CHAPTER 19
Sophie swallowed down the hurt she felt at Gabe’s abandonment and smiled at her new sister-in-law. She didn’t know this woman at all, and she had no idea about what sort of conversation she should make until Gabe decided to return. Mundane topics she discussed in London over the latest fashions or a recent performance at Drury Lane would be of no help with Lady Augusta. And Lady Augusta was who she was even if she had decided to call herself Mrs. Henri Caplette. Lady Augusta Caplette, only known daughter to the late Earl of Northwold, black-hearted villain that he was.
“If Clayton is still at Rosewood, I don’t understand how Gabriel came to find us,” Lady Augusta said.
Sophie breathed a sigh of relief that her sister-in-law had found a topic of discussion so the two of them wouldn’t simply stare silently at each other. “Mr. Hill, the Northwold solicitor, summoned Gabe home from Canada.”
“Canada?” Lady Augusta squeaked.
Drat it all. The woman had been held captive in Canada. Sophie gulped. “He was in Spain at the time of your capture. Recovering, actually, from a wound he received at the Battle of Vittoria.” Or thereabouts, timewise, anyway.
“Sorry,” Lady Augusta took a calming breath. “It was a traumatic time for us.”
As Sophie could well imagine. The loss of her husband, brother and child, could not have been easy to survive.
Aurelie Caplette returned to the sitting room, carrying a tea service in her arms. Her little sister trailed in after her.
“Ismérie, ask your Aunt Sophia how she would like her tea,” Lady Augusta instructed.
The girl who couldn’t be older than ten made her way across the room and said very softly to Sophie, “How do you like your tea?”
“Two sugars and a splash of cream, please.”
But it was her older sister who prepared the drink and brought the cup and saucer across the room to Sophie. “Aunt Sophia.”
“Thank you,” she replied, smiling at Gabe’s niece. She glanced back at Lady Augusta and said, “How have you found Cumberland in general and Fairhaven in particular?”
“Isolated,” the woman replied. “Which I daresay we needed when we first arrived.”
There was very little in the area, and Gabe had hoped to sell the cottage. She couldn’t see him displacing his sister or nieces, however. “Are you hoping to remain at Fairhaven, or…”
Her sister-in-law sighed. “I do not crave society’s attention,” she said. “The isolation suits me, it suited all of us at first; but now I’m not so certain that hiding away is in the best interest for my daughters.”
Her daughters who had every right to be introduced to society at some point. They were the legitimate granddaughters of the late Earl of Northwold. She looked toward the oldest girl and asked, “How old are you, Aurelie?”
“Fourteen, Aunt Sophia.”
“Just a couple years younger than my sister Cassandra. Perhaps I can introduce the two of you at some point.”
The girl had survived a massacre and imprisonment. Any influence she might have over Cassie could do wonders in regard to her sister finally growing a spine. Sophie took a sip of her tea.
“Does she like to hunt?”
Sophie choked on her drink. “I beg your pardon?” she asked after she finished coughing.
“I’m a good hunter. Papa always said I was.”
And perhaps young girls had to be in the wilds of America. But the only real hunting proper English ladies did was for husbands on the marriage mart. “She enjoys riding,” Sophie said.
“What about rocks?” Ismérie asked, her warm eyes, so much like Gabe’s twinkled as she dropped onto the settee beside Sophie.
“Rocks?”
And then the young girl tugged a handful of various rocks from a pocket in her frock and started placing them one by one on the cushion between her and Sophie. “I like this dark green one the best.” Ismérie lifted a strangely shaped rock out for Sophie to inspect it.
“Very nice,” she said.
“Oh and this one.” The girl plucked a black and white speckled rock from the cushion. “See the design in it?”
Sophie didn’t, not really. But Ismérie’s love of rocks was perhaps an opportunity for the girl to not be so terrified of Gabe. “Do you know who knows quite a bit about rocks?”
“Your sister?” Ismérie guessed.
Sophie managed not to laugh at the suggestion of Cassie knowing anything of the like. She did shake her head. “Your Uncle Gabriel.” And then she smiled at one particular memory. “When we first met, he had a grand time pointing out all the different formations at Hampton Hall, where I lived.” Normally, the topic would bore Sophie to tears, but she could listen to anything Gabe said, anything at all to hear the deep rumble of his voice, even then.
A look of disbelief flashed in the little girl’s eyes and Sophie’s heart ached for the child. She had to have been so young when they’d been marched to Fort Macon. It was no wonder she was terrified of Gabe. He had to look like all of her captors. Still, she wasn’t in America any longer, and if she was going to live in England, Gabe would not be the only fellow she’d encounter in regimentals.
