Page 97 of The Lover's Eye
He drove away, leaving Isobel in a wake of finely milled dust.She did not even consider pausing to visit her sister, but struck out for the coast, following the jagged cliffs south toward the village.
She had not been gifted with such fine weather for walking as the day before.The sky felt close, clouds the color of grey pearls lying flush against the horizon.The wind whipped tirelessly, gusts tripping up her steps and forcing her to remove her bonnet.Her hair begged free, winding itself into tangly strands, and her eyes stung from the assault of misty sea air.
As the cliffs ebbed into flatter land, drawing inland to form a bay of mud and salt, Isobel’s nerves began to quicken.The island did not look so far away from this vantage; a direct path of scalloped sandbar stretched between her and it, but she still questioned her sanity.
There was a real possibility that the woman inhabiting the island knew nothing of Aurelia, Giles, or their elusive, tangled web.But it still seemed the only chance of plunging the truth from someone other than Giles himself.
“I can do this,” Isobel said to herself, taking a deep breath and hitching her skirts up in her hands.
She’d had the good sense to wear her shabbiest gown of navy cotton, knowing the sea-soaked terrain would leave her filthier than she had been in all her life.She took her first steps off the solidity of grassy land, her boot squelching into wet sand.
Isobel hesitated, her skirts trembling in her hand.She pushed away every sensibility and took another step.
The way was clear to her, even if strips of the sandbar were still pooled with seawater.Before leaving, she had asked a footman when the tide went out, claiming she and Marriane intended to go watch birds.It seemed he had given her an accurate answer.
The encroachment of the sea was still within sight.It lapped at the edges of the exposed seabed, giving the impression that at any moment it might decide to come into its own again.
Isobel shuddered as her foot sank to ankle depth, cool mud penetrating her stocking and slithering into her boot.She hadn’t expected to have so little balance here, to feel like she might topple over at any moment.
She ploughed onward in several tottering steps, pausing once she reached a more solid bit of path.A glance cast over her shoulder revealed just how little ground she had covered, and the promise of land ahead did not appear any closer.With a sigh of surrender, she leant and removed her filthy boots and stockings.
Her shoulder soon began to give her pain from carrying such cargo—a bonnet under her arm and the boots that swung like a pendulum by their strings, periodically crashing into her side to leave strikes of fresh mud.But her passage was far easier barefoot.
It allowed her to regain much of her surefootedness, and despite the frigid temperature of the seafloor squishing between her toes, there was something oddly pleasant about it.Freeing or humbling, perhaps, stripping all those who walked here of their titles and accolades, reducing them to mere people, seeking passage, praying the sea did not reach them before they reached dry ground.
Shallow pools of water reflected the sky like spills of melted silver.Isobel’s feet occasionally caught on something sharp, or slid against a slick of grass and seaweed.By the time she reached the shores of the island, she had small cuts on the soles of her feet and had lost all concept of time.
But even as she stepped onto the refreshing solidity of dry land, the twinge of foreboding did not leave her.It was as though a little bead of instinct was pressing her, saying,You shouldn’t be here.
Isobel fought against it, as she had done with all her other finer senses, and summited the grass-sprung dunes.It still appeared to be a wasteland; a barren patch of earth only ever intended to support wild creatures that might swim or fly freely from its banks.Had Reverend Gouldsmith not affirmed for her that someone did, in fact, live here, Isobel might’ve turned her back at that very moment.
She walked on, the land morphing into a field of mixed grass and headstrong, wiry wildflowers that made her shins itch.There were no disruptions to suggest someone walked here.Not even a thin path or a round of dampened earth to suggest animal presence.
The ground drew up on a slight incline, and Isobel paused at its crest.A multitude of sound mingled over her head with a lightness akin to falling rain.Her chin jerked upward as a dark shadow fell over the field.
A flock of starlings.
The birds flew overhead in remarkable harmony, lilting, sinking, and beating ahead with unexplainable synchrony.They flew so low that Isobel could see their individual bodies—oil slick black, glistening in the darkest shades of green and blue—just whispers of color.
She had not seen such a large display in months, and never so close as this.It was as though this island did not obey the laws of nature.
A small shack rested at the base of the hill, constructed of native stones and driftwood.She made her way to it, straining her eyes for any sign of life, and rapped on the rickety door with her heart in her throat.
Silence.Well, not quite.
Isobel toed her way around the border of the shack and found a woman on her knees, tending to a messy plot of garden.Her shovel worked methodically against the soil.
Though the woman’s back was to her, it was evident she was up in years.Long straggles of grey hair scaled down her back, and scalloped vertebral bones shone through the fabric of her clothes.
Isobel didn’t know what to do.She remembered Marriane saying the woman had drawn a pistol on Reverend Gouldsmith—the last thing Isobel wanted was to startle her.She opened her mouth to announce herself, but the stranger spoke first.
“Come along, there,” she said, her voice strained and gravelly.“It’s taken ye long enough.”
Isobel swallowed hard, but did as she was asked.The upturned earth of the garden was sharp and ticklish against her bare feet, and her burn blared painfully in the absence of exertion.
“Help me, would ye?”asked the woman, gesturing to a nearby collection of potato sprouts.
Isobel hesitated a moment, but sat aside her bonnet and boots, and retrieved a sprout for the prepared furrow.
