hands was the final manuscript of the play. He picked it up, considering making room in his satchel for it, as if Hartley didn’t have half a dozen bound copies of the printed copy. But as he looked at the manuscript, he saw that in between each of the lines of dialogue were words written in a different handwriting. He stepped into the light to get a better look.
It took him a minute to understand what he was seeing, because while the handwriting was unmistakably Martin’s—he’d recognize it even in the dark, he thought—the language was not English. He sounded out the words, and after stumbling over a few lines he realized he was reading French.
He didn’t know when Martin had done this, although it must have been during the time Will spent helping Mrs. Tanner. Will could speak French—his mother had been a native—but he could read it only haltingly and couldn’t write it at all. He recalled what Martin had told him, and imagined an eight-year-old Martin, alone in his sickroom, insisting on learning French because he missed his friend. Martin had called it jealousy, but maybe that was because he had the idea that wanting things—specifically closeness and affection—was wrong. To Will, it seemed only natural that a lonely child would do what he could to feel close to what few friends he had.
He read the first few pages aloud, remembering his mother’s lessons on how to pronounce the language. A few pages later, he felt almost confident in his reading, and could hear the words as if it were his mother speaking them. It was an odd sensation—his words, Martin’s pen, his mother’s language—and even odder to know that Martin had sat at this table and translated his play. It was a good translation, too, preserving both the sense and the humor of the original. He took a few books out of his satchel to make room for the manuscript.
Before closing the flap on his satchel, he took the primroses from the cup and carefully pressed them between the pages of the book he was reading, then slid the book into his bag.
Chapter Fifteen
Martin stood in the doorway of the elegantly appointed bedchamber that his aunt had kept clean and ready for him. In one corner sat a trunk that contained everything he had brought from Lindley Priory the previous year. Almost afraid to peer inside, he tried to remember what he had thrown into his trunk in that hurried flight to town: a few changes of clothes, a shaving kit, a miniature portrait of his mother, Will’s letters.
When he opened the lid, the first thing he took out was the clothing. It all looked enormous compared to the clothes he currently wore. But it was good quality, and he could sell it. He refolded the garments and stacked them on the dressing table. Then he looked at his mother’s portrait. She had died before he was old enough to remember her, and when he thought of her it was mainly as the idea of someone who might have loved him, who might have prevented things from going the way they did with his father. But that was a heavy burden to put on a person he didn’t know, a person who, at the time this portrait was painted, had been some years younger than himself. He really looked nothing like her, despite what Will might say, but he could see his aunt in the wry turn of his mother’s mouth and the sharpness of her gaze.
He reached into the depths of the trunk for Will’s letters, which was what he had come for in the first place, but was distracted by a gleam of gold. He bent and picked it up without thinking. He knew, even before his fingers closed around the cold metal, that it was his father’s signet ring. Martin had worn it every day between his father’s death and the day, a year later, when he finally left Lindley Priory, and not once since then had he thought about it. He didn’t even remember tossing it into the trunk. Absently, he slid it onto his third finger, but it was precariously loose. On his middle finger it was a better fit but still wobbly. The band, made of intricate swirls of gold, was in need of polishing. In the center was the Easterbrook coat of arms, which was supposed to be a dragon and a unicorn holding up a shield, but those