Page 14 of Unearthing the Smuggler's Heart
He missed the hammock.
CHAPTER6
To Jade's pleasant surprise, Isabelle followed her to the pantry, chattering away as though they were lifelong friends in dire need of a catch-up. For Jade, who always wondered exactly what one should say to someone she wishes to befriend, it seemed that Isabelle's tactic was to speak of nothing at all, commenting on the surroundings, the temperature, and the taste of the coffee.
She stood in wait for instructions once they'd reached their destination, and had confessed with a crooked smile that she had never been much use at organizing anything.
"Our larder in Oxford is really more like a pile of things that we're both hoping stays fresh," she said, running her fingers down the dusty label on a jar of fruit preserves. "I can't believe these jams are still here. I suppose the entire point is that they keep, isn't it?"
"One can hope," Jade replied with a shrug. "I think the first thing to do is just to pull everything in here down and separate the items into type. If you want to start over there and see to the canned and jarred foods, I will go to the back and deal with the fresh meat and produce."
Isabelle nodded, still looking rather thoughtful as she examined the dusty jar.
For the next hour or so, they worked in companionable silence. It hadn't escaped Jade's notice that the other woman frequently paused in her work and threw sidelong, curious looks her way, but without knowing exactly what was garnering her interest, Jade thought it best to feign ignorance for the sake of simplicity, but the longer her glances went unacknowledged, the more restless Isabelle Applegate appeared to become.
Her little gatherings of jars and cans looked like mock armies, preparing for a sortie. Each was shaped roughly into an arrow pointing at the other. They weren't very large, but Jade suspected that the other woman saw no reason to rush anything at all, ever.
Jade's mood was rather buoyant this morning. It wasn't just making such pleasant acquaintance with the ship's cook, though to be certain she had taken an immediate liking to Mr. Tennyson. Something about the complete shock her innocuous bit of housekeeping had caused their swaggering, unflappable captain made her want to spin around in glee.
What a strange feeling. She had never taken pleasure in antagonism before, and it certainly was not born of a dislike of the man. So why was his stunned face and incredulous tone making her giddy?
"You don't say much, do you?" Isabelle finally blurted out, touching her fingers to her bottom lip as though it was too late to catch the words and shove them back inside. She gave an apologetic little laugh, and elaborated, "I find you quite enigmatic."
"Me?" Jade replied, genuinely startled, a mesh bag of battered-looking stone fruits suspended in her fist. "I assure you I am not."
"I assure you that you are," Isabelle returned with a grin. Her French accent seemed more pronounced when she was feeling playful. "For example, when you took your hair down last night for bed, I had to instruct myself not to stare. What a glorious mane! And then to my delight and surprise, you did not hide it again this morning!"
Jade sat the bag of fruits in their proper pile. Her area looked more like a selection of siege towers, she thought, glancing between one and the other. She raised her fingers to the strands of hair that sat on her shoulder, suddenly wondering if she shouldn't have.
"Zelda made me wear it up," she confessed, "but when we were under house arrest, I always wore it loose or just bound in a ribbon at my neck. It is more natural to me, even these years later."
"It is beautiful," Isabelle assured her, sitting back on her heels and toying with the tail of her own braid. "Like strips of silk at an exotic market."
Jade almost laughed, turning it into more of a clearing of her throat. "It has always been quite unkempt, to tell you the truth. When Zelda insisted on styling it as was proper for a woman in public, she also bought me a balm to tame all the frizz. As you can see, it only partially works. It's still quite a hive of chaos."
"Beautiful chaos," Isabelle agreed. "I am just so very curious about you. I expected someone far more...wounded, I suppose? A girl raised in captivity seemed to me the perfect recipe for a woman consumed by her rage and grief."
Jade blinked at her. Even her brash spinster guardian had not been so direct in her speech.
"I was not resentful of our lot," Jade said softly. "My mother needed me. If I'd wanted to leave, I could have."
"Oh?"
"Yes, of course. My mother even tried to send me to a boarding school once, when I was a girl. I hated it and insisted on being sent home within days of being apart from her. It took nearly three months before they finally let me go." She hesitated, uncertain if she should share the personal details of this story, even with someone so open and gregarious. The patient, unblinking gaze of the other woman's hazel eyes seemed completely without affront, fascinated, even. "When I came back to the house, my mother had wilted, barely leaving her bed, barely taking her food. She was...confused about where and when she was. I could not leave again."
Isabelle frowned. "That is too great a burden for a child," she said. "Even for a woman grown, it is too much to bear alone."
"Perhaps," Jade said with a sigh, "but there was no one but me, and if nothing else, it instilled my young self with purpose and determination.
"You know, my mother is a brilliant woman, particularly with numbers. She had some renown of her own in her youth, and to hear her tell it, published a few well-received academic papers under my father's name. He was an academic himself, you know...or perhaps still considers himself so, even after his confinement.
“My father was intelligent and passionate, but my mother's genius goes beyond the simple instruction of a good education. It is something God given, inherent...staggering, truly. I was in better hands under her tutelage than I would have been under a whole host of schoolmistresses and tutors, and giving her a purpose to her day-to-day living brought the color back into her cheeks and the life back into her limbs. It was not a bad life."
Isabelle did not respond, lowering her gaze for a moment to the sawdust-covered planks beneath her. She took a shuddering breath that spoke more of her feelings on this matter than any expression of horror might have.
Jade pressed her lips together and turned back to the shelf of food behind her, certain she'd just alienated a potential friend with her sad and bleak story, her overexpression of unpleasant reality far too early in their acquaintance. She'd been well educated in numbers and letters, but knew she was still very much wanting in areas of human connection.
"You are in good company," came a quiet voice, Isabelle's voice. "Mathias and I, I mean. But also in your friendship with Gigi and Kit and even steely Zelda Smith, there is understanding you will not find elsewhere. The Silver Leaf has taken much from us. Too much."
