by C. J. Archer
She had to get back. Had to take care of Old Man Shawe and be with Nick so he would know she still loved him.
"Let’s go," she said, striding off.
"Wait!" He caught her cloak and she stopped. "I have a salve to deliver to a customer."
"Out here?" Although they occasionally delivered to regular customers too frail to frequent the shop, she didn’t know of any who lived as far as Norton Folgate.
"I was coming this way later after the shop closes anyway," he said, shrugging. "The man’s servant came by earlier and asked if I could deliver it today. His master is ailing and is desperate for his potion."
She nodded. "You deliver it and I’ll return to the shop."
"No". He caught her arm, his grip hard. "He needs some advice too. So his servant said. He probably won’t trust me since I’m only an apprentice." He said it with a sneer, as if his status in life had begun to gnaw at him. If he’d been a better apprentice then perhaps he would already have become an apothecary in his own right. Perhaps it wasn't the best time to tell him that.
"Very well," she said with a sigh. "Let’s be quick. Which way?"
He took one of her bags and led her off the main road and down a muddy lane. Not even the pale sunlight reached into the narrow space between the overhanging upper stories of the buildings lining both sides of the lane.
"Are you sure he lives down here?" she asked, wrinkling her nose against the stench of human and animal waste.
"Over there." He pointed to a door in the depths of the shadows and stepped carefully through the muck towards it.
Isabel followed, willing him to hurry so they could leave and return to the shop.
"Can you knock while I retrieve the potion?" he said.
She lifted her hand to the door but before she could knock something hard hit the back of her head. Pain ripped through her skull, down her neck and back. She tried to turn around, tried to speak, but everything faded to black and she felt her body collapsing, falling into the filth. What...? How...?
Fox.
Her last clear thought was of Nick and what he would do when he learned she had left him. Again.
***
As soon as Nicholas spotted his mother walking towards him along Cheapside, he knew something was wrong. She looked too...satisfied. These days when his mother was satisfied it meant she had managed to wedge another lever between himself and Isabel and was gradually forcing them apart.
He’d feel more inclined to speak to her if he knew why Isabel had left Ashbourne House without leaving him a message.
"Mother," he said in way of greeting.
"Son. I’ve been looking for you. I was told you were at Ashbourne House," she said, stroking the fur collar of her cloak.
Only Isabel or Fox knew where he’d been, which meant his mother must have been to the shop. "Have you seen Isabel?"
She nodded. "I have a message to you from her." Her mouth twisted in an odd smile.
Nicholas waited for her to go on, his heart thumping so hard against its cage he thought it would break out. "You might as well tell me, Mother, since you seem so eager."
She looped her hand through his arm. No, this didn’t bode well at all. "Now, Son, don’t be alarmed at what I’m about to say, just think of it as an opportunity—"
"Mother!" He withdrew and rounded on her. "Give me the message."
"She’s left you," she said flatly.
The noise and activity of the busy street faded and he was once again in Lyle Hall, in the private chamber he shared with Isabel where he had first heard his mother say those three shocking words. Then, as now, he felt their force as if he’d been punched in the gut. Then, as now, everything stopped moving, stopped breathing, stopped existing except those three words.
Then, like now, he shook his head over and over. "No. It’s not possible." He heard his denial, an echo from six years ago and yet not an echo. Real. Too sickeningly real.
But he knew it was true. His mother looked too triumphant not to be sure. And Isabel had left Ashbourne House without leaving him a message. That fact repeated in his mind, torturing him again and again. He pressed his fingers to his temples and tried to rub it away.
"Well, she has," his mother said.
"Why? What have you done?"
"She and I came to an agreement—"
"To the devil with your agreements, Mother." He spoke quietly so passersby wouldn’t overhear but he could see by her flinch she had felt the sharp edge of his anger. "What have you said to her to make her leave? What have you done?"
"Nothing. That is," she added quickly when he grabbed her by the shoulders, "nothing new. We agreed that it was only a matter of time before her powers were discovered and she would be arrested, dragging you and the entire family down with her. Once we discussed it, she finally saw my point of view." She took his hands in her own but he snatched them away. Her eyes widened and he could see the uncertainty clouding them. "She left for your sake, Nick. So you could have the bright future you deserve." Her voice rose as she spoke so that by the end she sounded like a frightened little girl.
He knew she was lying. At the very least, she was leaving a vital piece of information out. But it didn’t matter. There was something else which ate through his thoughts like a maggot through rancid meat. Even though his mother had virtually admitted forcing Isabel to go, the truth remained that she hadn’t seen his wife until after Isabel left Ashbourne House.
So it couldn’t be his mother’s new threats which had made Isabel leave him that morning? Then...what could it be?
