Next, she fell to her hands and knees and slid a small box from beneath her bed. She flipped open the lid and grabbed the only items of value, besides the shop, she had in the world. The money, she stuffed into the bag. Mama’s necklace, she latched around her neck, its delicate hamsa pendant hanging low between her breasts, out of view.
Then she was on her feet and back in the sitting room, her eye locked onto the other bedroom’s door. She could avoid it no longer. She must face what lay on the other side with tonight’s failure. Her closed fist hesitated just before it delivered two light taps.
No answer came. Isabel pushed the door open anyway. Eva had stopped answering months ago. She’d expected to find Eva in bed, curled onto her side, facing away from both the door and the bassinet at the side of the bed. The bed, however, was empty.
Isabel’s panicked eye swept the room and found Eva in her night-rail, seated beside the window, her hand on the babe’s bassinet, rocking it gently. Emotion, equal parts grief and hope, if that was possible on this night, surged inside Isabel. It was the first time she’d seen Eva tend or even acknowledge the babe. Could it be that her sister was recovering? That she’d returned to her old self?
At last, Eva’s dark brown eyes lifted to meet Isabel’s. No. All she saw was the same bleak emptiness that had stared out at her the last time she was in this room a fortnight ago. None of the vivacity that had defined Eva as Eva all their lives, only blankness. Eva had sacrificed so much for the family; she’d sacrificed everything. And, still, it hadn’t been enough.
Isabel’s fists clenched. She would ensure Eva’s sacrifice wasn’t in vain.
She would fix her mistake.
“Have you saved England yet?” Eva asked. There was no mistaking the bitterness in her voice.
Isabel’s fingernails dug into her palms. “The night didn’t go to plan.”
A shadow passed in Eva’s eye. She parted the curtain a sliver. “Is that hackney waiting for you?”
“Yes.”
Eva’s cheeks went paler than usual, and she stiffened. “Is he inside?”
“It’s not Montfort. But, Eva,” Isabel continued, gaze darting about the room, feet itching to be on their way, “where is your travel bag?”
“I’m not exactly dressed for travel.” Eva tugged at the soft material of her night-rail to illustrate her point.
No time to explain, Isabel rushed to the room’s one wardrobe, opening and closing drawers and doors, grabbing clothes and sundries, stuffing them unceremoniously into the bag. “Where are the babe’s clean nappies?”
Wary, Eva pointed to a small chest beside the bassinet. “Why are you packing us up?”
Isabel stopped and looked her sister dead in the eye. The truth could be avoided no longer. “I failed”—oh, that her voice didn’t crack on that word—“and we must . . . go . . . now.”
Isabel stepped to the bassinet and stared down at her nephew. He was peaceful in his sleep, no longer the fractious infant he was for the first few months of his life when Isabel had had to spend most of their remaining savings on hiring Nell to wet-nurse the babe. The girl’s own babe had been stillborn only days before. Oh, how thin and weak he’d been, squirming and crying the house down. Now his cheeks had plumped up, and he was able to rest peacefully.
She bent over and bussed a light kiss on his forehead, inhaling his warm, sweet scent. She straightened, and her hands tightened around the two bags. “Would you like to dress? Or will you wear your night-rail?”
Eva’s eyebrows drew together and released. “Does it make a difference?”
“Not to me.” It only mattered that Eva was safe with her.
Eva stood and turned to the small table at her side. She opened a drawer and removed a small object. When she faced Isabel again, she held a pistol.
“Where did you get that?” Isabel asked in a shocked whisper.
“Such items can be got. The point is we shall not be defenseless.” Eva’s eyes burned with emotion. “Never again.”
Isabel understood her sister wasn’t leaving without the gun. She nodded, and Eva dropped the offensive item into one of the bags. Isabel stared down at the babe. “Will you carry him? Or shall I call for Nell?”
Isabel’s heart stuttered in her chest as she awaited Eva’s reply. “I,” Eva began and swallowed. “I can.” She reached into the bassinet and lifted the sleeping infant into her embrace, gingerly. Too gingerly.
Isabel wouldn’t ask if this was the first time Eva had held her child. In a strange way, it felt too intimate a question. Eva had so many demons to battle, Isabel wouldn’t add to her sister’s burden by placing judgment upon her shoulders, too. Instead, she asked, “Have you—” She hesitated, not wanting to ask the next question, fearing its answer. “Have you named him yet?”
Eva gazed down at the babe in her arms, a cloud of emotion in her eyes. “Ariel,” she said, almost as if surprised at hearing the name spoken aloud.
A knot twisted inside Isabel. “After Papa?”
“Sí.”
“Mama would have liked that.”
She and Eva didn’t often speak of Mama—she’d died of a lung infection when Isabel had been ten years of age and Eva nine—but she was never too far from their thoughts. Mama was feisty and brave, and Isabel longed to be more like her.
Mouth pressed into a firm line, Eva nodded once, as if she couldn’t trust herself to speak. How Isabel wished Eva would speak, shout, scream, cry, rail in fury at the hand Fate had dealt her. But Eva refused, forgoing emotion in favor of flat stoicism.
“Follow me,” Isabel said. It was time to move before that devastating man in the carriage hunted her down.
Across their small rooms, down the narrow staircase and corridor, through the maze of fabric bolts, they fled, meeting a wide-eyed Nell at the front door. “Nell, do you have the key?”
As Isabel twisted the key in the deadbolt, she experienced a pang in her gut. This was the shop, the life, she and Eva had begun. And now she was leaving it behind and shuttered for an uncertain future. But what choice had she? The business was nothing to those in her care. She would rebuild when—if—she returned.
Door locked behind them, they crossed the short distance to the carriage. The door flew open, and Bretagne’s face appeared, ripe with disbelief. It would be comical, if the circumstances weren’t so deadly serious. “Are you out of your deuced mind, woman?”