And now, speaking of consciences, hers was beating a nasty little tattoo in her chest. It was a most unpleasant-and unfamiliar-feeling.
It wasn’t that Isabella was the soul of sweetness and light, all sugary smiles and pious platitudes. Heavens, no, she avoided such girls like the plague. But by the same token, she rarely did anything that was likely to make her feel guilty afterward, if only because perhaps-and only perhaps-her notions of propriety and morality were ever-so-slightly flexible.
But now she had a lump in the pit of her stomach, a lump with peculiar talent for sending bile up her throat. Her hands were shaking, and she felt ill. Not feverish, not even aguish, just ill. With herself.
Letting out an uneven breath, Isabella rose to her feet and crossed the room to her desk, a delicate rococo piece her namesake great-grandmother had brought over from Italy. She’d put the jewels there three years back, when she’d finally moved out of the top-floor nursery. She’d discovered a secret compartment at the back of the bottom drawer. This hadn’t particularly surprised her; there seemed to be an uncommon number of secret compartments in the furniture at Clair House, much of which had been imported from Italy. But it was a boon and rather convenient, and so one day, when her family was off at some ton function they had deemed Isabella too young to attend, she’d sneaked back up to the nursery, retrieved the jewels from their hiding place behind the tile (which she had rather resourcefully plastered back up), and moved them to her desk.
They’d remained there ever since, except for the odd occasion when Isabella took them out and tried them on, thinking how nice they would look with her new gown, but how was she to explain their existence to her parents?
Now it seemed that no explanation would have been necessary. Or perhaps just a different sort of explanation.
A very different sort.
Settling into the desk chair, Isabella leaned down and retrieved the jewels from the secret compartment. They were still in the same corded velvet bag in which she’d found them. She slid them free, letting them pool luxuriously on the desktop. She didn’t know much about jewels, but surely these had to be of the finest quality. They caught the sunlight with an indescribable magic, almost as if each stone could somehow capture the light and then send it showering off in every direction.
Isabella didn’t like to think herself greedy or materialistic, but in the presence of such treasure, she understood how diamonds could make a man go a little bit mad. Or why women longed so desperately for one more piece, one more stone that was bigger, more finely cut than the last.
But these did not belong to her. Maybe they belonged to no one. But if anyone had a right to them, it was most definitely her mother. Isabella didn’t know how or why Hyacinth knew of their existence, but that didn’t seem to matter. Her mother had some sort of connection to the jewels, some sort of important knowledge. And if they belonged to anyone, they belonged to her.
Reluctantly, Isabella slid them back into the bag and tightened the gold cord so that none of the pieces could slip out. She knew what she had to do now. She knew exactly what she had to do.
But after that…
The torture would be in the waiting.
One year later.
It had been two months since Hyacinth had last searched for the jewels, but Gareth was busy with some sort of estate matter, and she had no good books to read, and, well, she just felt…itchy.
This happened from time to time. She’d go months without searching, weeks and days without even thinking about the diamonds, and then something would happen to remind her, to start her wondering, and there she was again-obsessed and frustrated, sneaking about the house so that no one would realize what she was up to.
And the truth was, she was embarrassed. No matter how one looked at it, she was at least a little bit of a fool. Either the jewels were hidden away at Clair House and she hadn’t found them despite sixteen years of searching, or they weren’t hidden, and she’d been chasing a delusion. She couldn’t imagine how she might explain this to her children, the servants surely thought her more than a little bit mad (they’d all caught her snooping about a washroom at one point or another), and Gareth-well, he was sweet and he humored her, but all the same, Hyacinth kept her activities to herself.
It was just better that way.
She’d chosen the nursery washroom for the afternoon’s search. Not for any particular reason, of course, but she’d finished her systematic search of all of the servants’ washrooms (always an endeavor that required some sensitivity and finesse), and before that she’d done her own washroom, and so the nursery seemed a good choice. After this she’d move to some of the second floor washrooms. George had moved into his own lodgings and if there really was a merciful God, Isabella would be married before long, and Hyacinth would not have to worry about anyone stumbling upon her as she poked, pried, and quite possibly pulled the tiles from the walls.
Hyacinth put her hands on her hips and took a deep breath as she surveyed the small room. She’d always liked it. The tiling was, or at least appeared to be, Turkish, and Hyacinth had to think that the eastern peoples must enjoy far less sedate lives than the British, because the colors never failed to put her in a splendid mood-all royal blues and dreamy aquas, with streaks of yellow and orange.
Hyacinth had been to the south of Italy once, to the beach. It looked exactly like this room, sunny and sparkly in ways that the shores of England never seemed to achieve.
She squinted at the crown molding, looking for cracks or indentations, then dropped to her hands and knees for her usual inspection of the lower tiles.
She didn’t know what she hoped to find, what might have suddenly made an appearance that she hadn’t detected during the other, oh, at least a dozen previous searches.
But she had to keep going. She had to because she simply had no choice. There was something inside of her that just would not let go. And-
She stopped. Blinked. What was that?
Slowly, because she couldn’t quite believe that she’d found anything new-it had been over a decade since any of her searches had changed in any measurable manner, she leaned in.
A crack.
It was small. It was faint. But it was definitely a crack, running from the floor to the top of the first tile, about six inches up. It wasn’t the sort of thing most people would notice, but Hyacinth wasn’t most people, and sad as it sounded, she had practically made a career of inspecting washrooms.
Frustrated with her inability to get really close, she shifted to her forearms and knees, then laid her cheek against the floor. She poked the tile to the right of the crack, then the left.
Nothing happened.
She stuck her fingernail at the edge of the crack, and dug it in. A tiny piece of plaster lodged under her nail.
A strange excitement began to build in her chest, squeezing, fluttering, rendering her almost incapable of drawing breath.
“Calm down,” she whispered, even those words coming out on a shake. She grabbed the little chisel she always took with her on her searches. “It’s probably nothing. It’s probably-”
She jammed the chisel in the crack, surely with more force than was necessary. And then she twisted. If one of the tiles was loose, the torque would cause it to press outward, and-
“Oh!”
The tile quite literally popped out, landing on the floor with a clatter. Behind it was a small cavity.
Hyacinth squeezed her eyes shut. She’d waited her entire adult life for this moment, and now she couldn’t even bring herself to look. “Please,” she whispered. “Please.”