Page 92 of The Spy and the Nightingale
A shaky plan, in that she and Lucy were both emotionally fragile at that point. For her, everything had finally come crashing down all at once after she was safely away from France with Lucy. If her grief-filled, gasping-for-air, crying jag in Amélie’s bathtub had been the initial small detonation, well, there were several much larger ones after leaving France.
“Nathaniel is a man to whom duty means a good deal,” she said to Lucy. “It would not be out of character for him to take such responsibility.”
“You know there is more to it.” Lucy made a small, amused sound under her breath. “But I will not pry. Both of you, it seems, would prefer to dance entirely around the subject.”
So Lucy had discussed it with Nathaniel? They did walk together fairly often. She did not know the content of their discussions, but Lucy and Nathaniel had developed a friendshipof sorts; it warmed her, seeing his darker head bent towards her lighter hair as they set out from the cottage. Perhaps Lucy felt freer to speak of certain matters with him than she did her own sister.
Had it not been much the same for her, that week in France? Even now, there were subjects she did not feel she could share with Lucy but which she discussed with Nathaniel, free of judgment and without risk of upsetting Lucy. It wouldn’t surprise her if Lucy felt similarly about conversing with Nathaniel. His quiet strength invited it.
Very little moved Lucy strongly one way or another anymore. Outwardly, at least. She suspected it was not that her sister was incapable of deep emotion but had for some reason, conscious or otherwise, throttled her access to them.
She understood intimately, although the cause was different. She’d done the same in the months after Jamie’s death. Until she’d met Nathaniel, that was. She did littlethesedays but dwell on matters relating to him. It was rather exhausting. Lucy’s periodic insights often added new dimensions to her musings, not always welcome ones.
As she’d told Lucy, Nathaniel put great stock in both duty and honor. It was not duty that had passed between them last autumn, however. She’d hardly dared consider at the time what else it had the potential to be besides unthinking passion, but she did so now.
They’d scarce touched this past month save for that kiss.
She wanted to go to him but did not quite dare.
Chapter 27
“There’s acèilidhtomorrow night at the Arms, a community gathering,” Isobel informed Nate one particularly lovely afternoon. She’d brought him a cool drink as he worked, staying to talk, which had turned to another walk upon the heugh. “Although likely you’ll have heard that.”
“Aye.” He’d become friendly with some of the men. They’d been suspicious of him at first, showing up out of the blue like he had and English besides. Protective of Isobel and Lucy, mainly, who’d been embraced into the tight-knit community despite not having grown up in it. But as time wore on, he’d proved himself to them. Evenings sharing pints and swapping stories had gone a ways towards that. He couldn’t speak of the years between Badajoz and Compton’s death, but he found he had stories of his own to contribute from the two decades of his life before that.
“It’s a musical evening,” Isobel told him. “Or rather, there will be music. Those who play are encouraged to bring instruments.”
“I am sorry to disappoint you,” he said drily, “but I haven’t an instrument to bring.”
Her laugh was merry. “You’re more than welcome anyway. Likely I will sing. I so wish that Lucy would...” Her mouth flattened, then tipped down at the corners.
“Would sing?” he guessed.
“I’ve always been the one to sing,” she said. “Da’s nightingale. But Lucy can play the fiddle beautifully. Or could. She has not touched it since our return from France. She will not. And she will not say why. I have not tried to force the issue, although it has been hard. I’ve wondered...”
“You’ve wondered . . .?” he asked gently.
She startled; she’d been lost in her thoughts sufficient to forget him momentarily. “I’ve wondered if it has to do with music being something we shared with Maman and Da. It was such a large part of our childhood. A happy part. Maman had quite a lovely voice, which it turns out passed to me, at least somewhat. Da was partial to fiddle music, although he was no proficient.” She was smiling again, fondly. “But Lucy... She picked up a fiddle one day as a young child, and it was clear from the start that she had a gift for it, something inborn that couldn’t be taught. Until I married and left home, she and I would regularly perform together at entertainments. She would play, and I would sing. They are dear memories, and I only wish— But that’s it, I believe. She will not speak of Maman’s and Da’s deaths, which came while she was... gone. And she will have nothing to do with music now.”
“Perhaps with time.” He wished he had more to offer than rote words.
“Perhaps.” She looked unconvinced. “They do say time heals all wounds. Or is it that time changes all?” She gave a soft laugh. “I suppose it all amounts to the same thing in the end. My own wounds, such as they were, are healing, so perhaps in time hers will as well.”
He hoped so, for both their sakes.
“Iamhealing. I no longer have near so many nightmares,” she said. “A sign of moving on from that period of my own life, don’t you think? There is still the occasional one, still just as dreadful when it comes, but they have come less and less frequently.”
“I am glad to hear it.” Holding her, waking with her after her nightmare, had been the beginning of his emotional...awakening, he supposed one might call it for lack of a better word. It had softened him. Or maybe it had only revealed some softness already there that he’d thought long gone after the grueling years with the Rifles and what followed.
“Perhaps someday they will stop altogether.” She paused. “I have remembered more than once your kindness. The comfort and understanding you lent me. And those memories bring me some comfort still, when the nightmares come.”
He might have said truthfully that it was his pleasure, then and now, but it would have been a strange comment and didn’t quite fit the tenor of the conversation. He didn’t wish to leave her words unacknowledged, but he wasn’t sure what to say.
She spoke before he could, smiling a little. “Do you know, it was the first I’d not felt fundamentally alone in some time. Waking with you that morning after I’d had such terrible dreams.”
It was that for him too. That, exactly. Waking with her in his arms. Liking it for no other reason than that holding her had brought him peace. “Aye,” he said softly. “I could say the same.”
Birds were wheeling and diving in the sky, far out over the firth. He tracked them for a time before asking something he’d wondered at since the conversation that morning when she told him of Jamie’s death.
