Page 30 of Unearthing the Smuggler's Heart
"It truly is," Jade agreed with a bit of a frown. "I cannot imagine what my mother possibly had of value to leave for me, especially at the time when my parents were arrested. That was months after she had been shunned by her family and stripped of her dowry and inheritance. It is my understanding that they lived a modest life, with only so much as they needed."
"That is what I have always been told as well," Mathias said, tapping his chin. "But if Pauline had this thing of great importance, it might have been entrusted to her long before your mother actually eloped. She had to have had an inkling of how her family would react."
"Why was she disinherited?" Isabelle asked. "What sort of family does such a thing?"
"She married below her station in a public elopement that embarrassed my grandfather. It was quite the scandal at the time, to hear her tell it, and it divided her family right down the middle. My mother's elder brother and father were furious and stringently against the thing, going so far as to seek out a means of annulment, while my grandmother and youngest uncle were, at least according to the story I've been told, quietly supportive.
"My grandmother wrote letters to my mother and me until she passed away some years ago. She came to visit once, in secret while her husband was abroad, though I was too small to remember it."
"And the good uncle?" Isabelle asked, her expression flat. "The younger one?"
"Oh," she blinked back, a shaky little shrug emerging from her shoulders. "He died. The night of my parents' arrest."
There was a beat of silence in the room, with only the creak of the ship's wooden beams to mark the passage of time. Even Mathias looked curious, though surely he knew the story. He seemed to know everything.
Jade sighed, reaching for her wine and taking a deep drink before speaking. "My youngest uncle, Edward, had allegedly aided the Silver Leaf Society—known to the law as vagabond smugglers and ne'er-do-wells—in some mission. My grandfather would never have allowed him to be truly humiliated and tried for the crime, especially after so recent a scandal on the Benton name, but he wanted to teach Edward a lesson, and so he had him imprisoned for a time. My mother would not stand for it and staged a jailbreak to free him alongside my father and the Oliviers. All I know is that they failed, and Edward died in the process."
"Surely you asked your mother for more detail," Isabelle breathed, her hands clutched at her chest. "How could you not?"
Jade hesitated, almost confessing that shehad. She had asked those questions for far too long, until she'd realized the harm it was doing.
"It is a sad business," she told Isabelle, "and I did not like for my mother to think about or recall it. It often made her fits of confusion significantly worse, and the melancholy of the tragedy would strike her as if it had only happened moments ago."
This revelation put a cloud over the remainder of their supper, with only sparse details remaining regarding their plans upon the return of the skiff.
Isabelle yawned, stretching her arms over her head, and suggested that they retire, though in truth, Jade could not imagine getting a wink of sleep tonight.
"I will join you soon," she assured the other woman. "I am going to spend some time on the deck, watching the city lights. I am hoping it will calm my worries enough to allow me to rest."
She bade them goodnight and made her way to the now-extinguished trail of lanterns, still and cool in the night breeze. She inhaled deeply, resting her hands on the carved railing that separated them from the sea, and let her eyes drift off into the distance to marvel at the glitter of Marseille.
Every now and then, one of the lights on the horizon would vanish, often in a flicker of immediacy rather than the dull glow of an ember. She realized that from all this way away, she was seeing people going to sleep, blowing out their candles as their days ended.
She didn't hear Mathias approach. He might have been there all along for how quickly and silently he appeared next to her, his expression hooded and thoughtful.
"Captain?" she asked, pulling her eyes from the city to give him a questioning frown. "Are you well?"
Mathias nodded, though he appeared to be uncertain of exactly what he wished to say. His eyes were searching her face, as though in it he might find some indication of how to unburden himself. "I know the story," he finally said, "about Edward and all the rest."
"Yes, I thought you would," she replied in clear confusion.
"I know more about it than your mother told you," he clarified, sighing and looking away, as though the city in the distance was a safer place to lay his eyes than on her face.
She did not answer. What was there to say about that statement, other than to plead for the information he held? She would not plead. Asking would make no difference if Mathias Dempierre had already set his intent on the divulgence of this information.
"What happened was not about the Silver Leaf," he told her. "As far as I know, the Bentons never even knew the Silver Leaf existed, much less that your mother was involved with it, untilafterher arrest.
"Edward was only attempting to do the honorable thing by his sister. He wanted to ensure that she was provided for, no matter who she had married. They way he did this involved stealing from the late Lord Benton, his father, and passing the stolen goods on to Gerard Olivier, which would then be passed along to his sister. Unfortunately, Edward was not a very skilled thief.
"After all the dust had settled, the late Lord Benton explained his imprisonment of his youngest son as duty to the crown, having uncovered his involvement in espionage. At the time, he had only engineered for Gerard and Edward to be 'arrested' and left in confinement under guard for a few days, in the hopes of teaching them a lesson."
Jade exhaled sharply, anger at this grandfather she'd never known spiking in her heart. This had been a man who reveled in controlling those around him. She had known that much, but she had never been given such a stark example of it.
"No one knew exactly what was happening when the men suddenly vanished, and despite the other Silver Leaf members advising caution and patience, Pauline and Diane decided to take matters into their own hands to get their loved ones back. Your mother quickly uncovered her father's plot and set about the intention of capsizing it."
"Of course," Jade whispered. "Of course she did."
"That was the real tragedy, I think," Mathias added with a frown. "Your grandfather was a mean and prickly bastard, but this whole affair was meant to be a ruse, with no harm done. The mistake he'd made was hiring proper guards at the little holding cell where the men were kept and not telling them much about their duties beyond guarding prisoners. When they were freed, they were then viciously pursued over the rocky terrain.