“He’s a wonderful man, your Uncle Gabriel,” she added. “You can’t let that uniform worry you.”
“Clayton said he was the most honorable of the two of them,” Lady Augusta said. “He spoke so glowingly of his brother.”
“He’s the most honorable man I know,” Sophie agreed. She only wished he hadn’t abandoned her that afternoon. Shouldn’t she be by his side to help him face their problems together? He didn’t have to shoulder everything alone anymore. They were husband and wife now even if they hadn’t understood all the Gaelic gibberish the day before.
When Gabe returned to Fairhaven, he was no closer to an answer to his solution than he was before he left. He had a wife, and now a sister and two nieces that he needed to provide for. One way or another. Was the devil on the market for buying souls? Otherwise, he had no idea how he was going to accomplish the task that Clayton thought him capable of doing.
He heaved a sigh as he pushed the door open to the cottage and stepped into the foyer. Girlish laughter hit his ears, and despite his concerns and weariness, he couldn’t help but smile at the sound. Clayton had thought those two girls were his treasure. If only his brother had stumbled upon one worth monetary value in the process, all would be well.
He followed the sound down the small corridor and found himself in the threshold of a cozy kitchen. Sophie was helping Augusta cut triangles out of some dough, and Ismérie sat at a table playing a game of jackstraws with Lumley of all people. When the coachman retrieved a small stick from the pile that made the others move, the little girl laughed again. “You’re not supposed to move them, Mr. Lumley.”
“Yes, well, my job is usually to make things move as quickly as possible, Miss Ismérie.”
At that moment, Sophie noticed him in the threshold, and that smile of hers that he adored lit up the room. “You’re back.”
“I had no idea you were so domestic, Sophie.”
She dusted her hands on an apron and said, “I’m certain I’m making more of a mess for Augusta than I am helping, to be honest.”
It made sense, of course, that his sister was so capable in the kitchens. Living in the Michigan territory as it seemed she had, Augusta had probably been responsible for much more than cooking and baking. The terrain was rough and could be quite unforgiving. Clayton was right about her strength. Not just anyone could have survived the Frenchtown massacre and that tortuous march to Fort Macon, and for her to have survived that ordeal with two of her children had to be a testimony to that very strength. And now all three of them were dependent upon him. His stomach churned at the thought.
“Gabe,” Sophie began, “you should ask Ismérie to show you her collection of rocks.”
He bit back a smile. What a fool he’d been all those years ago to wax poetic over rhyolite. He’d just been so flummoxed the first time he’d been alone with Sophie and a bunch of details about the pink speckled rocks at Hampton Hall had just flown out of his mouth like he was a veritable idiot. She’d very sweetly listened to the whole thing, her arm tucked into the crook of his, and she’d gazed up at him like he was the most interesting and wonderful man in the world. She still looked at him like that, and as he met her gaze now across the kitchen in his sister’s cottage, his heart swelled. He’d find some way to take care of her, to take care of them all.
“Gabe?” Sophie said again.
“Yes, love?”
She laughed as though she knew he was thinking about her. Perhaps she could read it on his face. “Ask your niece to show you her rocks. She’s very proud of them.”
Yes, the girl who was terrified of him. Sophie was clearly trying help him make inroads with his niece. “Yes, of course.” Gabe crossed the small kitchen and settled into a seat at the table next to Ismérie and across from Christian’s coachman, of all people. What an odd assortment they all were in that kitchen. “You have some rocks, do you?”
Ismérie nodded slowly, looking unsure whether or not she trusted him. But then she reached into her pocket and began to lay rocks on the table one at a time. She lifted out a piece of speckled black and white granite for him to take from her. He smiled at the girl. “Oh, that is a nice one,” he said, turning the rock over in his hand and then bouncing it for good measure. “A good solid piece of granite you have there.”
She grinned like he’d just bestowed his highest praise on her. Then she added a bunch more rocks from her pocket onto the table. “This one is my favorite,” she said softly.
Gabe took the dark rock from her and said, “Slate.”
“I like the edges.”
It was a worthless stone, but if it…
Gabe sat up straight when he noticed a little silvery and dark grey nugget on the table amongst the litter of other rocks. He handed her back the slate and picked up the odd, little misshapen mineral. It was silver he would bet…well, he had nothing to bet, but it was definitely silver, intermixed with some lead. “Ismérie, where did you find this?”
She frowned at the silver. “Near the path on the way to Ulaid Tarn.”
She’d found it nearby. “On Fairhaven land?” he asked anxiously.
“Clayton said everything from here to the tarn was Northwold property,” Augusta said as she added some mincemeat to the little doughy triangles Sophie had just finished with. “I understand our father liked to come here to hunt.”
