Page 58 of Unearthing the Smuggler's Heart
"Oh, my baby," cried Diane Ferris, rushing forward and opening her arms to meet her daughter's embrace. She held her with strength she had never before displayed to her daughter, her shaking hands stroking Jade’s hair. "My baby. My Jade. My little girl. Oh, you're here! How are you here?!"
Jade could only hold her for a moment, gripping her tightly and breathing deeply of her mother's familiar scent. She would have thought she'd want to hold this embrace for hours, but it lasted only a moment, as though the racing of her heart could not abide the stillness.
She was unable to resist pushing back again, holding her mother by the shoulders and gazing with wonder into her face. She looked incredible, awake and vital and sohappy.There was a sharpness to her gaze, a presence that struck Jade in her chest like a hammer on ice, shattering something that had frozen over so long ago that she had come to believe it was simply a part of her—simply a part of the world she must live in.
Diane Ferris seemed just as eager to return the examination, her fingers winding through the loose tresses around Jade's face, her chin quivering with emotion. "Oh, my baby," she said again, her voice cracking with the strength of her feelings. "Every morning I wake and pray that today will be the day you come back to us. Every morning. And today, you came! You are here!"
"I am!" Jade agreed, a laugh bubbling up from beneath her tears, evidently contagious as her mother began to laugh too, swiping at her cheeks. "I’m here! And I've brought... I've..." She trailed off, her eyes drawn to the man who stood quietly behind her mother.
His eyes were softly trained upon her, also wet with tears. He was a far cry from the cracked miniature portrait her mother had kept on the sideboard, but she would have known him anyhow. She would have recognized herself in his face, she thought as her hands slid from her mother's arms. She would have felt the love in his gaze.
He made no move toward her, content just to drink her in with his eyes if that was all she wished. He was smiling beneath the soft brown beard, his hands clasped in front of him, where he held his cane to the ground.
She lifted her hand toward him, uncertain of exactly what to do, of what was right.
Should she wait for an introduction? Should she allow him to speak first?
She found that she could not wait to see what was appropriate. From deep within her, in the cracked ice that had sheltered the most tender secrets of her soul, the voice of Jade as a child rose in a mighty swell, and escaped from her lips with a raw call for her father.
"Papa," she cried as she threw herself forward, wrapping her arms around his neck, too consumed with the things erupting out from the hidden parts of her heart to think further than this, to do anything more than hold onto him.
She shattered.
Randall Ferris held his daughter as she sobbed, her tears mingling with the raindrops that dampened his shoulder.
She cried the tears she had held locked tight, darker than her shadow and deeper than any secret she had ever held. She felt the things she did not know she had denied herself, heaving deep, shaking breaths as she clung to the parent that the world had kept from her. She borrowed his strength in a moment when her own had failed her.
Her mother joined them, winding an arm around Jade's waist, and for a while, the three of them simply held each other with all the fury and strength of any storm that might rage beyond the door.
CHAPTER26
It had not taken long for the evening to evolve into a celebration, with a truly copious amount of Spanish food and drink spread out over a long, ornate dining table in a central, roofed plaza lit by lion head sconces secured to the bricks. The rain continued to drum against the earth all around them as conversation bubbled along throughout the table, growing warmer and more familiar with every new dish.
Mathias had allowed himself to become engrossed with the simple pleasure of watching Jade from across the table. She had been coaxed out from the veil of her tears, plied with sweet sangria and tales of the past until she could no better hide that elusive smile of hers than she could tear herself away from her mother and father.
They had gathered around the silver box that had been retrieved from Marseille. While the bank notes were treated with the proper reverence, it was the sentimental items that were the true draw of the spectacle. Diane Ferris took her time unveiling each precious item with an expression on her pretty face of ecstatic disbelief. She fawned at length over a little note from her own mother written alongside a tuppence coin.
“Oh, Pauline,” she’d said with tears in her eyes. “I can’t believe you went back for this. I can’t believe you kept it so long!”
“It was the least we could do,” Pauline had replied, equally moved. “I wouldn’t leave England until we’d retrieved it.”
Jade was still wearing the coral beads around her throat, a fact which was commented upon with great favor when the box was finally repacked and put away in favor of more libations.
“Those were my mother’s,” Randall told her. “She gave them to Diane to wear on our wedding day. Something borrowed. They look very well on you.”
“Because, my love,” Diane had replied affectionately, “she was born to wear them.”
At some juncture, a man with a guitar had appeared and begun to play, seemingly harmonizing with the percussive beats of the rainfall. Was he a servant? A friend of the family's? A random passerby? It did not seem to matter. The role of the servants in this household was nebulous bordering on casual, and Mathias found that the atmosphere it created was exceptionally welcoming.
The maid who had been so startled by them when they'd first entered the house had already chided Isabelle for not trying a dish of fried, shredded vegetables in a white sauce, using mostly pointing to get her thoughts across, and when Isabelle still demurred, the maid snatched up a morsel from Isabelle's plate and ate it in front of her to ensure that she understood what the intended purpose of said food was. This got raucous laughter all around, and when Isabelle did finally try the dish with a sheepish shrug, she had found she liked it so much that she asked for two more servings!
"It is as though all of us are together again, in a way," Diane Ferris had said wistfully. "Mary and Therese have sent their children. We are only missing Zelda!"
"Oh, Zelda's bloodline is here as well," Isabelle told them, gesturing at her midsection. "As we've only recently learned. I married her nephew, you see, and now we are expecting."
This had caused another flurry of excitement, another round of toasts, and a demand for Isabelle's favorite dessert so that its best approximation could be created by the chef to celebrate. Mathias had thought she'd shy away from this kind of attention on her pregnancy, but she was in high spirits, and eager to accept all of the advice about babies and parenthood and managing Zelda Smith as a family member that could be mustered.
Their party did not begin to break apart until the night had grown so deep that morning threatened to overtake it. Isabelle went first, offering profuse apologies for her lack of staying power. The maid who took her to the room kept repeating the phrasela parterato Diane and Pauline while gesturing to their guest, and from the responses, Mathias gleaned that she had a midwife in mind for Isabelle to speak to, now that she was safely ashore.