Whatever it was, it was something that combined with his mother’s threats had been enough to drive Isabel away from him. Again.
"How long ago did she leave? In which direction? Was she on foot? Did she take any belongings?" The questions tripped over each other as they tumbled out of his mouth. To each of them, his mother just shook her head or shrugged.
"Bloody hell," he muttered and strode off in the direction of Bucklersbury Street.
"Wait!" She walked quickly beside him, her boots slipping on the wet stones as she tried to keep up. "What are you going to do?"
"Find her."
"She doesn’t want to be found."
"I don’t care. She’s my wife. I’ll find her and bring her back. She belongs with me." But even as he said it, he knew he had very little chance of convincing Isabel to do anything she didn’t want to do. One thing he had learned since their reunion, she was not a woman to do a man’s bidding, even her husband’s.
What he had to do was convince her he loved her, that he needed her and couldn’t go on without her. All of which was true but perhaps he hadn’t made it clear in the past few hectic days.
Of course it all depended on whether she loved him enough to return. And that’s what terrified him. He couldn’t make her love him. In fact, he had no idea how strong her feelings were. She had fallen easily into his arms but that could have been from desire fuelled by six years of celibacy. Love was different. He might love her so much his heart ached when she wasn’t near, but did she feel the same?
It didn’t matter. None of it mattered if he couldn’t find her and tell her how he felt. Even if she was to walk away again, he had to tell her.
"No, Son, you don’t understand."
He stopped and turned on his mother. "What?"
"She can’t be found."
The triumphant gleam in her eyes had all but vanished and that filled him with even more dread. "What. Have. You. Done?"
Her hands, grasping desperately at his, trembled. "The Justice of the Peace will be coming for her at sundown if she’s still here."
Nicholas’s throat went dry and his stomach roiled. No. No, this wasn’t happening. His mother couldn’t be so cruel as to alert the authorities.
But she had.
His fists closed into tight balls at his sides. He wanted to hit something, bellow out his rage to the world, but even at his worst he was too aware of the crowds that swarmed around them to show
any outward sign of his anger.
Steady. Be calm. Think.
"You fool," he snarled. "You stupid old fool. Isabel is pregnant."
She reeled back in horror, her foot slipping. He caught her before she fell but she didn’t seem to notice his steadying grip on her arms, even though it must have bruised.
"What?" she whispered, staring up at him. "What did you say?"
"She’s carrying your grandchild." If his mother had been in her right mind she would have realized that couldn’t be possible. Or perhaps she didn’t know he’d been reunited with Isabel less than a week. Long enough to make a baby, not long enough to know. "You’ve just condemned the heir to the Merritt lands and fortune to death." The lie had been the only thing he could think of to shock her into understanding the horrible senselessness of her actions. Perhaps it would make her call off the dogs.
Her body shook under his hands. "I, I didn’t know."
"And if you did, would it have made any difference?" He let go and strode off but she followed.
"Yes, of course."
But he wasn’t so sure. His mother wanted an heir but only from a daughter-in-law she liked. One who would bow to her superiority as matriarch of the Merritt family, one who would do her bidding. One who wasn’t a witch.
"Then you’ll tell the Lord Mayor you were mistaken, since I’m sure you were the one who told him Isabel was...unique."
"Y, yes. Of course," she said, her long strides keeping pace with his.
"Then what are you waiting for! Go tell him before he sends the JP around."
Still she didn’t leave his side. She was like a dog with a bone, unwilling to give it up until she’d stripped it of everything tasty. "But are you sure she wants to come back?"
"What do you mean?" he growled without slowing down.
"She agreed to leave quite readily this time. I would have thought, after her vehement denial at our last meeting, that she would have been more reluctant. Especially since you were so keen to keep her. Didn’t you tell her you loved her?"
"Of course I did." But apparently the declaration hadn’t been enough. "She must have been frightened by the prospect of going to prison. Her father died in Newgate. The threat of a death sentence can make up people’s minds for them, Mother."
"That’s another thing," she went on. "Do you want to forever be linked to a traitor? Surely if the queen or your friends knew about her father you would not be held in such high regard at court."
He had to laugh at that. If only she knew it was those so-called friends who’d coerced him into spying on his own father-in-law in the first place. "They already know."
"Then you must distance yourself from him, from his daughter."
"Mother," he ground out through a tight jaw. "I have had enough. Leave me now. I don’t want to hear another word from you."
"Just one thing," she said and he bit down on the curses perched on the tip of his tongue. "As I said, she left quite readily this time. Little arguing or reasoning. I was wondering..." She stopped walking and he turned back to her, not wanting to hear what she had to say but knowing he needed to hear it anyway, in a perverse sense.
"Yes?" he prompted.
