Page 3 of Unearthing the Smuggler's Heart
"One day," she promised. "One day, I will answer every question you have. But it cannot be tonight. Even now, the minutes are slipping past us."
Tick,said the clock in agreement.
"What must I do?" Jade replied, unable to fathom any other reaction she might choose just now.
"Gather the things you cherish most. Small things, ideally. I will take them with me so that they are not destroyed in the fire."
"The fire," Jade mouthed, her words barely a whisper.
“It will start in your mother’s room, at the bed. That means this section of rooms will be the first to catch, giving you the opportunity to play savior to your jailors as an additional testament to your innocence.” She broke off, frowning as she looked around the room. “It is fortunate that the guards’ sleeping quarters take up the opposite wing of this house, else we might have awakened them too.”
Jade could only nod. If they had come ten years earlier, it would not have been the case. The household only separated as she came of age, for the sake of her own virtue and propriety. This change had been made at the insistence of legal advocates whom she had never met and could not name.
"Do not fall asleep," Pauline Olivier warned. "Keep a dressing gown and shoes near, so that you might flee at the first scent of smoke. Cry out as you exit the house, wake the guards. We do not wish to harm anyone, but do not endanger yourself to save your captors. You must flee to the drive quickly and carefully. Do you understand?"
She nodded.
What else was there to do but nod? Even if she opened her mouth, she was not certain she had a thing to say.
She dutifully rose from her perch on the bed and made her way to the most sentimental items from her room, dropping them carefully into a small sack from her bureau: a scrap of needlepoint she'd made as a child, a cracked and faded portrait of her father and mother in their youth, and after a truly gut-wrenching deliberation, two chosen favorites from her collection of fans. The others sat in their basket, a mix of paper and fabric, wood and paste. Each was unique. Each had been painstakingly painted alongside her mother in their own special way. Each was a memory.
But she could not take them all, and so she’d chosen one from far in the past and one that was recent, and hoped she would not regret it later. The others would burn to ash and float away tonight, with all the other trappings of her life so far. The others were already lost.
She handed the bag to the older woman and dutifully retrieved her only pair of boots. She shivered when she slid the slippers off her feet and wondered if she ought to keep them, too, just in case. She stared at them, her hands gone slack on the laces of the boots.
"You will be well provided for," Pauline said softly. "Your guardian is a wealthy woman who owes your family a great debt. She will ensure that you live in comfort from this day on."
Jade nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat. She kept her gaze down as she tugged and tied at her laces. "May I say goodbye to my mother?" she asked.
"She is already gone," Pauline said, her voice thick with apology. "We could not risk upsetting her and raising a din. We could not risk failure. You will see your mother again. I swear to you that you will see her again. I know it is much to ask, but please, find it within yourself to be patient."
"Patient." Jade sighed, closing her eyes and summoning her mother's face. She willed herself to be calm, to look forward to this wealthy guardian and the great, black sea of the unknown future.
She reached for the clock on her bedside and held it out to the other woman. She watched it disappear into the sack and listened to the hurried final instructions from this stranger who was here to change everything.
She felt suspended, as though she were floating in deep, deep water, and that time had simply ceased to exist.
Soon, she was alone again, her eyes wide and focused on the uneven plaster of her bedroom ceiling, perhaps the most familiar sight in her entire life. She was floating in the embrace of the unknown, repeating the address of her new home in her mind over and over again, so that she would not slip back into slumber.
She breathed deeply, searching the air for the first scent of the flames.
She waited. Her heart racing, her lungs aching, her eyes pricking with tears of joy and of fear.
She waited.
Patience, she told herself,is the greatest of all virtues.
CHAPTER1
EASTER SUNDAY - TWO YEARS LATER
"You are staring."
Mathias Dempierre blinked, his vision swimming back into focus at the words of his dear friend.
He had been gazing across the lawn, through the tumult of playing children and piles of painted eggs, to a young woman in a yellow dress and bonnet, sitting near the house. He shook his head, willing his brain back into order, and shot Isabelle Applegate a smile and a shrug in apology.
"I am simply curious," he told her in his defense, winning laughter from both Isabelle and her husband, Peter, with whom Mathias currently shared a picnic blanket and a basket of fresh fruit. "Anyone would be!"
