Page 24 of Unearthing the Smuggler's Heart
Images of him flashed in her mind. The dimples in his cheeks, the careless way he ruffled his hair, beads of water on his bare torso in a room smelling of rosemary. She took a long, deep breath and gave herself a shake. This would not do.
Isabelle was sitting on the floor, examining the mess she'd left behind of notes and opened fans, and had mercifully not bothered to look up to examine her bunkmate upon entry. She appeared completely absorbed in the notebook, which Jade assumed was quite incomprehensible to anyone but herself and her mother. Isabelle, however, seemed unfazed.
She was still rumpled from her nap, with her hair in a messy braid down her back and her blue skirt a bit worse for the wear. If any distress was caused by her disarray, it was undetectable. "I've seen this before," she said to Jade, as though they were continuing a conversation already long in progress. "In my mother's things, she had fans just like this, with hidden symbols in the crooks."
"It's a cipher," Jade said, immediately grateful for the opportunity to talk about anything but what she had just experienced. She suspected Isabelle would have many opinions about the matter, and she was not yet prepared to hear them. "My mother created it when they were at finishing school, and refined it over the years with the Silver Leaf. The ones on the right are matched pairs, the holes in the one work like a grille on the other. Zelda said that I'd need to read the ciphers to complete our mission, and I'm afraid I've grown rather rusty in the last two years."
"I love this," Isabelle said excitedly, coming to her feet with one of the fans in her grasp. "Were you sending coded messages out from house arrest this entire time? What do these fans say?"
Jade stifled the urge to laugh, shaking her head. "They were just a game I'd play with my mother. We would hide things around the house, create puzzles for one another, leave clues. It was a means to keep our minds sharp in the drudgery. I'm afraid it is not very exciting at all."
"Oh, but that sounds delightful. I would love to learn," Isabelle said, a flash of energy seeming to grip her, even in her clothes still rumpled from her nap. "What is a grille?"
"Here," Jade said, extending her arm for the notepad, which Isabelle readily supplied. She flipped backward in it until she found what she was looking for, a scrawl in her mother's handwriting, describing how her roses flourished in the spring. Jade knelt and picked up an orange fan from the floor, which was scattered throughout with little lace-like holes in apparent decoration, and beckoned Isabelle over to her side. "If you hold a grille to a coded letter, you will see that the holes in the faux lace line up with words sprinkled throughout the letter, revealing a hidden message. Both the reader and the writer must have identical grilles for this to work, and it often takes several tries to make a letter look natural with the coded words sprinkled throughout.”
Isabelle was wide-eyed and hovered over Jade's shoulder, watching as she slid the fan into place to match up with what appeared to be idle doodles at the top of the page. It transformed the message from idle prattling about a garden to a directive.
"The coin is hidden in the farthest bush east," Isabelle read, unbridled delight in her voice. "Oh, I must start writing letters this way. Two messages in one!"
"It is very time consuming," Jade replied with faint amusement, handing the notebook and the fan back to her bunkmate. "There are a few more letters in that book written by my mother when she was teaching me. She'd hide a copper somewhere and once I'd cracked her codes, I could keep it. The grilles were the easiest ones."
"I wonder if one of these fans fits the things I found of my mother's," Isabelle pondered.
"If they looked like the symbols I was studying earlier, it isn't as simple as a grille. It is likely a combination of two methods, as my mother was wont to do. I believe she said Mary was always fond of the Caesar shift cipher."
"What an odd thing to be fond of," Isabelle replied happily, giving a little start and squeak as another roll of thunder boomed outside the door. "Goodness, that was a loud one."
"I saw a tree struck by lightning once, from very far away," Jade commented, passing the other woman and seating herself on the unmade bed. She gave a little shudder, remembering the crack and shine of that moment, formidable, even from the safety of her bedroom window. "It didn't catch fire like you'd think, it simply charred and split the thing in two in the blink of an eye. I can only hope that the ship does not attract the storm's attention in the same way."
"It had better not! It never has before."
Jade nodded, kicking her slippers off and drawing her knees up to her chest. She didn't say so, but she thought that perhaps she had already been struck.
* * *
The storm had tossedthem about for the better part of three hours, leaving both women nauseated and anxious. Neither dared believe that it had ended, even when a crewman knocked on their door to call them to supper.
Jade, rather more green than usual, suggested linking arms lest either of them slump dead away into a mess of rattled bones on the walk, which had made Isabelle laugh in the most gratifying way. Jade wondered if she had the capacity to be amusing, in the way some women staked their popularity among Society in London. Zelda always spoke very highly of ladies with a cutting wit, saying they were best prepared for the gauntlet that was theton.
Mathias was amusing. Anyone would say so. But Jade did not think that the amusing things he said would have quite the same impact if she repeated them. Perhaps that was simply by merit of being a woman, though a niggling part of her, deep in her mind, suggested that perhaps it was because the captain was a singular man, talented in ways that no one could imitate, no matter how hard they tried.
The thought put a lump in her throat, a sudden buzz of worry awakening in her chest at seeing him again after they'd...well, aftershehad behaved as she had. Why had she told him about Edgar? Why would she tellanyoneabout kissing a man who had been instructed on keeping her mother prisoner? They had both been so young, and so very stupid. He must have realized it sooner than she, for one day he simply ceased to be a guard at her home, and she never saw him again.
She had always thought she'd take that memory to the grave. The grave was where it belonged.
Gangly, awkward Edgar, whose kisses had felt dry and cool against her lips. It was nothing like these other kisses. Nothing at all. And oh, how her younger self had mourned his departure.
Humiliating.
Mathias entered the galley in dry clothes with wet hair. He looked almost enlivened by the storm, the amber in his eyes sparking like little bolts of electricity. He wore a wide grin that Jade knew had more to do with the invigoration of fighting the elements than her presence. Still, she almost wanted to grin back.
"Evening!" he boomed, dropping into his chair with a clap of his hands. "I could eat a horse."
"If not for Jade, you very well might be eating a horse tonight," Isabelle clipped back. "I, for one, findchevalrepulsive."
"Oh, no, there was plenty of meat," Jade protested, her voice sounding meek and damp against the clear and jolly tones of her companions. It got her a sidelong look from Isabelle. "Nocheval."
"Humph."