For the first time in the longest while, hope burgeoned in Gabe’s heart, but he squashed it down, too afraid to pin all his hopes on that little bit of silvery lead, at least not yet. “Do you think you could show me where you found it? Do you remember well enough?”
She inched away from him like he’d scared her all of a sudden.
Damn it all. Gabe forced himself to remain calm. “It’s important, Ismérie,” he said in his most gentle voice. “Do you think you could take me there?”
“Gabe?” Sophie asked, concern lacing her voice.
But Gabe didn’t look up from his niece.
“You’re not mad at me?” she asked quietly, blinking her hazel eyes at him.
Far from that. She might just be his most favorite person in the whole world…except for Sophie, of course. “Not in the least, my dear, but this could be very important.”
“Mama, is it all right?”
Gabe glanced up to meet his sister’s eyes. “It is important.”
“Of course, of course,” Augusta said. “But be aware of the time. I’d hate for supper to be cold.”
Gabe pushed out of his seat and so did his niece who looked back at her mother. “Can Aurelie come too?” she asked.
Augusta nodded. “I think Sophia and I can manage supper by ourselves.”
Sophie had never managed supper a day in her life, but Gabe was too anxious to pay attention to the novelty of it all. Was there more silver nearby? Or had Ismérie stumbled upon a rare piece?
His niece rushed from the kitchen and called for her sister in the corridor.
As Gabe started after her, Sophie stood in his path. “What’s this about?”
If he didn’t want to get his hopes up, he certainly didn’t want to get hers up. Dealing with his own crushing disappointment would be difficult enough. “Just a suspicion I have,” he said.
“Be careful with her,” Sophie whispered. “She is quite fragile.”
“As careful as I’ll be with our own someday.”
“Why did you come to Fairhaven, Uncle Gabriel?” Aurelie asked, keeping her step even with Gabe’s while they trailed after her younger sister who raced through the woodlands as though she was born to it.
He certainly wasn’t about to admit it was to sell the place, especially as he’d decided he couldn’t do any such thing with his newfound relations inhabiting the cottage. “I’m looking in on all of the Northwold holdings. The best way to do that is see everything with my own eyes.”
“Because Uncle Clayton is dying?” she cast him a sidelong glance.
“I’m afraid he is.”
“He saved us, you know?” she said quietly. “Mama cried nearly half the journey to England, so relieved that Uncle Clayton sent someone to free us.”
“I will try my best to take care of you in his absence,” Gabe promised, meaning every word. Had things been different, had his father been a decent man, Augusta would have been raised in England, the daughter of an earl and her life would have been so different. She wouldn’t know her way around a kitchen. She and her children wouldn’t have been marched from Frenchtown to Fort Macon with only the clothes on their backs. And he’d have bet his last farthing, she would still be in the possession of two good eyes and perfect legs.
“I’m gathering from your names and your papa’s,” he began, changing the subject, “that he was French.”
“Oui,” Aurelie smiled up at him. “Papa came to America as a boy from Marseille.”
Gabe nodded as he listened. “Was he a tradesman or…?”
“Papa and Uncle Charles were both fur traders. We all left the Hudson Bay for the Michigan territory when I was one.”
“When you were one?” Gabe laughed as he shook his head. “Certainly you don’t remember that trip.”
“Certainly not,” she agreed. “But my sister Eloise said I cried the entire journey and drove her half-mad.”
“Here!” Ismérie called to them, leaving the path and pushing her way through an opening in the forest.
“What are you looking for, Uncle Gabriel?” Aurelie asked as they increased their pace through the foliage.
“Salvation, Aurelie,” he replied, worried that his hopes were already too high. “Salvation.”
They followed Ismérie a little ways toward a rambling brook and then she stopped by a large oak tree. “I think it was right around here,” she said, bending over to look at the ground.
Gabe stopped beside her and sunk down to his haunches, he ran his fingers over the moss and stones, turning them over and rubbing his thumbs across their faces looking for any sort of trace of silver.
“Any luck?” Aurelie asked, standing behind them.
“Not yet.” Gabe glanced over his shoulder at the girl. “See if you can find any stones that look silvery.”
“Silvery?”
“Or streaked with silver.”
“All right.” His older niece nodded, bent at the waist, and began rummaging through the mossy and muddy ground.
Aurelie had the devil’s own luck. “Like this?” she asked, lifting up the very first stone she touched.
A smoky quartz with a definite streak of silver running through it. Gabe’s pulse began to race as he leaned closer to Aurelie. “That’s it! That is it! Let’s see if we can find some more.”