Page 52 of Unmasking the Silver Heiress
It was the truth.
There was a beat of silence, but she did not stop moving her hand, stroking it over the breadth of his chest in the most soothing way. She did not recoil or condemn him, nor did she murmur assurances that he surely didn't feel that way deep down. She was a woman who could comprehend the complexity of people and find a spark in the tangle to nurture. That was what he had seen tonight, when she had moved so easily amongst the party-goers, laughing with strangers as though they were old friends.
"What is Jamaica like?" she asked, nuzzling her cheek into the crook of his shoulder, sliding one of her legs over one of his in a gift of shared warmth.
He smiled, the feeling bittersweet. "If you had seen the beaches of Jamaica, you would never have stared so lovingly at the chilly English sea. It is a paradise of sun and golden sand. The water is pleasant rather than cold when it laps at your bare feet, and its color is vibrant turquoise. I wish I had been there with happier business to attend, for when I think about it now, it seems like a place one might spend a lifetime free of worries."
"No place is like that," she said, and he could feel the curve of a smile against his chest. "People are the same, rain or shine, and no matter how far you run, you can't escape yourself."
"True enough," he allowed. "But some problems are less daunting in paradise. It took me some time to track down exactly where my uncle was serving, and inquiries had to be made delicately so that I could resolve the situation without a scandal. It was too late, however, by the time I was given answers. Perhaps the sun drove him over the edge of his own sanity or perhaps his body could no longer tolerate the stress of his mind, but less than a week before I arrived, he had been found in his bed, cold and gone."
He sighed at the horrified gasp she gave, holding her tighter into his side. "It was the strangest thing," he told her. "Everyone at this plantation described him in glowing terms. The children of the African slaves called him 'grandfather,' and the women praised his gentleness with the little ones. The other white men, English and Irish indentured, described him as cheerful and warm. From all accounts, shackled to a life of slave labor, he was briefly at peace and then he departed the mortal coil. Perhaps for a moment, he was happy."
"Perhaps," Nell agreed. "It is hard to avoid happiness entirely, after all, just as it is hard to avoid sadness entirely."
"I brought him home in a casket and we buried him between the cherry trees," Nate continued. "He had forbidden us for years from going into Meridian House, insisting it was full of evil and regret. On some level, I must have agreed with him, because when I rode away from Kent after the burial, I thought I should never return again. Now, I can't help but wonder if he believed the house was cursed or if he simply didn't want us to discover how much he'd stolen over the years."
He gave a dry chuckle, though there was no humor in it. He felt suddenly uncertain about having launched into such a dark tirade, especially in the wake of such beautiful intimacy. "I suppose I should have begun with something lighter as an introduction into my private life," he said apologetically. "It is late, and I did not properly consider which story to tell."
"It is a story that answers many of my questions," she replied, tilting her head up to look at him in the dark. "I thank you for trusting me with it, Nathaniel."
"I find you unseemly trustworthy, Miss Applegate," he whispered, leaning down to capture her lips in a little kiss before he corrected himself to, "Nell."
For a time, he thought they might drift off to sleep like this, entwined under the coverlet, with some of the truth exposed between them. Her body, however, did not slacken into the surrender of rest. It was almost as though he could hear the whirring in her mind as she explored the story he told, assembling it, searching it, making sense of it.
It was no surprise when she spoke again.
"My aunt had the keys to Meridian," she recalled, "and you did not seem surprised by that, only irritated."
He sighed, knowing he had walked her directly into this realization. It was his own fault for not thinking it through. "They were friends," he decided to say, because it was true. "Lady Dempierre, my mother, your aunt, and two other ladies, evidently, were dear friends.
"I did not know until the day the Dempierre women surprised us with their visit. She told me a story about a winter they passed together in this house and how they would create the illusion of starlight by gathering in the dining room and lighting dozens of candles, which would refract the light off the silver gilt leafing on the ceiling. Nell, they called themselves the Silver Leaf Society. My mother was one of them."
"That makes sense," Nell replied, her tone suggesting a quick acceptance of this explosive revelation. She sounded as though this information was mundane and did not shock her to her core. "My aunt built her fortune and her independence through means no one has ever been quite clear on. She has also told me more than once that information is the most valuable contraband, and much easier to get past a customs officer than valuables."
"Your aunt is a smuggler?" he replied, aghast. The woman was a blackmailer and possibly a murderess, so naturally he should expect a longer list of crimes. Still, he had not expected it.
"Nathaniel," Nell said, lifting herself up so that she could look him in the eye. "What did you think the Silver Leaf Society was when you decided to join?"
He hesitated, caught in his own folly and surprise. "I assumed it was a branch of our parliamentary espionage operations," he admitted. "One of many active groups working in the shadows to impact the sway of the war."
She tilted her head, squinting at him in obvious befuddlement. "I am confused," she said slowly. "My aunt told me you had been asking questions about us, which led me to believe you knew exactly the nature of our business. I thought your inquiries were the reason I was tasked to deliver that invitation to you. If your mother was a founding member, and you knew that, why not go visit my aunt directly?"
"I did not know her identity," he said, thoroughly rid of any thought of sleep by the dull panic that had begun to scrape at his throat. "Her moniker was one of the things my uncle repeated many times over the years. Lady Silver did not play a coherent or consistent role in his ramblings, but he said her name enough that I felt compelled to investigate."
"And she sent us to meet the Dempierres," Nell added, dropping back down to his side. "When instead, she could have explained everything to us in half an hour over tea that day in London. Sometimes, I could strangle her. Please accept my apologies on her behalf."
Nathaniel would never say so, but the immense relief he felt in that moment, that her irritation was geared at Zelda Smith and not him, was dizzying. She yawned, curling a hand against his heart, and murmured something of a good night, assuring him that they would talk more on the morrow.
He stared up at the ceiling, a great deal of questions buzzing in his mind that he had been ignoring with wondrous success for the last weeks. He had batted away the stirring of uncertainties about his goals of revenge and exposure. He had assured himself that Nell would understand, once the truth was revealed.
What did you think the Silver Leaf was?
Her question hovered over him. She hadn't confirmed nor denied his assumption about its purpose, but the way she had squinted at him made him wonder if he was missing a great deal of information. Considering how surprised he had been by Lady Dempierre's reminiscing, he likely was woefully underinformed.
It was, perhaps, apt that he had conjured the ghost of Uncle Archie tonight. For the first time in his life, he understood what it meant to doubt your own reality.
Chapter 23
