Page 57 of Unearthing the Smuggler's Heart
Yes, they had just come from Marseille. Yes, they had the dowry box. Yes, therehadbeen trouble getting it, and yes the townhouse was very much now occupied by someone else.
All the while, rain battered down ever heavier on the terracotta roof above them.
Jade stared after another maid, who fled at an impressive gait after delivering their second kettle of tea. That maid likely knew exactly where to hide. Surely there was somewhere in this home where one could find a bit of silence and sanity, even if the Oliviers lived here.
The only mercy was Mathias's willingness to field all of the questions and the abridged version of the journey they'd taken to arrive here, on this particular day. Well, that and the honey bread, which was exquisite.
Jade simply resigned herself to watch, attempting to absorb as much of the conversation as possible, half of which was in French far too rapid for her untrained ear. All the while, she found herself casting glances at every corner and turning at the creak of every footstep that came near. Surely all this ado would alert her parents to visitors. Surely they would appear at any moment, and she must be ready to receive them.
She found her hands were shaking too badly to handle her teacup, and so she set it down with a frown, turning her hands over in her lap to observe the way they tremored.
"They'll be along shortly, my dear," said Gerard Olivier, whose voice somehow found her, clear as a bell, through the melee of sound. "They're likely just delayed by the rain."
She blinked up at him, drawing a sharp little breath through her lips at this revelation. "Where have they gone?" she heard herself asking.
Suddenly, it was quiet again. The others had turned their heads to her like a flock of owls, curiosity fully piqued. Her voice had been unimpeded by the others and her question hung soft in the air, alerting everyone to her distress.
She resisted the urge to groan, clenching her hands in her lap. Somehow the silence and staring was worse than the chaos that had preceded it.
"They've opened a schoolhouse," Gerard explained, sipping so daintily at his tea that Jade might have been convinced he hadn't intended to silence the room, had his eyes not sparkled with a keen awareness of it. "It's a small little thing, but they've got a whole brood of village children who arrive every morning, eager as you please."
"Oh," Jade managed, something twanging in her heart with a sweet, distant ache.
"We all found ways to occupy ourselves after we settled," Pauline added gently. "The school has been a labor of devotion and love for your parents."
"A school," Jade repeated, nodding. "Yes, I suppose that is right. My mother is a natural tutor."
"Randall was ever the teacher," Pauline said to Isabelle, whose hand she had taken into her own at some point during their settling into tea. "And Diane was ever the scholar. They are a formidable team, admired excessively by our fellow townsfolk. Their accomplishments make the two of us feel quite barmy in our old age sometimes."
Gerard snorted, returning to his tea.
"So my mother is...well?" Jade asked, uncertain if her hesitancy in that question would be read as tact or doubt.
"She has mostly good days," Diane replied with a little nod of understanding. "She keeps to her schedule and relies quite a lot on your father, but of course nothing and no one is perfect. We all have days when we are not at our best, and Di is no exception to that. She will be ever so pleased to see you, my sweet girl. She speaks of you often."
And my father?
She pressed her lips together, wondering if she could gather the courage to ask, and if she did, if there was any sort of answer that the people in this room could provide her. Almost as though to stop her from doing such an ill-advised thing, a din sounded from the entry, voices and the slapping of footsteps and the howl of wind as the door was fought shut again.
She was standing before she'd made the decision to do so, and though there were voices speaking at her back, she could not force herself to make sense of the things they were saying. Her feet would not be stopped. Her heart was pulling her now, and there was no overpowering a force like that. The others would simply have to follow if they wished to.
Had she made note of the route they had taken to the sitting room? She must have, for she was cutting a decisive path back. There was no hesitation in her trajectory, and she rounded the final corner just as her sensibilities seemed to return to her, slamming her to a halt opposite a sight she had dreamed about since childhood.
Her parents. Together.
Her mother looked like a woman reborn. All the hollows and paleness that had characterized Diane Ferris’s person for all of Jade's life had gone, replaced with a healthy glow and rounded cheeks. She was smiling widely, in a way usually reserved for the opening of her Christmas gift every year and very little beyond.
She was wearing a bright crimson rather than her muted rotation of English dresses in which Jade had always seen her. This was a bright, celebratory red, tailored to fit her mother and enhance her beauty. It was stunning, even spattered as it was from the storm. Her long, brown hair was twisted over her shoulder in an effort to wring out the rain.
Behind her, still chuckling at whatever had passed beyond the front door, was Randall Ferris, a man whose face she had only ever seen on a canvas, captured some years before her own birth. He walked with a wooden cane and had grown a beard since the days of that painting. His hair was the same gentle sable color as Jade's, and the wrinkles around his eyes crinkled deeply as he assisted his wife with her wet parasol, taking it from her and shaking droplets from it onto the shiny tile floor.
He was the one who saw her first. His eyes shifted to the figure in the hall, his expression sliding into disbelief. He straightened, dropping the parasol to the floor with a clatter, and in a rasp, he said her name.
"Jade."
Her mother gasped, snapping around from where she'd been fussing with her things, her hands coming up to her mouth as her eyes found her daughter as well.
"Mama," Jade managed, stumbling forward, weak with the thundering of her heart. "Mama."