She sighed, as if what she was about to say genuinely concerned her. "Perhaps she’s decided she doesn’t really love you after all."
Grunting, he turned his back to her and kept walking. Already at the corner of Bucklersbury Street, he could see Isabel’s shop. He focused on its door, willing Isabel to be on the other side, smiling, happy. Her arms wrapping around his middle and her lips closing on his in a soft, eager kiss.
But he knew she wouldn’t be there. His mother’s words repeated over and over in his head, becoming louder, clearer. The sickening feeling that she might be right grew stronger. He had thought Isabel still loved him. Hadn’t she said so?
Words. Merely words, easily spoken.
He put his hand to the door to push it open, and was reminded of another door, slightly ajar. It had seemed insignificant that morning when Ash had noticed the bedchamber door was open during their conversation and had got up to close it, but now Nicholas wasn’t so sure.
What if Isabel had opened it?
What if she’d come back from her meeting with Fox and overheard him speaking to Ash about...what?
Oh God.
They’d spoken about his spying and his involvement in Samuel’s case.
Then she had left. Without leaving a message.
And now he knew why.
She had learned he had lied to her, betrayed her in the worst possible way by helping send her father to prison. No wonder she wanted to be as far away from him as possible. She must hate him, possibly even fear him if she suspected he was also spying on her. Considering his actions, his furtive behavior recently, she most certainly would be thinking that.
Oh God.
He opened the door, still hoping, but Nicholas knew as soon as he entered the shop that she had gone. He couldn’t feel her presence, couldn’t sense her brightness. He was too late.
"Oh. It’s you."
At the sound of the flat voice he looked up at the woman behind the counter. Isabel’s friend, Meg, stood looking a little less unkempt than the last time he’d seen her. She’d dispensed with the wig and wore a demure caul over brown hair. She’d also removed the thick face paint and her clothes didn’t hang like rags off her thin frame. In fact, the simple gown looked like Isabel’s.
"Where is she?" he asked, trying to keep the edge out of his voice.
"Gone." Meg chewed on her lip and he noticed her eyes were red-rimmed.
"Where?" He strode up to the bench and half leaned across it to shake the answer out of her before restraining himself.
Nevertheless, she reeled back out of his reach.
"I’m sorry," he said quickly. "I’m sorry, I just..." He sucked in a breath to steady his speeding pulse. He didn’t want to scare the one person who might know where Isabel had gone. "You’re her friend, aren’t you?"
"Yes." She curtsied awkwardly then blushed. "But I don’t know where she went. She didn’t tell me."
The same sickening feeling came back. If he knew Isabel, she would already be far away, and she would have made certain she couldn’t be found.
"How long ago did she leave?" he asked.
"Not long. No, wait, it was a while." She shrugged. "I don’t know. I’ve been busy here. I’m not allowed to sell anything but telling all the customers to come back later is hard work." Her eyes grew bigger as she spoke and she threw her hands in the air. "There’s so many of them."
He frowned. "Where’s Fox?" It seemed a lifetime ago that he and Ash had discussed Fox’s possible link to the poisoning plots, both old and new. He almost didn’t care anymore. Finding Isabel was more important.
"Oh, he left not long after Izzy. Said he had errands to run. I wish he’d come back. I’ve got to go see my intended. He’s a draper. Has his own shop, you know."
Oh Hell. He knew with hideous clarity that Fox had followed her. The apprentice must be linked to the plots, it was the only explanation, and he had decided to get to Nicholas through Isabel. Fox knew it was the only way to make Nicholas give up his investigation.
He leaned on the bench, groaned and rubbed his hands through his hair. This was all his fault. If only he’d been honest with Isabel, told her everything...
"Are you all right, Sir Nick? It’s just that you look really ill. And when you groan like that... Wait, I’ve probably got something here I could give you." He looked up to see her studying the rows of jars. "But I don’t think Izzy sells anything for love sickness," she said. She plucked out a jar and placed it on the counter between them. "Maybe fennel. Izzy used to give me this all the time when I had pains in my stomach."
Nicholas swore.
"There’s no need for that. I’m just trying to help."
"No, I’m sorry, I...I need to find Isabel. Is there anything you can tell me that might help?"
Meg suddenly looked ser
ious again. She picked out something from the fennel jar, a fruit or berry maybe, and rubbed it between her thumb and forefinger. "No. Izzy’s gone forever. She said she’s not coming back." She looked up and absently fixed Nicholas with a brutal glare. "I don’t know what you said to upset her so much that she had to leave all her friends."
"I didn’t," he said, even as guilt made his chest tighten. It was all his fault. If she hadn’t overheard his conversation with Ash... No, if he hadn’t said anything to be overheard. If he hadn’t spied for Walsingham in the first place...