. I blame myself for not recognizing what was happening. I was only recently returned from the Continent, from nursing the wounded in Antwerp. I was... not entirely myself.”
“You remained in Antwerp after Waterloo?”
“Six months. Nearly seven. I returned to England this January when some of the Greys were released from peacetime occupation of Rouen. I stayed till then because it kept me occupied after Jamie’s death.” She lapsed again into silence, a complexity of emotions writ on her face.
He marked the silence with her as she collected herself; although he was eager for more information, he could offer that much.
“All that is to say, once I returned to my parents’ home in London, I did not watch out for Lucy in the ways I should have. Perhaps if I’d been home sooner, or more myself... Thesefriendstook advantage of Lucy’s naïveté and her natural sweetness. Although perhaps Mr. Garnewood held her in genuine affection at the outset; I cannot know.” Isobel’s hand upon the tabletop clenched into a fist.
“What happened with Mr. Garnewood as you understand it?”
“Lucy was last seen at a social function in his company in early April. When I began on my own to trace her whereabouts, one of herfriendssaid enough to persuade me that Lucy left willingly with Mr. Garnewood, to Gloucestershire.” Isobel picked up the journal that was still between them, rubbed her thumb across the cover, and replaced it on the table. “I believe she loved him or at least fancied herself in love. I’m certain of it. And he betrayed that.” Her voice choked on the last. “I know Lucy,” she said when she was able to continue. “She is romantic-minded and without guile herself. It is not so great a stretch to imagine that Lucy was easily seduced by someone who preyed on her trust. Herinnocence. I blame myself all the more for having not been a more attentive sister, knowing Lucy’s temperament. While I am by no means wise to all the evils in the world, I have at least seen more of the world than she has.”
“How do you know she does not still remain with her lover?”
“Mr. Garnewood returned to London after several weeks. I confronted him in August, after I’d learned his name. He claimed—sneering as he did so—that they lost interest in one another and she took up with another man.”
“Jeremiah Compton?”
“Yes. Although I think it was a lie, at least in part. I had nothing I could share with the Runners to prove that, but—” She steadied herself. “Mr. Garnewood had numerous gambling debts, owed to Mr. Compton. It seems unlikely to me that she would go willingly to Mr. Compton in those circumstances, and I cannot believe the debts mere coincidence.”
