“You’re charming,” Isobel says, and immediately blushes, looking like she would pull
the words back into her mouth if she could.
“Thank you,” Marco replies, unsure what else to say.
“I’m sorry,” Isobel says, clearly flustered. “I didn’t mean to … ” She begins to trail off, but perhaps emboldened by a glass and a half of wine, she continues. “There are charms in your book,” she says. She looks to him for a reaction but he says nothing and she looks away. “Charms,” she continues to fill the silence. “Talismans, symbols … I don’t know what all of them mean but they are charms, are they not?”
She takes a nervous sip of her wine before daring to look back at him.
Marco chooses his words carefully, wary about the direction the conversation is taking.
“And what does a young lady who once lived in France know of charms and
talismans?” he asks.
“Only things I’ve read in books,” she says. “I don’t remember what all of them mean. I only know the astrological symbols and some of the alchemical ones, and I don’t know them particularly well, either.” She pauses, as though she cannot decide whether or not she wants to elaborate, but then she adds, “La Roue de Fortune, the Wheel of Fortune. The card in your book. I know that card. I have a deck, myself.”
While earlier Marco had determined her to be little more than mildly intriguing and fairly pretty, this revelation is something more. He leans into the table, regarding her with considerably increased interest than he had moments before.
“Do you mean you read the tarot, Miss Martin?” he asks.
Isobel nods.
“I do, at least, I try,” she says. “Only for myself, though, which I suppose is not really reading. It’s … it’s just something I picked up a few years ago.”
“Do you have your deck with you?” Marco asks. Isobel nods again. “I would very much
like to see it, if you don’t mind,” he adds, when she makes no move to take it from her bag. Isobel glances around the café at the other patrons. Marco gives a dismissive wave.
“Don’t worry yourself about them,” he says, “it takes a great deal more than a deck of cards to frighten this lot. But if you would rather not, I understand.”
“No, no, I don’t mind,” Isobel says, picking up her bag and carefully pulling out a deck of cards wrapped in a scrap of black silk. She removes the cards from their covering and places them atop the table.
“May I?” Marco asks as he moves to pick them up.
“By all means,” Isobel answers, surprised.
“Some readers do not like other people touching their cards,” Marco explains, recalling details from his divination lessons as he gently lifts the deck. “And I would not want to be presumptuous.” He turns over the top card, Le Bateleur. The Magician. Marco cannot help but smile at the card before replacing it in the pile.
“Do you read?” Isobel asks him.
“Oh no,” he says. “I am familiar with the cards, but they do not speak to me, not in ways enough to properly read.” He looks up from the cards at Isobel, still not certain what to make of her. “They speak to you, though, do they not?”
“I have never thought of it that way, but I suppose they do,” she says. She sits quietly, watching him flip through the deck. He treats it with the same care she showed with his journal, holding the cards delicately by their edges. When he has looked through the entire deck, he places them back on the table.
“They are very old,” he says. “Much older than you, I would venture to guess. Might I
inquire as to how they came into your possession?”
“I found them in a jewelry box in an antiques shop in Paris, years ago,” Isobel says.
“The woman there wouldn’t even sell them to me, she just told me to take them away, get them out of her shop. Devil cards, she called them. Cartes du Diable.”
“People are naïve about such things,” Marco says, a phrase oft repeated by his instructor as both admonishment and warning. “And they would rather write them off as