Page 81 of The Spy and the Nightingale
During these intervening months, she couldn’t have summoned the precise arrangement of his features—truly, she hadn’t known him long enough for them to become fully engraved in her mind—but the shape and color of his eyes she did remember, vividly, and the way sunlight picked out flecks of gold in the darker brown.
Eventually she found breath enough to speak, although her voice was shaky. “I’ll not be silly enough to ask what you are doing here. There is no earthly reason for you to be walking this stretch of the Solway Firth, save you knew I was on it.”
“Though you doubtless wonder why I’ve come.” His eyes had not left her face. She felt oddly naked.
“Yes.” How could she not? She’d thought never to see him again after that chilly morning departing on the road to Dieppe. Certainly not here, in this quiet corner of Scotland.
“Matters in France are entirely concluded. I thought...” He hesitated. “I thought you might like to know.”
“You met with success?”
“Aye.” There was a whole world of events tucked carefully underneath that single word. Surely he meant to tell her at least some of it, having come so far.
But perhaps not while standing on a bare hilltop, buffeted byspring breezes. They could not in any case just remain here indefinitely, staring at one another.
She gained her feet, less gracefully than she’d have liked because she’d been sitting for quite some time. The initial shock was fading a little. Only a very little.
“It isn’t only that for which I came, Isobel,” he said softly. “I wanted to see how the two of you have done. Or shall I now call you Mrs. Graham?”
A more formal address because they were no longer in France, caught in the strange crystalline intimacy that had bound them there.
“No.” Why could she not determine what best to do with her arms? “Isobel will do.” She crossed her arms and clasped hands to elbows, then uncrossed them and brushed at a spot on her skirt. How impossible that any ease had once existed between Nathaniel and herself, and yet memories of it were flooding her. “Although I suppose it must needs beMrs. Grahamif you are nowMr. Blackmore? Surely not Mr. Beaumont still. Or perhaps you now have some other name entirely?”
The left side of his mouth quirked upwards ever so slightly, and of a sudden the moment was easier, although not by much.
He shook his head. “Nathaniel. Unless your preference is Mr. Blackmore.”
Her choice in the matter, as ever he’d given her.
“Nathaniel,” she said decisively. “How did you find where exactly in Scotland we’d gone? I don’t remember saying anything about the cottage here.” And then smiled at her own words.
The left corner of his mouth kicked up again, further this time. “I’ve a few resources at my disposal,” he said drily.
“Of course you do.” She shook her head at herself and laughed. “Probably I’ll learn tomorrow that old Mr. Haffie who enjoys his pints at the Arms is one of your spies.” She sobered. “But as for finding me here on this particular rock, you must first have been to the cottage?”
“Your sister told me where I might find you, up the hill on the coast path. Something about flowers.”
“Tonn a’ chladaich.Sea thrift, it’s called in English,” she said distractedly. “I’m quite fond of them. Lucy knew you?”
“She knew me.”
She exhaled. What were Lucy’s thoughts upon seeing Nathaniel? She might not ever learn. Lucy kept every emotion close to her chest these days and other people at arm’s-length, even her own sister.
“I did have a hat at that point,” Nathaniel said. “She took it before directing me up here.”
“Did she now? She must expect you to return. Come, then. We will share our lunch with you.”
Isobel’s hair never had stayed in its pins. She wore no bonnet or cap, and the strong headwind whipped up loose tresses.
His fingers remembered the texture of it.
In a rose-colored gown, she looked part of the drifts of pink blossoms. She was no longer so thin as he remembered from Paris; her frame was rounder in places, and it suited her well. Healthy color painted her face. She was no longer the shade she’d named herself during that first memorable conversation in the fiacre.
She was beautiful. He couldn’t have removed his eyes from her for anything less than dire catastrophe. Maybe not even for that.
Was it a mistake coming here? A letter might have served as well or better for the news he carried. Would his presence only stir up reminders of a difficult chapter, one both sisters were no doubt endeavoring to forget? It had been a journey of some daysfrom Manchester on a series of mail coaches and other conveyances, making many stops and transfers along the way, to reach coastal Kirkcudbrightshire. Ample time, then, for him to question himself and his motives. This morning even, walking the half league or so from the Auchencairn Arms to the stone-fronted cottage that Isobel and Lucy shared.
He walked beside her now as the path allowed, following her where it did not. When they arrived, plates and cutlery were laid on the table, two of each.
